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About 2.5 years ago Lyft launched Lyft Rentals – the ability to rent a car via Lyft rather than using their more commonly known rideshare feature.
They appear to be having a bit of a push on their car rentals option that had previously flown under the radar because there are a couple of stackable offers that can save you 20% and earn 9x American Airlines AAdvantage miles and 9x Loyalty Points on top of whatever you’d earn from your credit card. These offers first showed up a few months ago and expired on July 31, but they’ve now refreshed with a new expiry date of September 30.
The Deals
- Get 20% back on Lyft Rentals with a targeted Citi Offer
- Earn 9x on Lyft Rentals when paying with a card linked in the SimplyMiles program
Key Terms
- Lyft Rentals Citi Offer
- Expires September 30, 2022.
- Lyft users may receive 20% back (up to $50) on their first Lyft Car Rentals when using their Mastercard.
- Whether such rental car qualifies as an eligible rental for purposes of the offer will be determined at Mastercard’s and Lyft’s discretion.
- Does not apply to Lyft rideshare.
- Lyft not available in all locations, including Puerto Rico.
- Lyft Rentals SimplyMiles Offer
- Expires September 30, 2022.
- Lyft users may receive 9 miles per $1 spent (up to 2325 miles) on their first Lyft Car Rentals when using their Mastercard.
- Whether such rental car qualifies as an eligible rental for purposes of the offer will be determined at Mastercard’s and Lyft’s discretion.
- Does not apply to Lyft rideshare.
- Lyft not available in all locations, including Puerto Rico.
Quick Thoughts
Before seeing the SimplyMiles offer on my account last week, I’d never heard of Lyft Rentals where you have the ability to rent a car through the app. While 9x AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points was interesting, what got me far more intrigued was the new Citi Offer giving 20% back on up to $250 in Lyft Rentals charges.
Depending on how good their prices are, it seems like Lyft Rentals has the potential to be a good option regardless of the Citi Offer and SimplyMiles deal. That’s because Lyft Rentals come with a number of perks, features and benefits:
- $20 Lyft credit
- Free optional add-ons (e.g. USB phone charger, child seats, ski racks, etc.)
- No additional driver fees
- Lyft Rentals refills the gas tank at the end of the rental based on local market rates for gas and no additional fees added on
Lyft Rentals has also partnered with Sixt in some markets. The perks, features and benefits of rentals via Sixt are different, but still potentially worthwhile:
- $10 Lyft credit
- Choose the exact make and model of your rental and it’ll be ready upon arrival
- Unlimited mileage
What could make the 20% Citi Offer and 9x SimplyMiles offer even better is the fact that Lyft Rentals seems to be charging competitive rates, at least in some locations anyway. For example, doing a search for a three day rental from June 14-17 from LAX showed rates for as low as $134.69 total.
I wasn’t sure how much car rentals from LAX are costing nowadays, so I checked prices on Kayak for the same dates and the cheapest option came to a total of $147, so $12 more expensive than Lyft Rentals.
$12 isn’t a huge difference and Autoslash has the potential to drop the $147 lower than the $134.69 price from Lyft Rentals, but if you can also save 20% from the Citi Offer than Autoslash might be hard-pressed finding a rate as low as $35.91 per day, not to mention the $20 Lyft credit you’d get from Lyft Rentals and 9x AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points from SimplyMiles.
What I’m not sure about is if Lyft Rentals is an eligible rental company for credit cards that have CDW coverage. Lyft’s FAQs suggest they might be eligible for that kind of credit card benefit:
We offer Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) for an additional charge. CDW is not insurance and not mandatory.
Your own insurance, or the issuer of the credit card you use to pay for the vehicle rental transaction, may cover all or part of your financial responsibility for the rented vehicle. You should check with your insurance company, or credit card issuer, to find out about your coverage and the amount of the deductible, if any, for which you may be liable.
What’s tricky is that cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve that have CDW coverage state the following:
What’s Not Covered
- Leases and mini leases; including hourly rentals and car share services
While Lyft Rentals isn’t a car share service, someone dealing with your claim might see ‘Lyft’ and automatically decline your claim, not being aware of/caring about the intricacies of Lyft versus Lyft Rentals. That could result in some back and forth as to whether or not you have an eligible claim in the event of an accident.
There might even be a third stackable element because Lyft has partnerships with Delta and Hilton. While the Hilton and Delta partnerships no longer stack with each other, there’s the possibility that you could earn miles or points with one or the other when booking a Lyft Rental, so be sure to have your accounts linked.
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Mastercard and Lyft’s discretion whether you receive the promos. Basically if your rental price is too low they won’t give you the points/rebate. Also they charged me for some bogus toll fees when I wasn’t even in the area of the toll bridge at that time. Total scam, stay away.
This confuses me since Lyft recently announced they were ending their direct rental business (they may still offer rentals through partners like Sixt):
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/21/23273092/lyft-rentals-layoffs-car-ride-sharing-transportation
It appears to me and I could be wrong that Lyft simply acts as a booking service here and so CC insurance would still apply as your contract will be worth the respective car rental company. As an aside stay away from sixt at least in the US a service is horrible and branches don’t even have a direct line to call
The $20 Lyft credit seems to be meant to defray some/most of the cost of getting from the airport to get your car, and then back to the airport after you drop off. There is no free shuttle mentioned. The LAX location is at La Cienega and Imperial, adjacent to the Lyft driver center, so you certainly should have no trouble getting a Lyft to/from the terminals. You could also walk over to the metro green line station just south of Imperial at Aviation to catch the free shuttle bus to LAX (or do the reverse from the terminal). You can save a few steps by making sure you’re walking on the south side of Imperial so you can enter the station’s parking lot from Imperial (or, again, in reverse just leave that way, turn right, and cross Imperial at the crosswalk near the freeway entrance). As someone who lived in L.A. 25 years and now visits frequently, I would not recommend doing that after dark and would not want to do that at any time with luggage. But with rentals from the “major” players often well over $100/day, it could be worth the small hassle to save a lot.
I rented with them in April and they charged me bogus charges for tolls while I wasn’t even driving the car. All customer service is via email and they were rude and unresponsive. Watch out.
[…] Hat tip to FM […]
Are you sure that this applies to Sixt rentals booked through Lyft, and not just to “true” Lyft Rentals locations? It’s hard for me to tell from reading the fine print.
My reading of it is that it’s for rentals booked through Lyft Rentals. Although Sixt fulfills some of the rentals, I’m assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that payment would still be processed by Lyft Rentals and so would trigger these offers.
Thanks. Yeah, I hope it would work out that way. Looking in the app, it says “pay at pickup” and “cancel for free,” which makes me wonder if Sixt would run your card, and it would be billed like any other Sixt rental. Hopefully someone can provide a datapoint.
BTW, these locations have “true” Lyft Rental offices: Los Angeles, San Diego, Bay Area (San Francisco x2, Oakland, and San Jose), and Chicago. None are actually at the airport, but LA, San Diego, and San Jose are reasonably close.