You may not think that your pickup time is very important when you first make the reservation for a rental car. Other than knowing that’s when the car will be available to you, what’s so important about it, right? But, consider that your reservation doesn’t guarantee you a car and if you’re not at the rental car company on time, your car could be given to someone else, leaving no rental car for you to pick up.

The fact is that when you reserve a car, the car rental company is expecting you to be on time to pick it up. Reserving the car just tells the rental car company that you would like to rent a car on that day. It doesn’t actually tell you that a car is guaranteed to be there for you. Most often, if you reserve a car it will be available to you at your pick up time. But if you miss that time, the car rental company might give it to someone else because they think you simply don’t need the car anymore, and aren’t coming in to pick it up.

But companies that deal with rentals cars aren’t unreasonable. They know there are times when customers will be picking up their car after taking their cheap flights and landing at the airport. And in cases of missed or delayed flights, they not only understand but they deal with these circumstances every day. Because of this, car rental companies are generally very understanding if you call them to let them know that you will be late picking up your car. Often, they will hold the car for you for a few hours or even a full day. But you must call them to let them know, or you might not have a rental car when you’re expecting to!