wanderingkev

I few months ago I decided for no particular reason to take the Presidents Club membership with Hertz through GS/UA premier benefits,in the scheme of road warriors I do not rent that many cars, I would guess 45-50ish per year,
I previously rented from Avis in the main.
After consideration I have decided to go back to Avis. I never get upgraded with Hertz, I was 90% upgraded on Avis . I find them in general a little more expensive. On Saturday I had a two day rental at BRU which with the UA rate and insurances was 350 euro's, Surprised at this I popped across the car park and got the equivalent vehicle for 200 euro's from Avis for the same period . A pretty startling difference. This is the only MP partner offer I have taken up
I don't use Marriott's and I was already a significant hotels.com user.
I was wondering if others had similar learning with Hertz or other MP partners ?

Kacee

Hertz is awful for numerous reasons, including high prices, hidden charges, customer unfriendly policies and terrible cs. I did one rental under the UA promotion. It netted me a ton of points but the experience was so unpleasant I haven't been back.

Many here (including me) are big fans of National.

More discussion here. Hertz MP Offers.

jsloan

It greatly depends upon where you rent. Hertz is rolling out a choose-your-own-car service similar to National at several US airports. Since they started doing this, I've gotten a very nice Infiniti twice -- once at ORD and once at LAS -- for about $30 per day, all-in.

My work rentals are all National, by corporate contract. For personal rentals, I choose National unless Hertz is significantly cheaper, as National's free days are extremely useful if you enjoy road trips, since they can be used for one-way rentals if desired.

Kacee

And they're going to do 1-2-Free again this fall.

Darlox

Ha! At least I'm not the only one... I made the hop to Hertz, briefly, too, but almost immediately went back to Avis. Especially for Int'l, the Hertz rates were utter insanity, and most even had limited kilometers.

Funny story about the old Avis perks, though. I too was upgraded virtually all the time, and now that I've switched back, even without the "formal" perks, I still get upgraded ~>50% or so, probably based on my rental volume. But when it first started and I started renting with Avis a lot, I was getting such insane upgrades, that I actually had to occasionally call Avis and get them to add a "do not upgrade" mark to my rental record. I have a few non-profit clients, and I had to do a heck of an explanation once when I rolled up to their offices in this land-yacht of a luxury vehicle (which was, of course, being billed to them -- but only at the Intermediate rate!!)

It was a nice perk, but particularly on teeny-tiny narrow European streets, or when you're working with cash-strapped nonprofit clients, giant luxury vehicles aren't necessarily what you WANT!

But, agreed... the Hertz "benefits" are crap, and not worth even bothering about.

EWRMAN

As someone who only hires cars 4 to 6 times a year. I find the hertz president benefits very useful as I would have no status without being 1k

Kacee

IMO better benefits from National Emerald Club, which is free.

Billiken

wanderingkev:

Absolutely agree.
I have been completely under-whelmed by being Pres Circle on Hertz.

Lately, I just get Uber/Lyft rides more often than renting a car.

findark

Interesting - I don't rent terribly often, but I've found Hertz (with all the discounts) to be reasonably competitive on price and I haven't had any major issues. President's Circle status is kind of a joke, but I appreciate that the frequent promos mean 1-day rentals are essentially buying miles at 1cpm and getting a free car as a bonus.

SFO28L

I have Hertz and National as options with work. While there is little about Hertz that I think is particularly great I have had 2-3 rentals with National in the last couple years and problems with each one. Our corporate pricing with Hertz is usually very good. I have 2.5 weeks in Europe this month for ~400 euros.

scracer14

I switched from Avis to Hertz and haven't looked back. Most of the airports I fly to I can pretty much pick any car in the lot (Pres Circle, 5 star, or Gold), and our corporate rates are almost identical to Avis. For weekend rentals I book through United, and typically find competitive rates. If the rates are high on United.com, I book our corporate leisure rate and pass on the UA miles.

For quantification, I have rented 18 cars for personal use this year for a total cost of ~$1,100 (including taxes and fees) and have received 75,250 United miles for those rentals and 550 Hertz points (for the bonus every 15 rentals)

tarheelnj

Somewhat related...

Is there any way to get UA to stop asking me in every call with customer service whether I want help with a hotel or Hertz Rental car? I am virtually never going to book a rental car via a UA phone agent, and it's annoying every time they ask, particularly when I'm done with what I needed and am trying to get off the phone. If company travel, I will have booked the trip on the company travel site. If personal travel, my company discount rate is better than anything I could get through UA, so I'll just book directly on the Hertz web site.

I'm a very long time Hertz renter and have generally had good experiences, especially getting me out of the airport and on returning. The "choose your own car" option is also a big improvement (matching Enterprise from, what, 10 years ago?)

notquiteaff

Probably not, but is "no thanks <click>" so much effort that it's worth a post here that probably took more time for me to read than I ever spent on saying "no thanks"?

txviking

We went from Hertz to National as our preferred partner for corporate rentals a few years ago. I've never been a fan of Hertz, and actually pointed out repeatedly how badly they were overcharging us.

National, however, has been an absolute pleasure to deal with. Good choice of cars, friendly and actually helpful customer service, reasonable rates and all kinds of surprising upgrades (like having rented a "mid-size" and ending up in a Cadillac CTS, or picking a Dodge Charger only to discover it was a V8 R/T rather than the rental-car-standard V6.)

In short, I second Kacee's recommendation. I've been nothing but pleased with National, and recommend checking them out if you haven't already.

txviking

Easy. Stop flying United. *Insert obligatory re-accommodation joke here.*