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There is a new Amex Offer out today that’s good for 5,000 bonus Membership Rewards points when you spend $250 or more with Hertz. This should stack nicely with this week’s Rakuten Big Give Week as you can currently get 15x Membership Rewards points from Hertz on top of this offer.
The Deal
- A new Amex Offer is out that is targeted and offers 5,000 Membership Rewards points when you spend $250+ at Hertz [enrollment required]
Key Terms
- Valid through 7/7/23
- Only valid at corporate-owned locations in the US
- Excludes individually-licensed locations, Hertz Car Sales, and Rent2Buy
Quick Thoughts
This could be a very nice offer if you’re stacking with 15x from Rakuten and spending around the threshold for that offer. In March, I had an offer for 30% back from Capital One Shopping and I made numerous Hertz reservations for my trips this year at that point, but I have a couple more needs that have come up since then and I may consider making a few more reservations.
That said, keep in mind that Amex rental car coverage is inferior to that of competitors. I typically avoid renting a car on an Amex card for that reason, but I might make an exception in the right circumstances given this offer.
Keep in mind that this only works at corporate-owned locations. I’m not sure exactly how the end-user knows which locations are corporate-owned, but I’d expect any airport location is corporate-owned and locations within a city may be (but probably aren’t always?) licensed (and therefore ineligible). YMMV.
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8:30pm Eastern on May 9 and I tried to use this offer but it was gone – Amex chat told me the offer had reached its cap. I didn’t realize there were caps and missed out on this offer. Total bummer.
With all of the issues Hertz has had with poor record keeping that has resulted in numerous arrests for people renting cars that they reported stolen, there is positively no way I’d personally ever rent from them. I tell everyone the same. It’s not like it was a one time thing – they have a demonstrated lack of ability to properly record when cars go out and get back in and they just report them stolen. Lots of people ended up in jail falsely due to Hertz’ incompetence.
You’re always great at finding these offers Nick and this is a good offer here, but zero change I’ll personally use and really no one should be using this company anymore.
Yeah, I know those stories have been absolutely nutty. I’ve also rented from Hertz multiple times this year (and even extended one rental multiple times during the course of the rental via the app) and had zero issues. I definitely did think about it when I kept extending that one rental, but I also figured that if I was extending it in the app it had to be reflected in the computer system and it was probably safer than calling and trusting a human to do it or texting someone to ask that they extend it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be unhappy the day they send the police after me. And the stories are absolutely insane. But I haven’t heard much about it since they settled $168 million in lawsuits over it about 5 months ago:
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement
Again, that’s not to excuse them. And if you don’t want to rent from them because of it, I certainly understand why. But from my perspective, between the statistics cited in that article (out of 25 million cars rented each year, 0.014% are reported stolen and about 10% of that number were reported to be false reports, so we’re talking less than two tenths of one percent of rentals where that happened), and the fact that they paid out a large settlement over this a few months ago and have likely instituted systems to prevent paying out another $168 million, I feel like the odds of that happening seem astronomically low (and if they do, I’ll certainly be in that next lawsuit). I’m not chomping at the bit to rent from Hertz, but neither am I going to avoid them when they offer the best combination of price and selection.
Again, I 100% understand if you feel differently. I don’t know for sure whether or not they have fixed the problem. Your perspective seems to be that it doesn’t matter whether or not they have — “no one should be using this company anymore”. Again, it’s not that I disagree with why you feel that way (obviously), but I think I’d generally rather a system where they get a chance to fix it. You could make the argument that they had a chance after the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 360th person were arrested without cause and they didn’t and you’re not wrong. But then I guess the solution is for them to go out of business and we lose competition in the rental car space, which enables everyone else to increase prices. I guess I’d rather hope that they’ve fixed the problem.
I got the offer and I’m actually in the middle of a Hertz rental right now that would qualify. I reserved with my CSR, but I guess when I return it (undamaged) I can ask to switch payment to another card? I’ve never tried to switch payments while returning before, so not sure how easy/possible it is.
When returning car, don’t let Hertz rep closeout rental upon parking car in return lane. Inform that rep that you need to use another cc to pay for rental. You most likely need to go in office / desk and switch CSR to AMEX for full payment.
wow, never thought of this work around…So essentially. Use your CSR to rent, and then when you return the car (undamaged) change to your Amex for actual payment to get your $50 off… Brilliant!
Searching on https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/location
returns the location type, including Corporate locations.
I always book my car rental reservations with my CSR for the protections. When I return the rental undamaged I request to change payment methods. Looks like I will be using that method again with this offer.
If I book a car today in May for my trip in November but don’t pay until November at check in at the airport will my 15X points post in December 2023?
Yes, your 15x should. In general, that works pretty seamlessly with travel reservations (there are always exceptions where something doesn’t work right, but I do that kind of thing a lot and in my experience it has worked as it should).