Have a good weekend!

R

So basically it is £20 for a pre pay booked through the UK site regardless of the pickup country.
Good to know!

Can you just confirm there is no fee for date change?

Thanks again,

Robert

The cancellation charge for prepay rates is £20. This is irrespective of the pick up country. if you are on the website and look at the links at the bottom of the page there is one called BOOKING CONDITIONS, via this link you will find all the terms and conditions and costs of cancellation etc.
I hope this helps

Chris

Brining up this old blog post (just over 12 months after the last one!) as I came across an issue with the pre pay today.

Pricing up on the UK website for a rental in the US, it’s giving me a pre pay and post pay option.
The problem is that while I know you can cancel the pre pay rate for a fee there is nowhere during the booking process that tells how much the cancelation fee would be.

I don’t know if the fees discusses above are still valid for UK/Europe, but even if they are I assume the US might be differ, so could someone confirm please?

Many thanks!

Robert

Firstly let me extend my apologies that you were not fully informed of the prepay policy. I do assure you that explaining the modification process and potential cancellation charges are part of the script here in the call centre and agents are regularly monitored and marked upon this criteria. The fact that you weren’t therefore does disappoint me. It also surprises me that the charged amount varied from the price you were quoted as the prices we give here are all inclusive so there should have been no variation at all.
Could you please email the rental details to me at comments@avis.co.uk and I will look into this further?

Chris

Last week, I had to use the Avis UK call centre to book a car for use in the UK.

There was no mention in the script used by the call centre operative of any pre-pay policy, or any charges for cancellations / amendments, or of the scale of the one-way surcharges.

Imagine my surpise then when a charge of £153 appeared on my credit card two weeks before I used the car. This was almost 50% more than the quoted rate, due to the surcharges.

Also, imagine my surprise to be told by the USA Call Centre that they could cancel my booking, but could not make any refunds (apparently these have to be made in writing to the UK office), and that I would have to pay a GBP £20 ‘administration’ fee.

I will post again to this blog as the situation develops in the next few days. However, in the meantime, this policy seems to not be applied in a fair, simple or honest way.

Frankly, it seems to me to be a deliberate rip-off, designed to ensure customers pay (and do not reclaim credits) for services they do not use.

My verdict: avoid any pre-pay deals and, if that cannot be done, avoid Avis together and go somewhere with an open and honest policy.

Rob

I assume the booking in the second sentence refers to non pre-paid rates. Can you confirm please.

On the first point you can actually use the difference between the price paid and the actual cost of the rental towards additional extas such as Avis GPS, fuel, excess waivers, etc.

On the second point, I can only assume that you were told this before the new policy was put in place (otherwise we will need to follow up wiht our reservation team) as this is not true. A booking can be cancelled online. The only difference with the policy for the internet versus the call centre is that, when you first make a booking, you have 24 hours to cancel the booking free of charge and 48 hours for the call centre.

I should also note that the cancellation charge not only includes the cost of paperwork, it covers the cost of the operational disruption that occurs, the original cost to take money from a credit card and to refund it, the cost of the cancellation call if it was called in, and the cost of administering the refund from a paperwork handling standpoint.

We feel that our cancellation policy is the most generous in the industry but I welcome any further feedback on this.

Rob