manually

I sent a tweet on twitter AND direct message to them. No response on either.

Auto Enthusiast

What's ironic is that Uber and Lyft are heading in the opposite direction, in favor of rewards. They were astonished to find no brand loyalty. People were booking whichever one was cheaper, and had cars closest.

CO-PLAT

I went to change my Hertz reservations to anything else. Apparently, Hertz is the only option I have through my employer's Concur portal. I can't unselect Hertz in an advanced search.

HeidiInTheAlps

I book most of my points to UA, but I did have some Hertz points, enough for a week rental. I was in the middle of putting together a family holiday solely on points - with many moving parts, when in the middle of putting it together, Hertz devalued, just to cut me out of my weeks rental with points.

I wrote to an e-mail to [email protected] and they added enough points to my account to make up the deficit so I at least could enjoy that week rental on points.

RooseveltL

While I like Hertz Gold selection - I will begin using HotWire for my personal booking as loyalty to Hertz doesn't gain me anything.

Mary2e

I don't find the devaluation for a 1 week standard car rental all that terrible. The "cost" has been that way for a long, long time. I thought is was pretty "cheap" for a 1 week rental, including a premium car, which I always reserved.

I'm presidents circle via my UA card, so the penalty doesn't affect me, but I think it's a bit ridiculous to charge those hard-earned points for a cancellation after 24 hours.

lmp623

I have been saving a long time and am VERY angry. I hope they see this. I will not be using Hertz any more unless they are the only game in town and I have to use them.
Laura Pearlman

cestmoi123

Well, it still gains you Ultimate Choice benefits (particularly if you're 5* or PC), which you don't get if you're booking through Hotwire prepaid...

aCavalierInCoach

Long time Hertz Prez Circle. UC has been trash 90% of the time in my experience - full/size premiums making up the majority of the inventory. I rarely see large differences in cost from compact through full size or premium, and those are upgrades I should've been getting from intermediate under the old regime anyway.

I have had several exchanges with the president's circle email over this and have just gotten canned responses. My guess is the program just does not move the needle enough for them to care. The airlines make billions from selling their miles to credit card issuers, so there is a modicum of risk to the devaluations they have been pushing - Hertz doesn't have that and has done the math that they don't think retaining sole-sourced customers generates enough value to justify the rewards program.

RooseveltL

I think the last response is accurate. Hertz business loyal folks have corporate contracts so no risk losing those clients. With car rental searching many go for price vs. brand of Hertz or Avis so they really don't lose anything from a retention perspective as those of us choosing Hertz comprehend we pay a surcharge for selection & customer service. If we want to save the $xx p/day we go with their cheaper Dollar or Thrifty sub. With competition from ride sharing, and the fact car rentals quality/standards is decreasing (Sentra is intermediate car, Cruze is GOLD) why should they give anything free.

cestmoi123

My hunch (and it's just a hunch) is that the Hertz points program put customers into two categories: people who didn't care much (weren't earning a huge number of points, or didn't do a lot of personal rentals), and hence wouldn't be affected one way or the other, and people who cared a lot (people who used the points for high dollar redemptions), who were costing a fortune. I routinely got 15c/point or more (occasionally >30c) in value booking Premium cars for weekend rentals in NYC. I'm not hugely surprised that Hertz would look at that and say that they weren't really intending on giving me >1/3 back on my rentals.

cestmoi123

Although, a lot of companies have multiple rental car company contracts, so employees do have a choice.

bedelman

I've recently paid attention to the dollars-off redemption options. For example, 600 points for $30 off. Can be a reasonable redemption value when rates are low. If rate is $15/day, this yields two days for 600 points, versus 1500 points required under the newly-worsened reward chart. Obviously better for customer. And if Hertz corporate is concerned about redemptions on super-high-priced vehicles at peak time, this also helps protect them against that.

Today the dollars-off redemptions are no longer appearing for me within hetz.com, and also appear to be missing from https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/ememb...points-program . Gone for good? What a double-whammy that would be.

Canarsie

The ability to redeem Hertz Gold Plus Rewards points for vehicles in the Dream Cars collection also seems to have disappeared.

That is bizarre because both that and the ability to redeem 3,600 Hertz Gold Plus Rewards points for a discount of $180.00 were newly added when the reward charts changed greater than two weeks ago.

Canarsie

They definitely fiddled with the reward charts again.

The Dream Cars collection was condensed and rolled under the Collection Rentals portion of the reward chart; but all of the new Dream Cars collection rewards are still there.