The plan was set. The hotels, golf, and rental car was booked. Everything was ready to go and then I got an email notifying me that our flight itinerary was being updated.
The dates were still the same, but instead of arriving in San Francisco (SFO) around noon, we were now arriving in the early evening with a very long layover in Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW). Ugh.
Airlines are always adjusting their flight schedules and frequencies so it’s not uncommon for this to happen, especially when you book 6+ months ahead like we did. When they rebook you, they often book you flights that are the most empty which is rarely a desirable change.
I dialed up customer support to find a more convenient connection. This was slightly complicated by having two itineraries to adjust because I ended up having two itineraries since I booked their flights using my miles and my flight using my wife’s miles. The agen was able to reduce the layover in DFW by a few hours, putting us in SFO in the early afternoon, though I was unable to get us all on the same flights on the SFO/DFW leg.
The best I could do was adjust my itinerary to arrive about 90 minutes earlier than everyone else. We would all leave Boston on the same flight but would have different flights from DFW to SFO. The only option for us to all be on the same flight would require an even longer layover in DFW so we decided to go with the separate flights into SFO.
The Fallout
The flights were adjusted, but the schedule change affected other things as well. For the car rental we were scheduled to pick up the car around noon while in the new itinerary it would be closer to 3:00.
I called Dollar Rental Car where I had made the reservation using United Miles to let them know of the change in my arrival time. I was told that I would need to update the time because the car would not be held for me and I could lose the reservation by showing up so much later than the time I had put in my reservation.
Unfortunately when I called United about updating the reservation I was told the reservation could not be updated. My only option was to cancel it and rebook it with the new time. At least the reservation was refundable and I could get my miles back, Rebooking the reservation using the united miles ended up not being possible. Due to changes in the program, the same car rental was going to cost nearly twice as many points, which I didn’t have at the time.
In the end this meant I was going to have to find a cash price for the rental.
Luckily I had about 4 months to try to find the new rental, so I could be patient. By booking refundable rates I could cancel an existing reservation and book a new one at a lower rate whenever I found one.
I tried thinking out of the box to get the best deal. I considered renting two small cars instead of a minivan. I considered renting a full size car and hoping we could squeeze all of our stuff in it. I even considered renting a pickup truck, which would have more than enough space, but the open bed wouldn’t be all that secure and the jump seats in the back of the pickup wouldn’t be very comfortable for the amount of driving we would be doing.
By being patient, about 2 weeks before the trip I finally found the deal I was looking for. I found a refundable rate for the 7 day minivan rental for $305, including taxes. That was a pretty fantastic deal since prices were well over $700 for the same period when we started looking.
By being patient and persistent and canceling refundable rates as I found better prices I was able to get a fantastic rate in the end. As I now know, there are websites that will do much of this for you, so I could have saved myself some time. I did learn a lot in the process, though. Car rental rates can fluctuate wildly and if you see a good price on a rental car, it’s best to book it when you see it, especially when it’s a refundable rate. That great rate may not last, or may go even lower, you never know.
Two weeks prior to the trip everything was finally nailed down and we even ended up with a better deal on the car rental than before the itinerary update.
Now it was just the countdown until the trip would start.
Tomatico Travels 
You must be logged in to post a comment.