susieling

We had a trip in Aug and I booked a few rentals (Alamo, Budget, Avis) from costco website, however, when my husband went to pick up the car, he forgot to give the representative the US airway miles account, is it still possible to add those miles for past car rental? I called US airway and hoped that we can just fax in the receipt or car-rental agreement (showing pick up/drop off date and location), but I was told they don't take it from customer, it has to be sent from car rental company directly, does that mean we lost the chance? Anyone has a past succesful experience in adding those miles?

Thanks!

Air Rarotonga

Log in to the USDM account, press the quick link "Missing partner miles" in the toolbox and you get the following information:

susieling

Thanks for the reference, so it still has to go through car rental company? Since it is our fault that my husband did not provide the divident rewarrd account at the time of rental, I assume in most cases, the car rental company won't bother to handle such request as a curtesty to the customer only?

arollins

It doesn't hurt to try, specially if it is a lot of miles. If you have all the pertinent documentation, there is a chance. But, as you said, you are at the mercy of the rental company to do its part, don't be surprised if you need to send a reminder. At the same time, some airline promos do require to be noted prior to rental, which in your case, it was not. Just send them an email with the information required, and follow up with snail mail.

sdsearch

Check the earnings on the various rental car companies, and see if it's even worth it.

The one I know offhand is Avis: It's usually 2 US miles for every dollar spent on the rental. So if it was an inexpensive rental, it's only going to be a small handful of miles. If you book with Avis directly, and follow the promo thread in the Avis forum on FT, you'd find a 5x promo coupon for AA that was good for much of the year, and that would make it much more worthwhile (since it would be 10 miles for every dollar spent on the rental). But I have my doubts that you can add such a coupon when using Costco (it's meant only for booking directly with Avis), and furthermore it's much trickier applying a coupon retroactively than just getting "normal" miles credit retroactively.

Generally, airline earnings from car rentals are pretty small, unless you "follow the promos". It's only the promos that tend to have car rentals give you a signficant amoutn of miles.