car hire day charges if you pick up early or return late?

[Quando Quando]

How do the car hire companies calculate the time of pickup and return. is it based on a 24 hour cycle?

So for instance If I pickup a car at 11am and return it at 4pm 3 days later do I get charged for 3 days or 3 days and 5 hours?

What if I make a booking from 4pm to 4pm but arrive early and pick the car up at 11am. Will they make me wait or will they give me the car and inform me that they are going to charge me extra?

[markis10]

They base it on 24 hour days, so the clock starts ticking when you pick it up, not from the time you stated you will pick it up. Arriving early just means you have to drop it back early, anything later than 15 minutes means another day is charged in a lot of cases, but you do need to check with who you are hiring with as to their policy!

[Quando Quando]

Yes that seems to be the policy. The thing is I used to hire cars regularly and I'm certain Ive returned them late on many occasions...

Its just that I never remember being charged any extra.....

[serfty]

Most companies will give up to one hour leeway before additional charges may be incurred.

ISTR recently reports of one of the Major companies reducing this to maybe 30 minutes.

[lovestotravel]

Most companies will give up to one hour leeway before additional charges may be incurred.

ISTR recently reports of one of the Major companies reducing this to maybe 30 minutes.

Hertz used to be 1 hour, now it's 30 mins!

[AdMEL]

They base it on 24 hour days, so the clock starts ticking when you pick it up, not from the time you stated you will pick it up. Arriving early just means you have to drop it back early, anything later than 15 minutes means another day is charged in a lot of cases, but you do need to check with who you are hiring with as to their policy!

Most companies will give up to one hour leeway before additional charges may be incurred.

ISTR recently reports of one of the Major companies reducing this to maybe 30 minutes.

Hertz used to be 1 hour, now it's 30 mins!

Hertz is actually 29 min (they charge on the 30th minute)
Avis is 59 min
Europcar is 30 min

Don't know about Thrifty or Budget - don't use them and can't find it on their websites (it appears they don't have a published grace period).

Note that these times are for Australia.

Also, when I was in the US last year and hired from Hertz at SFO, they did not adjust the return time even though I picked the car up an hour later than reserved (in Australia, they would have).