Sometime, Plans change unexpectedly, and you might find that you need to start your trip short and / or later your hire car early. If you cut short your journey and car rental booking you might be disappointed to find you would not get a refund for the unused time. Most of the rental deals are non-flexible as you need, which keeps prices at lower side, but means that changing your trip dates can cost more at all.
On the other hand, you must not be charged admin fees for changing your dates and must not be charged extra fees for returning the car early.
How to reduce your rental before your journey starts:
If you have booked your rent a car online, you can probably change your booking through online as well. And if you are very close to your planned pick-up time (maybe it is the same day), ring the company you have booked with.
Unfortunately, if you are unlucky and picking up your car later than the originally planned might mean that you end up paying more money for least time with a car. This is because, you are making a change to the booking which can effectively mean that you are starting from scratch.
If you need to drop the car off earlier than planned and fixed time or day, you can do a search online first to see if the price for your new dates if now cheaper car rental is being charged from you. If so, make the change and you will be saving some money for your need.
How to shorten your rental when you pick up the car:
If you know that you need to return your hire car earlier as in advance than the planned, tell the counter staff when you will be arrived there to pick up the car. You will not receive a refund for the unused days at all, but there should not be any charges for returning the car early to rent a car.
If you need to drop off your car earlier than the expected time, call the local number provided by relevant the car rental company along with the paperwork you got when you picked up the car. You will not receive a refund for the unused / unconsumed days, but there should not be any charges for returning the car early from the planned days / time. So if you booked your car for too long i.e as monthly rent a car, there is usually a way to shorten your rental price or period, regardless of when you realize that you need to make changes to the dates which you have initially booked.
Early Return and / or Late Return Fees:
You may assume that a rental car company would love to get its car back early. But you must keep in mind regarding the rental car contract. If you return a vehicle early, the car rental company may not be able to rent it out for those days. There is also a type of depreciation, the vicious daily expense for rental car firms. Both depreciation and car disposition cost the average rental car company which may per day or per car.
If you return a vehicle late after fixed date, the rental car company might not be able to serve the next customer which was waiting to come back this car, especially if you rented a specialty or rare vehicle or very luxury rent a car. In that case, the rental car company would get stuck to compensate the new customer who could not be served well in time.