MilesBuzz! - FF miles with Hertz too costly starting from 10/1/02?

The following applies to reservations booked August 30, 2002 forward for rentals picked up October 1, 2002 forward. For rentals in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada when the renter chooses to receive Frequent Flyer miles or credits from the following U.S. airline programs Hertz will assess a Frequent Flyer Surcharge equivalent to $0.50 per day up to a maximum of $2.00 per rental.

This is for UA, DL, CO, US, F9, YX, HA. AA is only 7.5%. No fee for international airlines and hotel programs.

This info was seen in the Hertz.com website > partners > airlines > pop-up window

50 cents for 50 miles is steep! It's no longer a bonus but a charge! I used to blindly book with Hertz because of the #1 Club Gold (or whatever the express service was called) but this change could push me to become a comparison shopper.

So a rental from Hertz now entitles us to then buy miles for 1 cent each?

I hadn't heard about this but assuming it's true, I'll be running run from Hertz or at least their mileage credit.

Hertz isn't the only vendor that charges you for ff miles
I got a $2.50 bill from mci for miles from a phone card

Although I do not have a receipt handy, I believe that National Car Rental does charge this fee for miles and has done so for a while.

I'd go for the Southwest bonus - 1/2 credit per rental, which has a cash value of about $10.

Does anyone know whether this fee is in addition to or instead of the tax on FF miles that is currently being charged?

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Please be careful when opening the overhead bins as
the coach custmers may have shifted in flight...

Hertz also modified the "manhattan renters club" -- the program was valuable, in that it awarded a "credit" for every rental originating in manhattan. 5 credits and you received a free day coupon, with virtually no restrictions.

Today's letter annonced that I must now accumulate 15 credits for the same free day...

As Hertz prices in NYC are typically 10% more than National or Avis, the free day made it worth using Hertz (which also awarded Marriott points).

No longer.

Buh-bye.

cpd

I don't think that this is such a big deal because it seemed to me that Hertz frequently bumped up your rental price a few dollars when you put in an arrival flight number and an FF number.
It has been standard practice for many of the Hertz renters that I know never to put these into the reservation and just stay with the Hertz Rewards, whatever they are (I've never really looked at the stuff they send except to pull out the coupons).
In the past few years, there weren't enough FF miles given out to matter, not like when they started and it was 500 miles per rental.

Doug 2205... I got the same thing from MCI. I am debating on paying them... Did you?

Mykal

It's a maximum of $2 for a rental. Geez, guys, just pass it on to your company if you travel for business and guess what? They will not even notice!

And if you're traveling on your own, if you take a look at the fees and taxes, a $2 fee ain't nothing! You get raped already by the taxes, airport fees, and so on. Those things often turn a $150 rental into a $200 rental!

It seems to me that when I used to get United miles from hertz, I would get about 50 miles/rental. This didn't seem worth getting, so I switched to Hertz points--but I haven't investigated their value.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mdtony:
It's a maximum of $2 for a rental. Geez, guys, just pass it on to your company if you travel for business and guess what? They will not even notice!

And if you're traveling on your own, if you take a look at the fees and taxes, a $2 fee ain't nothing! You get raped already by the taxes, airport fees, and so on. Those things often turn a $150 rental into a $200 rental!</font>

Agree with Tony, and would add ...

If you're thinking about changing rental companies over this, or have been staying with Hertz despite higher prices for the sake of 50 miles ... then IMO you have a sickness.

In three years of frequent travel, I have gotten a rate quote from Hertz which beats Avis' best rate on the same-size car exactly once. That's what my company notices, and why we rent exclusively from Avis and Dollar now ... not the 50-cent fee on FF miles.

Mook

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Mykal:
Doug 2205... I got the same thing from MCI. I am debating on paying them... Did you?

Mykal</font>

I paid them, only because it was a small amount and it had already been debitted from my credit card and I didn't want to hassle with it.
I first asked them to reverse it and they refused

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doug from timeshare user's group ( www.tug2.net (http://www.tug2.net) )

Why go for miles? I stopped doing that long long ago. Go for Hertz ZE1 award points instead.

I've gotten about $40 worth of miles from 50 rentals.

I've gotten about $1,000 worth of rentals using my ZE1 points for about 80 rentals.

See this about ZE1 points vs miles:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum79/HTML/000266.html

Stop the insanity and go for ZE1 points instead!

[This message has been edited by UALOneKPlus (edited 09-24-2002).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by carpeperdiem:
Hertz also modified the "manhattan renters club" -- the program was valuable, in that it awarded a "credit" for every rental originating in manhattan. 5 credits and you received a free day coupon, with virtually no restrictions.

Today's letter annonced that I must now accumulate 15 credits for the same free day...

cpd</font>

wow...that's some revision.

They've certainly put in a lot of changes lately. I note that the Gold forms I was asked to sign and return for the next year also state that on international rentals they now want you to allow them to convert the charge to your credit card's billed currency *and* tack on a 3% fee for doing so! I know some CCs charge for this but I thought most are less than 3%.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by UALOneKPlus:
Why go for miles? I stopped doing that long long ago. Go for Hertz ZE1 award points instead.

I've gotten about $40 worth of miles from 50 rentals.

I've gotten about $1,000 worth of rentals using my ZE1 points for about 80 rentals.

See this about ZE1 points vs miles:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum79/HTML/000266.html

Stop the insanity and go for ZE1 points instead!

[This message has been edited by UALOneKPlus (edited 09-24-2002).]</font>

The 50 domestic airline miles generally offered by the rental companies is insulting. Instead, I have been taking the 1,000 Virgin Atlantic points offered for some time now. UALOneKPlus your 80 rentals would have been 80,000 VF points, almost enough for an Upper Class award on VF. Also, VF points can be transferred to HHonors and used towards free hotel nights. Not too shabby IMHO.

[This message has been edited by onedog (edited 09-24-2002).]

Crooks! Period......I'm switching

[This message has been edited by 777 global mile hound (edited 09-24-2002).]

Try using Qantas. You get 700 FF miles for each rental. Also, get 1000 FF miles at Hilton or Marriott Courtyard. Much better than domestic carriers.

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The greatest distance we have to travel still is within our own minds.CO-Infinite, DL-Gold, HH-Gold, SPG-Gold, Marriott, Qantas

Thanks for your advice. I am planning to become active again in the Hertz Awards program. I was once active and got a roller bag. I later started collecting miles.

Well, when they cut pretty much industrywide from 500 flat to 50/day I stopped taking miles into consideration in booking car rentals.

Dollar started their bit early by charging 50 cents extra for mileage accumulation, which was an overcharge to most people compared to what the FF tax was actually costing Dollar.

In other words, not only passing along a fee, but trying to turn it into a separate profit center. It's like trying to charge 10% sales tax in a state where it's 6%!

Others like Hertz played it straighter and just passed on the actual cost, but apparently Hertz is trying to go the same route as Dollar, only worse.

The only possible use I can see for it now is to have miles credited to some seldom-used program to keep a balance from expiring under a 36-month rule or something like that.

It's too bad Hertz has joined the airlines with this practice of fee invention and trying to boost costs without adding any value.

Just noticed that NW is no longer doing any miles with Hertz, but they have added National and one other company (can't remember the name).

Not a big loss. I rent from Hertz for the convenience of #1 Club Gold, not miles. Of course they have managed to botch every one of my last four rentals to the point where I still wind up standing in line, having to switch cars, etc.

If only another company offered the same kind of program...

-alan in seattle

alanw--

It depends on the airport, but I have found Avis Preferred to be
1) almost as good (at IAD a bus drops you off right by your car; no shelter from the weather, but not bad)
or
2) equal (at DCA both Hz Gold and Avis Preferred are on the same covered floor of the parking garage; I think it was the same at DFW as well).

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by El Boocho:
Although I do not have a receipt handy, I believe that National Car Rental does charge this fee for miles and has done so for a while.</font>

I've not had National charge me for miles with the exception of the tax which (I believe) all rentals charge. It was only about 6 cents/day?

I enrolled in Hertz Awards as soon as they initiated it--as a NYC non-car owner, a lot of my rentals were not in conjunction with a flight and, as I recall, at the time Hertz didn't give mileage credit in most programs unless you had a flight. With the reduction in credit to a measly 50, I've consistently chosen Hertz Awards even when I've rented coming off a flight. It's 600 points for a one-day off-peak rental, which saves me between $63 and $85 (even allowing for the best discount I can get) on a Saturday rental in Manhattan.
I do agree that Hertz's rates are generally higher than Avis's or anyone else's, but I've recently found that, using the AAA discount, in some locations they're cheaper than the best discounted rate I can get with Avis. I also like their online reservation system much better than Avis's, particularly for the ability to use the information in a prior reservation to set up a new one, and with Avis, if I override the discount number in my Wizard profile to get a better discount, my Preferred status doesn't show in the reservation.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Skylink USA:
No fee for international airlines and hotel programs.</font>
When renting from Hertz, National, or Avis, LanChile Lan Pass (http://www28.lanchile.com/english/un/lanpass/acumulando/autos/autos.htm) is the way I go: 800 KM per rental, no taxes.

You can consolidate OneWorld flights and redeem on any OneWorld (https://www13.lanchile.com/english/un/lanpass/acumulando/lineas/lineas.htm#oneworld) airline, or, what I do is transfer 1:1 into HHonors (http://www.hilton.com/en/hhonors/rewards/exchange_1.jhtml) points.

It looks like that UA, DL, CO, US, F9, YX, HA have written a bad contract with Hertz, since it allows Hertz to effectively resell miles. If I were an active member of these programs I'd complain with them -- so that when they renew the contract they will no longer allow Hertz to sell miles.

BTW, Hertz has been passing along the federal tax for a while, and it seems that it will continue to do so for AA. The tax is 7.5% of their cost for the miles -- 1.5c per mile in this case. So the actual cost to us is 0.1125c per mile.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by xyzzy:
They've certainly put in a lot of changes lately. I note that the Gold forms I was asked to sign and return for the next year also state that on international rentals they now want you to allow them to convert the charge to your credit card's billed currency *and* tack on a 3% fee for doing so! I know some CCs charge for this but I thought most are less than 3%.</font>


Ha ha, I almost want to laugh at the craziness of this. The 3% fee that the credit cards charge is a ridiculous junk fee in the first place -- it costs the bank nothing to handle a foreign currency charge since the conversion is done by the credit card company before the bank even gets it!

And now, Hertz has the balls to say hey, why let the bank get away with charging a 3% junk fee when we can do the conversion ourselves and collect that 3% fee to line our own pockets! Greedy bastaards.

Many credit cards still do not charge any more than the 1% conversion fee assessed by Visa/MC etc. who provide the actual conversion service and truly earn their fee (not the bank!).

[This message has been edited by anthonyanthony (edited 09-27-2002).]

dup

[This message has been edited by anthonyanthony (edited 09-27-2002).]

The reason that we have all of these annoying fees is simple. Folks do not want to pay a higher rate for anything these days. So, what they do to make up for the fact that there is inflation and things do cost more is tack on these fees.

It allows them to say we rent cars for $29.99 a day on the weekend and still make money. Or lose less money.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by El Boocho:
Although I do not have a receipt handy, I believe that National Car Rental does charge this fee for miles and has done so for a while.</font>

They charge a fee, but not that high a fee.

Example, lease 3 days (in September), 400 miles; tax recoupment fee ("FFTXRSU is a recoupment of tax on Frequent Flyer miles earned") is 19 cents!

Nowhere near 1 cent per mile!

If Hertz is charging one cent per mile, that's not tax recoupment, it's sales.


[This message has been edited by Counsellor (edited 09-30-2002).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mdtony:
The reason that we have all of these annoying fees is simple. Folks do not want to pay a higher rate for anything these days. So, what they do to make up for the fact that there is inflation and things do cost more is tack on these fees.

It allows them to say we rent cars for $29.99 a day on the weekend and still make money. Or lose less money.</font>

If this is what they are doing (quoting a lower price than what you end up paying), then this is called deceiving the customer, and generally leads to fines and or jail. That's why there's no "cash register receipt" fee at a supermarket, and that's also why the hotels were successfully sued (and stopped) over the despicable practice of adding an "energy" surcharge over their published rates.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by hillrider:
If this is what they are doing (quoting a lower price than what you end up paying), then this is called deceiving the customer, and generally leads to fines and or jail. That's why there's no "cash register receipt" fee at a supermarket, and that's also why the hotels were successfully sued (and stopped) over the despicable practice of adding an "energy" surcharge over their published rates.</font>

They aren't as dumb as you think they are. What they do is in their ads, they put lots of fine print that says that these do not include blah, blah, and blah.

And seeing how a lot of the fees, if not most of them, are due to local governments adding all sorts of fees and taxes to car rentals, I don't think you will see too many attorney generals filing suit because it will take away a huge source of revenue for them.

You pretty much always pay a higher price than is advertised due to taxes, if nothing else.

Caveat emptor.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by TravelingDale:
Try using Qantas. You get 700 FF miles for each rental. Also, get 1000 FF miles at Hilton or Marriott Courtyard. Much better than domestic carriers.

</font>

Cool! I just joined QF partly for this reason, mainly for the 1000 miles from Starwood & HHonors. I can earn a free AA ticket in J to Mex/Caribbean 2.67x as fast.
I jut had 2 car rentals:
Pensacola, FL from Natl.: 200 UA miles, 13 US cents FF tax total.
Hertz OW Toronto-Akron: 700 QF miles.

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Play the travel game 3 vacations into the future! :)

Don't be surprised to see some corporations telling their travelers that they can no longer request miles from Hertz - as the corporation would probably end up paying the new fee.

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ff

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Fly first class now or your children will</font>

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by freakflyer:
Don't be surprised to see some corporations telling their travelers that they can no longer request miles from Hertz - as the corporation would probably end up paying the new fee.</font>

While I agree that this may happen, I have to tell you, that is one cheap company. Come on, after spending thousands of bucks to send someone somewhere, and hundreds of bucks for the car rental, they won't spot you $2?

That tells me something about that company's mindset. Can you say penny wise, pound foolish?

I finished a rental with Hertz on Thursday and there was no charge for the FF miles. The only charge was the 7.5% tax on the moles but no .50/day charge.

Don't know if it wa because the rental started before 10/1/2002 or not.

I was not going to question it