sciconf

I am thinking of renting a car for about 3/4 days at the SYD.

I have points with MR and UR (US Based) - Any tips? Which one is better or alternatives to consider?

Do I need to purchase auto insurance? Any particular brand (hertz...?) to stick with?

I am traveling early next yr - if I book now, can I cancel without penalty?

MDWCommuter

My advice is don't do it, it's not a good value for your points as you generally will redeem at $0.01 per point. Better to use them for other redemptions such as air.

For example - 20,000 MRs will net you a $200 car rental or a round trip domestic coach ticket (or if creative a one way business class ticket in some parts of the world).

Just pay cash.

Re insurance question, and I say this because I'm working on a rental car in NZ for next year, is consider just buying the rental firm's insurance. Here's what swayed me: Amex Platinum won't even provide a CDW in about six countries in the world and two of them are Australia and New Zealand. Amex must have a good reason for that.

Re penalty question, all the shopping I've done has shown options for "pay later" or "pay now" with a discount for paying now. It's my experience that discount prepay rates typically have cancellation penalties while pay later rates that are higher do not.