Flexible
Plans that might change. Common on city self-drive listings.
- 1 day or more
- 100%
- Under 1 day
- 50% of day 1 retained
Under 24 hours, half of the first day is retained and every remaining day is refunded in full.
Policy
Cancellation policies
Every listing carries one of three refund policies, chosen by the owner and shown before you book. This page explains all three, what happens when the owner cancels, how no-shows and flight delays are treated, and when the money actually lands.
Draft policy copy.The figures and clocks below come from the internal product spec. Policy numbers are configuration rather than fixed rules, and none of this has been through consumer-protection review yet.
01The three policies
Owners pick one policy per listing. It appears on the listing page, in the search results, and again at checkout — you always know which one applies before you pay. Everything below is measured from your scheduled pick-up time.
Moderate
The middle ground, and the most common setting across the fleet.
- 5 days or more
- 100%
- 1–5 days
- 50%
- Under 1 day
- Day 1 retained
Under 24 hours the first day is not refunded; the rest of the booking is.
Strict
High-demand and high-value vehicles, and peak-season dates.
- 7 days or more
- 100%
- 2–7 days
- 50%
- Under 2 days
- No refund
A booking cancelled inside 48 hours refunds nothing of the rental. The deposit is still returned.
Your deposit is never a cancellation penalty
Whatever the policy says about the rental, the security deposit is your money. If it has already been placed, it is released when the booking cancels — see §12.
02Side by side
Refund of the rental amount, by how far ahead you cancel:
| You cancel | 🟢 Flexible | 🟡 Moderate | 🔴 Strict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 days or more before | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| 5–7 days before | 100% | 100% | 50% |
| 1–5 days before | 100% | 50% | 50% |
| 24–48 hours before | 100% | 50% | No refund |
| Under 24 hours | All but 50% of day one | All but day one | No refund |
| No-show at pick-up | No refund | No refund | No refund |
Every cell above is computed from the same policy rules the cards in §01 are drawn from, so the two cannot disagree. Where a full refund applies, the booking fee is still retained — see §03.
A worked example
A 3-day Moderate booking at ₱3,500 a day is ₱10,500 of rental, plus a ₱315 booking fee. Cancel 6 days out and you are refunded ₱10,500 — the ₱315 fee is retained. Cancel 2 days out and 50% applies: ₱5,250 back. Cancel the night before and day one is retained: ₱7,000 back. In each case the ₱12,000 deposit is released in full.
Moderate has a kink worth knowing about
Read those last two figures again: cancelling the night before returns ₱7,000, which is more than the ₱5,250 you get 2 days out. Moderate refunds half of the whole booking between one and five days out, but only retains the first day under 24 hours — so on anything longer than two days, the later cancellation is worth more.
We are stating it rather than hiding it. It is an artefact of how the tiers are written, it is under review, and the direction of any fix will be to make the curve behave — not to reduce what a late-cancelling renter gets back on a booking already made.
03What "less booking fee" means
The renter booking fee — 3% of the booking value, minimum ₱150 — pays for verification, payment processing, and support on a booking we have already worked on. On a full-refund cancellation it is not returned. Every other line is:
- Refunded on a 100% cancellation
- Base rental, add-ons, delivery and one-way fees, late-night surcharge, driver fee and driver allowance, and VAT on all of it
- Retained
- The renter booking fee
- Released separately
- The security deposit, in full
On a partial refund, the percentage applies to the rental and its related lines, and the booking fee is retained as well. Where the host is due a share, our commission is taken from what they keep, not added on top of what you lose.
04How to cancel
- Open the booking in Trips and choose Cancel booking.
- The screen shows the exact refund before you confirm — the amount, the policy tier that produced it, and what happens to your deposit. No surprises after the fact.
- Confirm. The cancellation is immediate and the dates go back on the owner’s calendar.
- You get a confirmation with two dates: when the refund was released, and when it should land with your bank or wallet.
Cancelling is not reversible
Once you cancel, the dates are free for someone else and the exclusive hold on that vehicle is gone. If you are not sure, message the host first — the booking message thread is open from the moment it is confirmed.
05If the owner cancels
An owner cancelling a confirmed booking is the most damaging thing that can happen on this platform, and it is priced accordingly.
- Your refund
- 100%, including the booking fee, whatever the listing's policy says
- Rebooking help
- We look for a comparable vehicle for your dates and cover the difference, within limits
- Penalty to the owner
- A cancellation fee, charged to the host organisation
- Ranking
- A search-ranking demerit against the listing and the organisation
- Repeat offenders
- Repeated cancellations lead to suspension of the organisation
The penalty and the rebooking assistance apply to cancellations less than 48 hours before pick-up. Earlier than that you are still refunded in full, but the consequences to the host are lighter, because a week’s notice is a genuinely different thing from a night’s.
06No-fault cancellations
Some cancellations are nobody’s fault, or ours. These carry no penalty to either side, no ranking demerit, and a full refund including the booking fee.
- Your tracked flight is cancelled or diverted. Never treated as a no-show — see §08.
- A nominated driver’s licence is not verified in time. If bring-your-own-driver verification has not cleared by pick-up, the handover cannot proceed. That is our processing failure, not yours.
- The delay cap is reached and the owner releases the booking. Beyond 6 hours past scheduled pick-up an owner may let the booking go rather than keep waiting.
- The vehicle becomes undispatchable — registration or insurance lapses, or a safety issue is found at inspection. See who pays.
One case that looks no-fault but is not: a failed deposit hold
The deposit is placed 48 hours before pick-up. If it fails, we retry — with reminders — across the remaining time. If it still has not gone through, the booking cancels under the listing’s normal policy and is attributed to you, because the instrument that failed was yours. The 48-hour lead exists precisely so this is a fixable problem rather than a kerbside one, so act on those reminders.
07No-shows
If you cannot be reached two hours past the pick-up window, the booking is marked a no-show.
- Rental
- Not refunded, on any policy tier
- Deposit
- Released in full — a no-show is not damage
- Reviews
- No review is generated, in either direction
- Repeat no-shows
- Counted as a fraud and abuse signal against the account
A no-show is a penalty state and it is reserved for someone who simply did not turn up. It is not applied to a late plane, a cancelled sailing, or anything covered by §06. If you are running late, message the host through the booking — a host who knows you are coming will usually wait.
08Flight and ferry delays
Airport pick-ups require a flight reference at checkout, and it earns you something concrete: when that flight is late, the no-show clock stops rather than running down while you are in the air.
- LandingThe clock restarts from your actual arrivalNot from your scheduled pick-up time. A three-hour delay does not eat into your grace period.
- + 45 min / 90 minPlane-to-kerb allowance45 minutes on a domestic arrival, 90 on international — time to clear immigration, collect bags and reach the meeting point. It is an allowance for getting off the plane, not extra delay tolerance.
- + 2 hoursOnly then can a no-show be calledAnd only if you are unreachable.
- 6-hour capPast 6 hours, the owner may release the bookingAs a no-fault cancellation with a full refund. It is the owner's choice, never automatic — a renter landing an hour later who still wants the car, and a host willing to wait, are not forced apart.
A cancelled or diverted flight is never a no-show
It exits straight to a no-fault cancellation: full refund, no penalty to anyone. Your delay does not re-price the booking either — a late-night surcharge, if any, is calculated from your scheduled pick-up time, not from when you actually landed.
Sailings are not tracked automatically
Ferry schedule data in the Philippines is not reliable enough to automate, and delays are common. Seaport pick-ups get the same protection, but it is applied manually by our team once the delay is confirmed — so message us through the booking if your sailing is late.
Suspension needs data from the flight provider. A delay you tell us about but that the provider does not show cannot suspend the clock on its own — otherwise “my flight was late” would defeat every no-show. Give the correct flight reference at checkout, and check it is right.
09Requests that never confirm
Before a host accepts, there is no booking to cancel — and nothing has been charged.
- You withdraw the request
- Free, any time before acceptance. The authorisation is voided.
- The host declines
- Free. The authorisation is voided and the dates are released.
- The request expires
- Free. 2 hours if pick-up is within 48 hours, otherwise 12 hours, and never later than 30 minutes before pick-up.
A near-cutoff trap worth knowing about
Bring-your-own-driver must be declared at least 12 hours ahead. If you request it at 12 hours out and the host lets it expire 2 hours later, you are now inside the cutoff and cannot re-request that mode at all. Below roughly 18 hours of lead time we warn you about this at checkout — the fallback is the with-driver mode, if the listing offers it.
If you paid by e-wallet, the money did leave your wallet at request and comes back as a refund rather than a released hold — up to five business days. Paying the rental by card avoids that entirely, because a card authorisation moves no money.
10Changing a booking instead of cancelling
- Dates and times can be changed with the host’s agreement, if the vehicle is free. The booking is re-quoted at current rates, and the difference is charged or refunded.
- Pick-up or drop-off location can change subject to the zone and the delivery fee for it, and the lead time still has to be met.
- Drive mode can be changed only within the modes the listing offers, and only outside the own-driver cutoff.
- Swapping a nominated driver inside 12 hours of pick-up is refused. It is not an entitlement — your options are the with-driver mode where offered, or cancelling under the listing’s policy.
- Extending mid-trip is possible only if nobody else has the vehicle booked next; a confirmed following booking cannot be displaced.
11When the money arrives
Two different things get confused here, so we show you both dates. Release is our decision that the money is yours — it is immediate on cancellation, and it is the part we control. Funds returned is your provider moving it, which is not.
| How you paid | What happens | Typical timing |
|---|---|---|
| Card — authorisation not yet captured | The hold is voided; no money ever moved | Up to 24 hours from release |
| Card — already captured | Refunded to the same card | Up to 5 business days from release |
| GCash or Maya | Refunded to the same wallet | Up to 5 business days from release |
| Deposit held as a card pre-authorisation | Hold voided | Up to 24 hours from release |
“Five business days” means Monday to Friday in Asia/Manila, excluding Philippine regular and special non-working holidays — which matters over Holy Week, when the calendar is short and Cebu is busy.
If a refund fails at the provider — a closed wallet, an expired card — the obligation stands. We raise it internally and re-issue it; nothing is written off because a transfer bounced.
12Your deposit
The security deposit is separate from the rental, on its own clock, and it is never part of a cancellation penalty.
- Cancelled before the deposit is placed (more than 48 hours ahead): nothing to return — it was never taken.
- Cancelled after it is placed: released immediately, whatever the refund tier gave you on the rental.
- No-show: released in full. A no-show is not damage.
- After a completed trip: released 48 hours after drop-off if no claim is filed — that is the post-trip settlement path, not this page. See deposits and claims.