Well that dreaded day has come for me, I now see our personal use XZ code has gone from $48/ day to $112 at some locations, $121 at others. I really like EHI, they’ve always been fantastic to me, but this will certainly impact my travel considerations going forward.

This is where I am; I'd much rather give the business to National than Avis. Had they increased the corporate leisure rate by 10 bucks a day or something... I'd have stayed with National, no question. But yeah, over $50 more than the official travel rate, per day, while Avis will match the official travel rate and throw in complimentary LDW... I can't justify it. Avis and Hertz are so wildly inconsistent and generally offer terrible service, but it's not worth hundreds on each rental to avoid them.

If someone at National is reading this - please reconsider.

How did Avis match before? Do they match corporate leisure codes?

My corporate personal code has gone from $30ish to $80ish per day now, and my wife's just last week has gone from $40ish to $80ish as well. Like others have mentioned, can't justify going National anymore with those huge increases. Both of our business codes remain at $30ish though, but unusable for personal since it includes LDW.

We have corporate and leisure AWDs with Avis. The pricing through both has always been identical, and LDW/CDW/whatever is always included with both codes. My employer does a lot of business with them (interns get rentals from Avis over the summer) and so they tend to give us decent perks at good rates. Of course, that doesn't always translate into acceptable service at the remote stations, which is truly a train wreck in almost all circumstances. Occasionally you'll get a good Avis employee at an off-airport location, but their airport operations are horrible. National has always been much better at this part of the business.

Genuine question here, is there a reason in that case to not use the corporate code? My corporate code doesn't use central billing (it's charged to my credit card at every rental) so I never bothered using the personal code (or even checking the rate) for leisure rentals.

ask your corporate travel. They probably don’t want to deal with personal damages being dinged against the corporate code.

The guidance I've received from my current company (and previous) is that we can use the corporate rate for personal use, but we will not be covered by the CDW/LDW for personal use. Also - no significant rate increase (yet).

From what I've seen, corporate code usually includes LDW. You can't remove it so the personal credit card insurance does not kick in. Thus there is a leisure code.

For what it's worth, I contacted my HR team that deals with the benefit and reported the error in pricing. They contacted National and got it fixed. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a system wide error with contract renewals that screwed up pricing. Might be worth a shot contacting the relevant person in your company.

Our company's National rates had been going up a lot in the past few years....this year I noticed we flipped over to Hertz as preferred provider at $44/day for a standard car. Not great but not horrible, and we're allowed to use it on personal rentals. Gone are the days of $15/day weekend rentals and generous coupons.

I don't rent many cars anymore - biz trips are all Uber now - and I no longer have any (legitimate) access to decent rates at National. I miss it too - Hertz is a dumpster fire these days.

I sent a note to our travel team as well… one of the guys responded back and confirmed our contact with National / Enterprise changed as of 9/1 due to costs. They kept the $44/day rates for our corporate use code, but the leisure code is now just 10% off whatever the going rate is. He mentioned quite a few people were disappointed about the change and that has been made known to the powers that be for our org, so hopefully they reconsider

My company’s travel department also confirmed that the corporate leisure rates for our company went up significantly to 10-15% off the market rate(same as the automatically applied “emerald club member” pricing). They almost made it sounds like it was a concession they made to keep more favorable on duty rates with the significant decrease in post pandemic business travel. Since it seems to be happening to lots of companies, I’m starting to think it’s a strategy decision on the part of EHI.

I made personal rentals during the height of the pandemic that compared to my pre-pandemic business travel, but I’m probably an outlier on that one. Still disappointing as it feels like they could care less about the loyalty during those challenging times.

Loyalty programs are in name only; it’s about what additional (and maximized) revenue you are going to bring going forward not what you brought in the past.

My "XZ" code, as a retiree from a major company, is recently no longer valid. The company has said that all hotel and rental car discount codes are now only applicable to active employees.

Same here, huge devaluation.