I've been renting cars from Avis to do company business for the last five years. Normally they treat me ok, giving me unlimited miles at reasonable rates. I got the bill back from my last trip to Longview, though, and got surprised by the bill.

Normally, in the situation where I rent a car from one place and drop it off or another, I still get unlimited miles, but there is a dropoff fee. That is what I expected in this situation, but Avis at the Dallas airport treats things differently. Instead of the dropoff fee, they charge your MILES * RATE in addition to the time you rent. So, instead of the $500 for 18 days that I was expecting, I also got charged for the 1476 miles I put on the car, at 32 cents a mile. Final bill: just over $1450. Ouch.

As much as my company wants us to use our corporate on-line website to book reservations, the website does not have the policy information for a specific location. The lesson I'm taking away from this is, if my requirements for rentals are anything different from a same-point dropoff-and-return, call to see what the policy is, even though it may be a pain.