Originally Posted by
travelingbob
Hertz points are worth so much more than Avis.
No experience with Avis Preferred but this intrigued me. How much is a 1 gold point exactly worth in $?
Was bored on the flight so I looked at the base rental charges for one weekend day across 15 airports: ATL, ORD, DFW, LAX, DEN, CLT, PHX, SFO, LAS, IAH, JFK, BOS, EWR, MIA, IAD, at a range of booking times (1 month, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, 1 week, next day) for the base rate for a PCAR, MVAR, FRAR, LRAR, and STAR. Using standard rewards, a PCAR is 550 points, the rest 825. I divided the rates by points required, and found a mean value of 10.4 cents, median of 10.1 cents, standard deviation of 2.25 cents, min of 4 cents, and max of 30.5 cents, with an approximately normal distribution. Large values were for regionally popular vehicles, like a convertible out of LAX and SUV out of Denver. The lowest values were surprisingly for a minivan one week out. Obviously, the best value of Gold points are for dates with very high prices that Hertz doesn't blackout or charge AnyDay rewards
This is by no means comprehensive but I think 10 cents on the dollar is a good baseline for deciding when to use points.