What if I don't want the car rental upgrade?

There's a 95 percent chance Senior Editor Christine Sarkis is thinking about travel right now. Follow her on Instagram @postcartography and Twitter @ChristineSarkis.

Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

The Handy Item I Always Pack: The Trtl Pillow. It's easy to pack and comfortable, and makes it so I can actually sleep on flights.

Ultimate Bucket List Experience: Seeing the Aurora Borealis from the comfort of somewhere warm, like a glass igloo or hot spring.

Travel Motto: Curiosity is an amazing compass.

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When I book a rental car, I don’t do it with an upgrade in mind. I prefer a smaller car because I like the easier parking and the better gas mileage, plus I usually don’t need a ton of extra space. But, on occasion, I’m offered a free upgrade to a larger car. So how do you avoid an upgrade if you don’t want one? I wrote to a few car rental companies to see what they’d suggest.

Avis said that agents offer free upgrades when the car size a customer reserved isn’t available, and that if the customer strongly prefers the originally reserved car class, to tell the agent so. Then arrangements can be made to exchange the car during the rental period as soon as possible.

Enterprise responded that if it didn’t have the correct car at a location, it would look to neighboring rental locations to find the vehicle.

The folks over at Dollar and Thrifty said that, in the case the correct class of car wasn’t available, the customer’s three options would be to wait until one was returned, to see if the rental agent can arrange transportation to your hotel and would be willing to deliver the proper vehicle when it was available, or to try to rent through another agency. Also, since weekends are the busiest rental period, by picking up a car on Monday through Thursday you increase your likelihood of getting the car you want.

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