One Dog,

I do not believe that there is a formal "tiered" system for the automobile programs. -National possibly being the one exception in that I have heard of in that I have heard of several different tiers of designations for the renters. BTW, the tiers all related to some form of marketing position, for whatever that is worth.

Regardless, I like Budget for their types of autos. Especially that beloved Jaguar convertible.

I will add this. I rent about twenty times per year from Budget, and get complimentary upgrades about 1/5th of the time. A coworker of mine rents about forty times per year, and has indicated that she gets upgraded about half of the time.

Curious as to the above, I asked the person checking me out at the Ont airport (Budget) gate (when they ask for your BCN) if she could check on how many rentals I had year to date. She said, "hold on a second and let me switch to that screen". Then, she said "nine rentals so far this year" (this was in May).

So, there is some form of system to keep track of how many times you rent. Also, my exceptionally unscientific approach of asking how often people get gratis upgrades has indicated a definite trend of higher upgrades related to a higher # of rentals per year. This seems somewhat borne out by Tino's comments, too.