xrayflyer

I couldn't check 1/28 to 2/4 DTW but 2/11 to 2/18 DTW is $210 for midsize on my corp discount which gives me choice from the executive area eg free upgrade to a SUV. Lowest price on kayak was $242 on payless and $326 on hertz and national is $390 so the corp discount makes a huge difference.

Talk to National if you do a lot of travel to give you a better corp discount.

dwbf11

Good luck getting the "Free upgrade to an SUV" with an impending snowstorm at DTW this weekend. You may get lucky and find a 4x4 pickup or AWD sedan of some kind, but in my experience with the station, pre-snowstorm is when the aisle/ES will be full of FWD sedans and plenty of RWD convertibles/coupes. In the past, they've always held back anything resembling an SUV (even a FWD Chevy Traverse) and asked for a hefty upgrade charge when the weather turns south.

NCLSEA123

My experience has often been that having Executive Elite status has helped me more at smaller non-aisle locations than larger airports with an Emerald Aisle. For instance, just flew into Grand Junction (GJT), Colorado to do some skiing. Preferably, I would have wanted an SUV so as not to be cramped with the skis, and because it would be nice to have an AWD in the snowstorm on Saturday. The cheapest reservable SUV at National with the Emerald Club discount was $360 for 3 days, which was actually cheaper than most of the other companies, who wanted high $300s or low $400s for 3 days. For a full size car, Enterprise was significantly cheaper, coming in at around $80 vs National’s $150. I decided to use 2 OTF days on a full size car and pay for 1 day at National because I figured I would probably have a reasonable chance of being upgraded to a SUV. Sure enough when I get there, I’m handed the keys to a 2000 mile GMC Acadia with AWD and heated leather seats. I pretty much guarantee you, had I reserved the $80 full-size at Enterprise, they would have made me pay significantly for that upgrade.

NCLSEA123

Decided to make a last minute reservation out of LAS this weekend to do some skiing in southern Utah. Surprisingly, National was actually one of cheapest with the regular Emerald Club discount. I'm coming in < $75 for a 3 day full size reservation, using a free weekend day coupon. After completing this rental, I'll also get 1 final OTF coupon, which I'll probably use on a one-way, and are typically valued >$100 a day.

Wadda

I am from England and visit the USA once or twice a year. Being from overseas the rental rate I get includes insurance. The rates I get with any company seem to be quite close. Alamo tends to be around $15-20 per week more than national but. Always use national for the convenience of using the aisle. Plus there’s no upsell like some of the other rental agency’s try on.

eponymous_coward

This tends to be my experience: Alamo often is a significant price cut on National. Using that price code linked in the post, National for a weekend (Fri 7 pm- Sun 7 pm) out of SEA is $80 all-in, Alamo is $40.

Yeah, One-Two-Free is nice but not at double the rate. Since I can't expense my rentals and let my corporate masters subsidize my freebies, Alamo it is, then. And it often is.

SportsTech

Don't want or need to waste time arguing ethics in this thread - it's about "why is National so expensive", not "how do I cheat".... but I've noticed that a number of universities and even conferences (the entire Big Ten, for example) have very reasonable rates, some with and some without coverage. As in, equal to or better than the good corporate rate I used to enjoy before I retired. Unfortunately for me, I went to a university that hasn't bothered to make a National deal for its alumni. And while I am confident that no one would ever ask for a University of xxx ID at checkout, I'm not sure what would happen if they did.

If National is willing to make such huge groups of infrequent renters eligible for reasonable rates, shouldn't it offer its best customers - Exec Elites, for example - an equally competitive "Emerald Club Preferred" rate? The default Emerald Club rate is rarely useful. I am always mystified by National's lack of interest in its loyalty program; the benefits are minimal IMO, A good non-denominational rate for frequent renters would be great for small business and retired folk, AND would eliminate the need to ethical challenge of borrowing a code to get a reasonable rate..

AutoSlash

You don't always need to use a corporate/alumni code to get a decent discount with National.

Our system doesn't search any discounts that aren't open to the public (and for paid membership organizations, you can check/uncheck boxes to indicate your affiliations to include/exclude them). And yet we regularly see cases where National beats Alamo. It's not super frequent, but it happens more than you'd think.

For example, I just ran a search at the end of April for Salt Lake City. Retail, Alamo's sitting at $177 while National's up at $221. However, our system identified a discount combo for National of a 5%-off contract ID and a free weekend day coupon to bring their rate down to $139. The best deal at Alamo is a contract ID that takes 15% off plus another 5% off coupon for a total of $140.

Of course, Alamo and National are still the most expensive two companies for these dates; Avis and Hertz (discounted) are just below National ($138) while Dollar and Thrifty are significantly cheaper ($104, down from $177 undiscounted). But even with all the data (well north of a million customers and a huge multiple of that number of rates in our pricing history), we can't definitively say which company is consistently the cheapest or the most expensive once you apply discount codes. Retail, sure, National is usually near the top, but all bets are off once you add a few coupons and discounts--National is very often in the middle of the pack and occasionally even comes out the cheapest overall.

As for your assertion that the benefits of Emerald Club are minimal and that National has a lack of interest in its loyalty program...I think you'll find most of us here on FT disagree. Here at AutoSlash, at least, National is by far our favorite program (although Hertz is starting to at least enter the same league now that they've widely rolled out Ultimate Choice). National has the slickest pick-up process and the best return-on-investment for earning and redeeming rewards (though you have to play your cards right to maximize your earning and also maximize your redemptions--short rentals to earn, ideally when they're doing One-Two-Free, and one-way rentals to redeem), far surpassing all of the other options in the rental industry. Sure, they don't do a great job with the default EC discount, and they price their product high because they think it's worth paying a premium for, but it's not difficult to at least bring those stratospheric rates down to a level that's not out of reach using coupons and discounts (which is what we do day in and day out).

SportsTech

Appreciate the thoughtful response, but you're making my point: National is generally expensive, and being an Emerald Club elite doesn't help with that. The fact that National, in an instance, is $1 whole dollar cheaper than Alamo is interesting, but not terribly surprising; in some mostly-business markets (other than NYC and Boston), weekends are often a good deal with National. But during the week, it's rare.

I am simply making the point that National could, but doesn't, do a lot to actually generate loyalty among its most frequent customers by offering the same competitive rates that they essentially broadcast to affinity groups

As you can tell from my profile, I'm Exec Elite with National; I had more than 150 days last year - as retired person. I value the hard and soft product: good cars, good check-out and check-in system. None of these things are benefits of the Emerald Club loyalty program; they're functional attributes of the National product. The loyalty program isn't, frankly, all that generous and the rewards of the "1-2-Free" program are completely independent of elite status.

The only way I've been able to continue as a National customer is by using my (former) employer's corp code so the rates are OK - not great, but good enough. I am, however, looking for an alternative because my former employer self-insures so, nominally, CDW is included. It isn't, in fact: if I were to have an accident, National would simply turn the bills over to my former employer - who would not be happy. I have been using Amex insurance and, lately, Chase Sapphire to secure primary rental car collision insurance but I need a good, honest rate that doesn't include insurance and they're not easy to come by. Silly, really; in virtually any other industry, someone who is as good a customer as I am would simply qualify for top tier discounts.

jackal

Really? I've been a UA1K, an MVPG, a Hyatt Diamond, a Choice Diamond, a Hertz PC, and an Amtrak S+. I don't recall having ever gotten a discount by virtue of my status (other than the measly couple percent that Choice offers to all Privileges members booking on the Choice website regardless of tier).

SportsTech

As a 1K, routinely got thousands of dollars of annual discounts on business travel via the annual SWU's and regional certs - some years, my SWU's alone were worth upwards of $10K on discounted business class trips to Europe. And I got those benefits - discounts - from the loyalty program, Now that I'm a lowly lifetime Gold, I really miss those benefits!

As a Hyatt Diamond I get the same thing: product discounts because of the volume of business I've given them. I had (2) suites for 5 nights each at the PH Vienna last year, nightly rate with my corp discount was over $1,400. I paid $125 cash plus points per night - and 2 Diamond upgrade certs. Don't know about Choice or Hertz, and I'd be shocked if Amtrak offered a decent seat let alone a loyalty program ... but surely you've gotten plenty of $ value from the the two loyalty programs I'm familiar with.

Yes, I know - with National, you get a "one car upgrade". For 80 days of rental - more than 20% of the year! I'm simply suggesting that they could offer a more meaningful benefit by offering the same price they'd give a first year grad from the Michigan who had never rented a car from National for one day.

Gunterindiana

I typically use national as with coupon codes they are close to the cheapest. However, for a 1 week rental in SLC next week (no aisle and historically poor cars) it’s $547 vs Hertz is $227. Even tried using Autoslash, they didn’t even list National in their prices

jackal

Sure, though I never have and probably never will ever find it worth spending $10K on a business-class ticket, so I never would have valued those SWUs at that much. Most I'd ever pay for an upgrade to a premium cabin is probably a couple hundred bucks for a transoceanic flight. (Yeah, I'm cheap.) Same with hotels; two nights at the PH Vienna in a suite would be more than my annual hotel budget (and I had about 60 nights in hotels last year), so I wouldn't count those suite upgrades as worth nearly that, because the most I'd probably ever spend to stay in a room like that would be maybe $150. (Total, not upgrade beyond normal room rate--yeah, I'm cheap.) And that assumes I'd even be able to use the SWUs...since I've never flown overseas on a W fare (too expensive) I really can't attribute any value to them at all, so I'll say they're each worth $50, which is what I'd pay to upgrade a domestic itinerary.

So with UA 1K, I got six GPUs valued at $50 apiece and four RPUs also valued at $50 apiece ($500 in value there). With Hyatt, I got four suite upgrades that, in real-world usage, I'd generously value at $30 (the amount I'd actually spend to upgrade to a suite at a mid-range hotel, which is the most expensive hotel I'd ever willingly pay to stay at), so that's $120.

Anyway, sure, OK, you do get a few dollars' worth of benefits for having status. And in the 25 rentals it takes to earn Executive Elite, I'd earn 25 rental credits, redeemable for five free rentals, plus 12 more One-Two-Free free days. Given that those free days can be redeemed on one-way rentals and actually save me real, cold, hard cash on short-/medium-distance flights or train tickets (I'd say the average replacement transportation cost of my typical one-way rental runs about $75, though some would run even more than that), that's $1,275 in benefit I get from National (and on about $2,500 in rental spend, so more than a 50% rebate!). Sorry, but I still have to disagree with your assessment that National's program is lacking in benefits. Top-tier status potentially saves me more money than 1K and Hyatt Diamond combined.

And I'll still point out that neither UA nor Hyatt gives an actual cash discount on fares/rates for having status, so expecting National to do so because others in the travel industry do is not a valid statement.

This is a distinction without a difference. It's so easy to get discounts on National with dozens of other contract IDs and dozens more coupon codes that even if they did offer a better discount for Emerald Club elites, it'd probably be easily beatable with other discounts. So I really can't fathom why you're making a big deal about this: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. At least National makes it relatively easy to join 'em.

dtremit

My personal theory is that National has priced themselves higher because they can usually offer the *same car* at a lower rate through Alamo or Enterprise, at the same location. So there is essentially no risk to them charging more for the benefits of National service.

That said, I signed up years ago for the National "small business" program -- I took the fixed-price option with LDW included -- and that continues to be one of the best, LDW-inclusive rates I can find for my midweek business rentals. I don't know if they still offer enrollment for that particular program, or not, but the rate code continues to work reliably.

It's also worth pointing out that, for leisure rentals, reserving what you want through Enterprise may be a good backup option. For a holiday weekend at LAX recently, we could reserve a PCAR through Enterprise for half of what National wanted for an ICAR, and a IFAR for a few dollars more. Sure it wasn't a "free" upgrade, but it was a good price for a good car. Unlike Alamo rentals, Enterprise rentals earn towards Executive status and earn rental credits.

SportsTech

I like your theory, hadn't really thought about the operational benefit of being able to move inventory so easily between National and the other two brands, but at a lot of major airports the cars are in the same staging lot.

As for the small business program, I just went to look and, while it's still offered by that name, I suspect the program is different: now, all you get is 5% off whatever the current public "non discounted" (rack) rate is - which will rarely be competitive. LDW not included in the rate.