Rental Cars
Renting from Avis? One Thing To Know When Making a Reservation
Did you know? Your name (and assigned car) will disappear off the Avis Preferred reservation board about 45 minutes or so after your reservation time.
This isn’t really a problem.
Unless the Preferred desk is closed for the night.
And there’s only one person working the main desk. With 5 people in front of you in line.
As a (free) Avis Preferred member all my information is already in the system and a car assigned in advance. Which means it takes about 5 minutes to find my car and check out with agent as I’m leaving the parking garage. When you’re getting in at midnight and just want to get to the hotel and grab some sleep, every 5 minutes makes a big difference.
This was a wake up call that I’ve gotten a little lazy about my reservations. I use Autoslash to get the best price on rentals, which means I’m often checking my email as I get off the plane to remind myself which company I’m renting from.
And I don’t usually sweat my car rental pick up time. I book for roughly the time I think I’ll arrive, if not a little earlier, and if my flight is delayed or I change plans and arrive late my car will still be waiting for me.
And it was, I just had to wait in line for 40 minutes for the agent at the main desk to tell me which parking space :/
Normally I’d just pull up my reservation on the Avis website or app, but in a confluence of bad luck my account wasn’t showing a reservation though I had the confirmation email with my Wizard number and their systems could see it.
So lesson learned, do a better job of updating my Avis reservation arrival time. Or rent from Hertz, which texts you your assigned car, or National where you can pick any from the executive aisle.
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Lee @ BaldThoughts
February 25, 2017 at 5:43 pm
Thanks. It is important to know little quirks like this so you don’t lose your rental car reservation.
Peter
February 25, 2017 at 6:15 pm
I believe the only keep your reservation up to two hours of the set time. If you are later than that and if you haven`t entered any flight information (for avis to check if you are delayed).
I always put the pick up time later than I would think I would arrive. about 30 minutes later. Meaning you have a full two-hour window of getting your car.
If you are in desperate need of any car, just to leave the lot, why not try the exchange line. You can pick any car for free. Depends what category you have booked of course. But maybe your rebookings with autoslahsh gave you all that trouble. I get an email usually right around when I land with my assigned car and spot. Check your settings at your avis profile.
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RNP
February 25, 2017 at 7:19 pm
You receive the notification your rental car spot # if you have avis app installed on your phone
Boraxo
February 26, 2017 at 2:43 am
I always book for an hour after arrival as they usually have it assigned an hour beforehand. But yet another reason to avoid late arrivals if you can except when coming home. So many things can get messed up if delayed (including sleep)