How to redeem points and miles for car rental

news7g04/16/2023

15 5 minutes read

From credit card discounts to negotiated rates for groups and companies, it’s no secret that there are ways to avoid paying full price for a rental car.

But no matter how often you rent a car, you should be up to speed using points and miles for rental cars. After all, it is thanks to car rental credits that a TPG . employee rented a $100,000 BMW 7 Series for $3 a day.

In this guide, we’ll highlight how you can redeem your rewards for your next hire.

Use car rental rewards

biggest car rental companies have a rewards program allows you to earn and redeem points for car rental. Here’s a quick overview of what you should know about earning and redeeming points with the most popular car rental loyalty programs.

Priority Avis: Avis Preferred members need at least 700 points to get a free car rental with a base rate of up to $50. Members earn 1 point per dollar and at least 100 points per booking. In addition, you can rent various accessories for 250 points per day.

Budget Breakthrough: The budget has no points system. Instead, members now earn $25 budget bucks for every two eligible paid rentals. You can earn up to 52 coupons per year.

fast dollar: Redemption starts at 500 points per day on weekends and 625 points per day on weekdays. Since members earn 1 point for every dollar, earning a free day takes at least $500 in paid rent.

plus business: Business doesn’t have an award chart, so the number of points you need for a free day will vary depending on your rental details. Members earn 1 point for every dollar on paid rentals, although elite members earn 10% to 20% bonus points on rentals.

Hertz Gold Plus Rewards: Free Hertz rentals start at 950 points per day at the standard rate, although blackout dates apply. Meanwhile, unlimited free Hertz rentals start at 1,900 points per day. Junior Gold members earn 1 point per dollar, while Five Star members earn 25% bonus points (for a total of 1.25 points per dollar) and President’s Circle members earn get 50% bonus points (for a total of 1.5 points per dollar).

National Emerald Club: Like Budget, Country does not have a points program but instead allows members to earn credits for free rental days. You earn one credit for each qualifying car rental. And depending on your status level, you’ll earn one free day after five to seven rental credits.

Redeem car rental credit card rewards

If you have earned tokens refunds or Transferable rewardsyou can redeem your rewards for car rental.

Although the process varies slightly from card to card, cashback rewards usually the easiest. For example, if you have a cashback rewards card like Unlimited pursuit of freedom, you can request a refund in the form of a statement credit or a bank deposit. then you can use cashback rewards from your card to effectively pay your car rental (or any other expenses).

You can also redeem Capital One miles to reimburse yourself for virtually any travel-related purchase charged to your card within the last 90 days. ARRIVE redeem One Mile Capital at a fixed rate for a car rental fee of $100, you need to exchange it for 10,000 miles.

The Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel Portal is another place to redeem car rental points. If you have Chase Sapphire Reserve, each of your points is worth 1.5 cents when booking a car rental through the portal. If you have Chase Sapphire Priority Cardyou can exchange points for rental cars at the rate of 1.25 cents per point through the portal.

You can also use American Express Members Rewards Points car rental through Amex’s Points Payment Feature. However, doing so will not give you high value for your points.

Redeem miles for car rental

Don’t expect to maximize your rewards if you redeem car rental miles. Airlines often offer much better redemption rates for flights.

However, to give you an idea of what to expect, here are the mileage you need to rent a car for a given day on a weekday at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Here’s what I found with the three major airlines that typically allow members to exchange miles for rental cars.

American Airlines

American Airlines works with most of the major car rental companies. And if you keep American Airlines status or co-branded American Airlines Credit Card, you can use up to 30% less mileage. To check prices, start your search This.

You can also pay for your car rental using a combination of American Airlines miles and cash.

Redeeming American Airlines miles for car rental will usually not yield high conversion rates. But you can also earn car rental AAdvantage miles when you start This. With the same rental date, I can reserve an upgraded car with damage insurance for $159.78. In addition, I will earn 201 Loyalty Points and miles (worth $3.55 at Valuation of TPG).

Meanwhile, if I Redeem American Airlines miles for my rent I would get a buyback rate of about 1 cent per mile for a shoddy car with no protection.

Delta Airlines

If you order a bundled package, Delta allows you exchange SkyMiles car rental. So you can redeem Delta miles for one flight and hotel holiday packages which includes a rental car. To do so, look for a holiday package This. You will need to select your hotel and flight before adding a rental car.

To use your miles, apply them in the right column to offset expenses. Delta doesn’t show the price of your plan by miles, but you can manually add the number of SkyMiles you want to use. If you do, you’ll find that Delta will pay you 1 cent per mile, less TPG’s valuation of Delta SkyMiles at 1.41 cents per mile.

unified airline

You can redeem your MileagePlus miles for a rental car This. As expected, this is not the best use of the United mile.

For the same weekday rental I discussed above, you can pay $108.56. So using 18,400 miles, you’ll only get 0.58 cents per mile, which is significantly less than that. valuation of United miles at 1.21 cents per person.