I've been renting from Budget for about six months now, and I'm going to make a bold statement: Perfect Drive is the best reward program I've seen - in any category. It usually isn't easy to compare hotels to cars to airlines, but from what I've seen, this one is so far ahead of anything else I've seen, it doesn't matter.

For me, the simple math is this: Spend $240 at Budget (including taxes, fuel, etc.), and that translates to 1 free rental day - or about $45 worth of merchandise. That's like getting paid 15 to 20 cents on the dollar!!

By comparison, Hertz requires $600 to get a free day - with no march options - which translates to 7 or 8 cents on the dollar (rough estimate: free day = $40-45).

Honestly, I seems too good to last. I wonder if the double-points-on-every-rental or the 20%-discount-on-everything will be reduced at some point.

The downside, of course, is this: Budget is terribly inconsistent from location to location, and their customer service sometimes SUCKS. Hertz is almost always on-the-money with customer service, more frequent shuttles, newer cars for Gold members, etc.

However, it's a price I'm willing to pay for the great rewards as long as the service isn't TOO bad. A Taurus with 20K miles isn't much different from one with 2K miles to me.

Other thoughts? Is there another program out there that stacks up with this one?

I don't know if I would go so far as to say it is the best rewards program of all, but it is in my opinion by far the best car rental program!!

The double online booking bonus and 20% online point redemption rebate will go away I think it's after 2001 or summer 2001, but you're absolutely correct.

I have been giving out the spa-wish gift certificates at $100 for every 1520 points after the 20% rebate. So with booking online, it only takes me $760 worth of rentals for $100 back. OUTSTANDING!!

I also think that their car rewards are fairly priced as well.

I agree that some locations are worse than others, but all in all I think they do a good job. The cars I've never had a problem with since as you put it, a Taurus with 20K miles is the same as one with 2K. In fact, I wish they had last year's models that had better acceleration, better brakes, etc. than the new ones.

All in all though, I'm very happy with Budget. They also tend to have lower rates than the others which always makes clients happy.

Regards,
Jbird

I'll agree that for auto rentals, Budget is the best (still looking for someone who has successfully cashed in points for a vacation trip). That's mainly due to the fact that the other ones are really bad/nonexistent.

One beef: Budget seems to have taken away their 50% discounted awards for off-airport locations. Then you only had to spend $120 for a free day!

Another beef: You still have to pay all those lousy taxes on the "free" rental, so it's really not that good of a deal when your "free" day still costs you over $15 in some locations. No taxes at all from most free hotel nights and some airlines.

As for the best reward program out there, I would have to say that some of the hotels and Southwest Airlines are hard to beat.

With Southwest, it is possible to beat the system and get a free round trip after every 2 round-trips (usually 4 for booking online). In addition, having a Companion Pass lets you potentially double your free tickets, so it is possible to get 2 free round-trips after buying 2 round-trips. And that's a beautiful thing.

With Hyatt and Marriott, for example, you can get serious bonus points and cash back for buying gift certificates in advance and taking advantage of bonus periods. I'd say with Hyatt and Marriott I'm getting about 25 cents on the dollar for the year, and compared to car rentals, it's a LOT of dollars. I just wish I rented cars more often...

For some of my tricks, try these old posts:
Southwest http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum44/HTML/000040.html
Marriott http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum63/HTML/000219.html
Hyatt http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum60/HTML/000070.html

[This message has been edited by Tino (edited 09-27-2000).]

Tino- Your Marriott trick is truly creative. I especially like the gift cert idea because if I know I'm spending 2 weeks on the road in Marriotts, that's straight cash in the bank! Your described scenario is pretty awesome.

As for the Southwest trick, I have a friend who flies LUV on a connecting flight every week, and he always does it as four one-ways. It costs him $15-20 more than 1 roundtrip, but he gets twice as much reward.

JBird - As far as the *cars* go, I think Budget is the among the best in terms of selection. If I really want an SUV or a convertible, I can always get one at Budget for far less than Hertz charges. And the Jag is a nice touch, too.

The main area that Budget needs to improve is service and consistency. Hertz blows every other car company away in the customer service area - I think everyone pretty much admits it, too. But I don't complain too much as long as the goodies keep rolling in.

Basically, I'm a whore for free merchandise - especially golf stuff. That's why I dig this program so much.

Agreed, the perks are pretty good, but the service is uniformally bad. Rented from them weekly for an entire year, and only got ONE complementary upgrade.

Check this out: I paid over $200 for a weeks "free rental." Granted the underage fee accounted for 1/2 of that, but combined taxes of ~ 30%?!

Slightly different topic: Underage rentals. I'm now 28, but I rented frequently from Alamo when I was 21-24. They have much friendlier underage penalties - a couple of dollars a day - unlike others that charge $15-20 a day. You might want to check them out (they dumped their rewards program, though).