Originally Posted by
bkafrick
No - though at some stations they share a fleet. But really? What does it take? 5 minutes to sign up for AVIS Preferred and Budget Fast Break? Boom - now you got membership in both.
Except that it really doesn't work for your first rental (and again the first rental after you update your credit card). So if you only rent from Budget once every three years or so, singing up for Fast Break would do you no good, if the verification of your credit card didn't carry over from Avis Preferred.
Yes, if you're frequently enough going to rent from each program, you can sign up for both, but that has nothing to do with them being the same company. Where them linking the two programs together would help would be for someone who almost always rents with one but wants to very occasionally rent with the other.
Originally Posted by
bkafrick
They are two separate companies owned by the same parent company. It doesn't always work like that.
Of course I know it doesn't
always work like that (if I didn't, I would have said "this is how it works, right?" instead of asking if there was
any link), but
sometimes it does, and sometimes even better.
Not only did UA and CO, and NW and DL (and now WN and AirTran), allow you to link their accounts long before those accounts were merged, but UA and Marriott aren't even co-owned and DL and SPG aren't even co-owned, yet they've now entered into partnerships that allow you to link the accounts between these airline/hotel pairings.