Good news! Points are awarded for rentals that use First free weekend coupons if you had any time & mileage charges that the coupon didn't cover.

Neither.

Instead, what you can choose to do is choose to earn Club Carlson points directly from each Avis rental (instead of earning Avis points), by choosing Club Carlson* as your earning partner (in the last step of making a reservation at avis.com) and specifying your Club Carlson number.

And then, if you use the MUHA021 coupon code mentioned in the Wiki for this thread:
you can earn 9000 total Club Carlson points for each 3+ day rental.

(You can still earn Club Carlson points on 1 or 2 day rentals, but in that case you earn fewer points since the coupon doesn't work for less than 3 days.)


* Last time I did it, it was not quite obvious how to select Club Carlson from that list. I seem to recall it was misplaced on the alphabetical list, by mentioning something like Radisson first. I don't know if it's still that way.


And welcome to FlyerTalk, thenovemberman.

I just now got the email from Avis. I'm not interested in Club Carlson. Can I send the points elsewhere? Must I opt in? Should I?


In addition to your current Avis President's Club benefits, you are now eligible to opt in to earn Avis Preferred Points.
• Receive 1.5 points for every dollar spent on base rentals and 3 points on optional products.
• Redeem points for complimentary rental days, upgrades, and accessories (like GPS).
• Choose your days – ultimate flexibility with no blackout dates.
With the launch of this new program, Avis Preferred Points replaces the Weekend Rental Rewards previously available.
Opt-in today and rent once within 3 months to receive 250 bonus points.

Forgive me if I missed this somewhere else in the thread, but is it no longer possible to earn the status based upon number of days rented? I've always been Avis First based on renting a total of at least 35 days a year.

I don't do a lot of domestic trips that require a car (almost always less than 12 per year), but when I do, it's typically for a period of 7-12 days at a time.

If I can't get anything higher than preferred plus based on days rented, I really see no reason to continue sticking with Avis. As I'm Plat with UA, I might as well go over to Hertz and get the perks associated with that partnership.

Preferred Plus is identical to Avis First in terms of benefits. Sadly, you still can't earn PC. An early version of the new T&C said you could, but the final version deleted that. You get the same points earning bonus as a PC member after 35 rentals, but no other increase in status.

And yes, days rented is no longer a qualification. It's either rental count or spend now.

But if they didn't care, why change the program in the first place?

I would guess they got a lot of complaints on the weekend coupons, and most people seem to be familiar with points systems so that's what they went with...but maybe they just didn't think that people would actually realize that their points are a terrible value.

The free rental coupons were pretty much worthless to me... Any time I tried to use them, there wouldn't be that class of car available. If I just tried a normal booking (without the coupon code) those car classes magically became available.

is there a listing anywhere of redemptions? I've never seens a program before where it simply doesn't even say what the points are good for? Even if its translated to cash value for rentals or something, at least they should state that. Does anyone know how many points it would take per rental day?

Just tried to book my normal M-Th rental and saw some new point values for the add-ons (still can't get it to show me rental costs). Looks like the Sirius XM value has gone down. I have a little over 600 points in my account, so only the Sirius option is available for redemption. The rental is for 3 days and 5 hours, but as we all know, that rounds up to 4.

http://i.imgur.com/eRkF5XH.jpg

Points Redemption
 

I spoke to a reservations agent at the counter in Amarillo yesterday and she had no idea that the web site did not explain anything about redemption of points and the amount needed. She said they were given training on the new program and she thought that information was available.

I completed my reservation yesterday morning and received the e-receipt this morning but no points have been credited to my account which is a bummer as I need to decide who to rent with starting Monday in Boston. Whether it is National, Hertz or Avis, it will be the one I stick with for the rest of the year to earn free rentals for our vacation next summer in Maui.

So far I have heard that National seems to have the most advantageous earning program? Anyone have another opinion? I looked in the forum but can't find a comparison thread?
thanks!

OK. Let's see who gets to the 1500 points first which might be enough for a 1 day car rental some place :D

More than 48 hours since my last rental with Avis and still no rental points or the 250 initial points... It is really disappointing that Avis cares so little about its frequent business travelers that it would treat us this way. I've had really good experiences with the Avis locations around the country and hate to move on to another rental company but it really is all about the points. We even pay more per rental and still they abuse us! Kind of crazy that an Avis Rep is not responding on this thread as well? Silence...I had a really terrible experience with my last National rental but they have agreed to status match at the Elite level and in just two weeks I'll have my first free rental day accumulated (3 rentals already done) so if I don't hear some good news from Avis by Monday morning (I'll cancel my Tuesday rental) I'm done with Avis unfortunately.

I sent an email to Avis to request my points. Points showed up. 483. Tried to bring up a one day (or half day, or 1 hour!) rental in PHX and I received a similar result as 1kIAH above, except more expensive... No point total for the vehicle itself. So I sent in an e-mail to Avis asking for answers and received a cut and past from the web site with no additional information.

You may need to contact them, they didn't have any record of me opting in on July 1st even though I got an email confirmation.

Was PC w/ Avis for a long time (15+ years?) and moved to National w/ a match to EE... I miss the really nice cars some Avis locations would throw my way (DFW was pretty much always good for a BMW:D) but I like National's system and can usually get a nice (as in loaded) Grand Cherokee in the Executive Aisle. I've already earned 3 free days that are really easy to use...