Avis First, President's Club & Chairman's Club
 

Hi,

Just got an invite as Avis First. Reviewing some posting in here, it appears there are 3 types of "elite" status - First, President's and Chairman's:confused:

Can anyone please tell me how you qualify for the PC and CC? Also what are the membership benefits?

Thanks

A search (on FT and Google) will turn up answers to your questions, but I'll do my best to quickly answer.

Avis First www.avisfirst.com has full details
Qualifications: 12 "qualifying" rentals or 35 "qualifying" rental days in a calendar year
Benefits: 1 class upgrade (where available... rarely), free weekend coupon with every 4 "qualifying" rentals, and skip the basic counter at larger airports & go to the Preferred Counter or to your vehicle if they have a display board.

President's Club
Qualifications: "Invitation" from the Continental Presidential Plus or Amex Centurion card or other similar methods. Large corporate contracts might come with limited memberships. Not possible to qualify through # rentals, at least it's reported anywhere.
Benefits: 2 car class upgrade (where available), car available anytime even without a reservation, and skip the basic counter at larger airports & go to the Preferred Counter or to your vehicle if they have a display board.

Chairman's Club
Qualifications: Corporate contracts might come with a few memberships or via membership in some programs like Netjets. As with Pres Club, it's not listed that you can qualify with # of rentals.
Benefits: Best car on the lot when you reserve a mid-side (with some hit-or-miss exceptions like Hummers, Corvettes or when employees lack knowledge), Return valet service at large airports (the manager or other employee will take you to the terminal in the rental car so you don't have to bother with schlepping your stuff on the bus/train/etc), car available anytime even without a reservation, (usually) fuel at "street price" when you don't return the car full, delivery of your car within 25 miles of the Avis station, and other random, non-standard benefits (sometimes offering a GPS for free, an "Avis welcomes [your name here]" at some locations, "bottled water, waived late fees, bringing in requested cars, overlooked damage, etc). They also will put your car right by the front door and if it's a place with an Avis bus, the manager will usually greet you and help with luggage.

It's worth noting that the PC & CC are stated as "US & Canada" but it's been reported that the preferential treatment (even if not all the benefits) are honored in Europe.

I'm sure others can jump in and correct me or add something that I've forgotten.

Thank you very much... this is really helpful ^

Pretty good description. CHM and Presidents may come with large corporate contracts. Presidents also comes with Amex Centurion.

You'll often see a sign at the preferred booth or counter that reads "Avis Welcomes ______" for CHM members.

Thanks... I knew I'd miss a few. I've modified my original post.

Should we make this a sticky, as the question seems to come up regularly?

It was indeed, but no need to quote that entire post... :)

Note that the President's Club allows piggybacking of the Avis First Free Weekend benefit, whereas the Chairman's Club does not.

Regardless of level you can stack Corporate Awards free rental days..

They are stated as "US & Canada" if the PC membership is from those countries. If it is an Australian PC membership then conditions are slightly different. For example delivery of cars to hotels is a benefit here for PC. Or at least was last year when I tried.

where available
Well, availability is under control of the agent.
Had a rental in Germany this weekend. Booked group D, got D (MB B180). Asked for an upgrade due to PC. "Ja und? Sowas machen wir nicht. (~I don't care - we don't do that)".
I would not have said anything if the answer was "sorry, we're out of higher group cars" or similar.

Where is your PC based? If it's from North America, (as far as I know) it's only listed as being for US/Canada. If it's European based, I'd definitely make a complaint. It's one thing to have reservations for everything better that's on the lot (as CLE usually claims) but to flat out refuse and state "we don't do that" is completely unacceptable and a complaint is in order, IMO.

Germany.

There were other issues with this rental, so I need to discuss it anyway.

Except (a) you didn't compare it to Avis Preferred:

Avis Preferred
Qualifications: Signing up then making one rental
Benefits: 1 class upgrade (where available... commonly available from Economy up to Compact, but may get rarer the higher up in classes you reserve), and skip the basic counter at larger airports & go to the Preferred Counter or to your vehicle if they have a display board.

which has astronomically simpler qualification, and most or all the same benefits, because:

Qualifying rentals do not include any on which you choose to earn miles or hotel points. So if you always choose to earn miles or hotel points, you'll never earn these free weekend coupons, making the one apparent benefit of Avis First that Avis Preferred doesn't have non-existent.

The only benefit that I see to Avis First for a miles junkie is the free whatever (weekend?) coupon you get once when you first qualify. That's assuming you can use it before it expires. (The one I got I never got to use, because I never need a rental where it would help during the time it was active.)

Because of the last point I kinda wish I could fail to qualify in alternate years, because maybe I'd get the one "welcome to First" coupon over and over again? :) But, alas, though my rentals have dropped drastically this year from last, I'm still doing several week-plus rentals this year, and thus will get to 35 days easily, even though I don't expect to get anywhere near 12 rentals this year.

I have never qualified for the free weekend days as a Chairman's member, and have been told by various Avis employees that the free rental days earned by AvisFirst members do not accrue for Chairman's members.

I wasn't talking about free weekend days and that's correct, as far as I have ever understood those don't accrue to Chairmans members.

I'm talking about Corporate Awards free days - which can be used any day of the week - and accrue 1 per 15 rental days.

You just need to sign up your business (sole proprietorship, whatever) for Corproate Awards..