rhwbullhead

I'm just curious what others here are willing to pay extra to rent from Hertz?

I'm President's Club now and I face this question every time I go to Vegas (usually once a month). I want to rent from Hertz to get rentals towards maintaining status and for the other perks including Ultimate Choice (though I have yet to use it at LAS).

I guess I have some sort of price premium allowance in my head, but Advantage has been so much cheaper that I've just opted to use them everytime so far.

​​​​​​To standardize the question, let's use a weekly rental period. What's the most you'd be willing to pay extra to use Hertz? (Factor in President's Club if it applies).

Thanks for any input.

m907

In my experience National has been superior to Hertz in almost every respect. Ultimate Choice is inconsistent and Hertz customer service is terrible. So I am willing to pay a premium for National over Hertz.

That said, I think being able to choose your car (assuming you only need a sedan) is huge so I'd probably take Hertz over the others.
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Dave Noble

Since I book premium cars anyway, PC or 5* makes no difference to me and I would book with whatever is cheapest and most conveniant . It happens that for my rentals it is very rare for Hertz not to be the cheapest

LondonElite

Nothing.

alphaod

I usually book only intermediate to full size, I don't really consider price difference unless it's stupendously expensive. For some rentals like Dream car I will still rent full size and then upgrade at the center.

jackal

A scale I made up on the fly but probably isn't too far off reality:

Payless > 50% > Europcar > 10% > Advantage/E-Z/Fox/Ace > 15% > Dollar/Thrifty/Enterprise/Alamo/Sixt > 15% > Avis/Hertz > 5% > National

I wouldn't say the scale is linear (i.e. I don't require Payless to be 5% of the price of National before I consider them), but assuming I'm looking at a week-long rental and the midpoint of Dollar/Thrifty/Enterprise etc. is running around $200 for the week, then Payless would have to be $100 or less for me to consider them and Avis/Hertz would have to be no more than $230 (though that's just a made-up number for illustrative purposes, and in reality, I tend to aim more for the ~$100/week benchmark and usually do succeed in finding it with my particular travel patterns and sources and willingness to be flexible), and I might be willing to pay up to a 5% premium over Hertz for National, though these days, with UC, I'm not even sure about that.

This is after CDPs and PCs and the like. With judicious use of them, Avis/Hertz/National are often in the same ballpark as the mid-tier value brands and occasionally even less.

narvik

Interestingly enough, Hertz has been consistently the cheapest (sometimes by far!), for the one-way rentals I most often do.
With Ultimate Choice as PC it has been a good experience.

To answer the question: I'd be okay with about 20% premium price for Hertz over the alternatives available to me (there's not many).

GRALISTAIR

Company Business - no choice -Hertz mandated so irrelevant.

Personal - 5 dollars per day extra

MojaveFlyer

Actually that's a great question, I like it. I usually rent from Hertz, though when I was younger I shopped around more. I look at Hertz first and if the price is what I can afford I go with it, then I monitor the price (like Autoslash does) and often get it down a bunch, but not always. Why do I do so? The rental experience is very fast and with Ultimate Choice I can poke around the cars (I'm usually going for a standard SUV or full sized sedan, so I have some options). I have PC and it's rare that I have to speak with anyone until I'm at the exit gate. I get decent AAA discounts (and some others) with Hertz. My family is covered as designated drivers without having to sign them up, show license, cc, etc. They have never (knock on wood) nickle and dimed me about what I consider to be routine wear and tear dings on the car. Some other companies inspect so carefully on return that I have to check equally carefully and get documentation before leaving the lot. They have always had a car for me, while some other companies have made me wait, chewing up my valuable vacation time. I'm willing to pay a bit extra for a smooth experience.

ijgordon

In general, I agree that the question should be how much of a premium for National over Hertz. But, IMO, the premium varies depending on whether it's a short rental or a longer (more expensive one) since you earn more Hertz points on the latter, and still only one rental credit with National for the former. I think I'd pay a slightly larger premium for National on a 1-2 day rental.

rbAA

Agreed. However, I bought the big package of Hertz points (16,500) in last April's Daily Getaway deal, so have been using them all year. Like 6 weeks free for a little over $120 per week for premium cars. Plus of course the taxes and junk fees, which seem to have skyrocketed. Also, I do the Florida drive out and drive in each year, like $50 per week. Haven't noticed others offering that, except of course Dollar and Avis (at a higher cost.)

1P

I always do a price comparison of Hertz, Avis and National. Whichever is the cheapest is the one I book. As I have status with all of them, it makes no difference to me which one I use.