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Hertz has repeatedly earned itself negative publicity over the past couple of years. Unfortunately, they are at it again. After previously reducing the expiration timeline for points from needing activity once every 18 months to once every 12 months, Miles Talk reports on a new restriction that came from Hertz via email today: now points expire 5 years after they are earned, regardless of activity. That’s a huge bummer that is no doubt tough to track and designed to create even more breakage in a system that’s already of marginal value at best.
Here’s the text from the email that Hertz sent to members today regarding an “important change” to the Hertz program:
Effective December 31, 2024, points will expire after 5 years from when they were earned, regardless of rental activity.* This means that any points that have been in your account for 5 years or longer will expire and be removed from your account. But don’t worry! You’ll have up to 6 months to use those points to book free rental days through 2025. And you can transfer points to an immediate family member who is also a Gold member.**
I found the wording to be a bit confusing there. My read of it is that your points will expire 5 years from when they were earned, but you’ll have up to 6 months to use the points (beyond the 5-year expiration I think?) for rental days through 2025. I think this means that you’ll temporarily have 5.5 years from the date they were earned in order to use the points until 2025 and then it’ll drop to 5 years from the date earned.
There are numerous problems with a policy like this of course. First of all, if you rent even semi-regularly, you’ll have lots of points in your account with differing expiration dates. It’ll be awfully onerous to figure out which points expire when.
There’s also the fact that this is really disappointing for anyone who has been loyal to Hertz intending to use their points on a big “someday” trip. If you have points that you’ve been actively accumulating for more than 5 years, you’d better plan that “someday” trip by the end of 2025 or else you’ll start losing what you’ve accumulated.
I hate to see a loyalty program move in this direction because it takes away the promise of future value for your loyalty and replaces it with the ability to get value so long as you constantly earn and burn, whether or not that makes sense from a value standpoint.
Ultimately, a change like this is designed to create breakage so that customers will have points expire and perhaps not even notice them evaporating little by little each month.
The moral of the story is that if you have earned a lot of Hertz points, look for opportunities to use them sooner rather than later.
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It is games like this why I stopped playing points games with airlines and such.
Qantas did the same with their points. They kept reducing the value. Expiring them. Starting charging more fees for the “privledge” of earning or using them. They always seemed to find a way to snatch away the prize just before you got there. It started to feel like a carnival game and I was just another sucker.
I finally just gave up since I could never get any value out of it.
In Pleasanton CA, we have other options besides Hertz. In addition to deteriorating business practices, and reporting returned cars as stolen, they offer the worst counter service and longest delays. I stopped using then completely 2 to 3 years ago.
I’m assuming it’s FIFO and you don’t have to keep track of points from each individual rental.
Also, Hertz is the worst.
Also, I’ve gotten a b’n red Camaro for the cost of a Corrolla twice now at President’s Circle. Thank you Amex!
And Hertz recently hired even more ex-Delta executives.
I don’t rent from hertz anymore. Does “activity” include using points for rentals or does it require you to pay for a rental.
My nearest Hertz branch is a disaster. They cancelled half of my reservations because there’s no vehicle available.
After ruining my weekend for the fifth time, they offered me 850 points. Said points were added and immediately expired because there were no rental activities in the preceding 12 months.
Since then, I never booked another Hertz.
Hertz rentals are just too expensive after you factor in the incarceration insurance waiver.
Is there any travel credit card that offers this as a benefit?
It would be very useful with Hertz. Plus a collision damage waiver waiver, to cover when they charge you the collision damage waiver after you declined it.
I read it that starting January 1, 2025 any points that are five years old will expire. However, since they’re letting you know now, you have six months to use them (for rentals through 2025) before they expire.
I just adjusted my valuation of Hertz points to $0.00.
It’s been a while since I last rented a Hertz vehicle due to all their shenanigans with false vehicle theft reports, false fuel charges, false damage claims, etc. Just reading the Flyertalk Hertz forum is quite eye opening. Every week they seem to come up with a new creative way of hosing their customers.
Does having an airline loyalty # saved in Hertz profile mean I earn points there instead of Hertz? I just looked and I have an airline loyalty saved in my Hertz profile.
You can choose whether to earn Hertz points or airline/hotel points when making the reservation (assuming you book on Hertz.com or app).
I had a great experience with Hertz in the past until they started eliminating value from their program.
My read of that expiration policy is that anyone whose points are over 5 years old on Jan 1 2025 will have 6 months to use those technically-expired points. It might also mean that any points expiring in 2025 have an extra 6 months, but it’s hard to say for certain.
This is the correct read. The devaluation kicks in on Jan 1, but they gave us about a six month heads up before this policy starts. So if you have 10 year old points you want to use in December 2024, that’s no problem.
Would be nice if you could easily tell how many points will expire on Jan 1 in the meantime.
My email told me how many miles are going to be expired:
”Effective December 31, 2024, points will expire after 5 years from when they were earned, regardless of rental activity.* This means that any points that have been in your account for 5 years or longer will expire and be removed from your account if not used prior to December 31, 2024 — you currently have 390 points set to expire by this date.”