Bottom line is if you need to make a modification, cancel, or any change, for ANY reason, you WILL absolutely lose all your money and have to pay again. This is from over 4 hours of texting with agents and a phone call where I finally reached a supervisor. They said I could directly make changes with SIXT, but SIXT says they need an email request sent to their *******@sixt.com from Hotwire requesting the change. Hotwire will not send one... period. As Hotwire is owned by Expedia, you would probably be well off to avoid them as well. Bottom line for me is a 5 day rental loss and I get to rebook... but it won't be through Hotwire or SIXT. Orbits allows you to make rental reservations without paying for the reservation up front... so that's where I'm heading.