Hertz Gold Plus Rewards’ Massive No-Notice Devaluation

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: May 22, 2019

47 comments

I’ve gotta be honest — while I love airline and hotel loyalty programs, I don’t really get into car rental loyalty programs. I probably should, because there’s value to be had, but I just have a hard time getting excited about them. I also don’t rent cars that often, and when I do, I usually rent from Silvercar, which doesn’t have a loyalty program.

Hertz Gold Plus Rewards is one of the most popular car rental loyalty programs, and it looks like they’ve just increased redemption rates for all kinds of rentals with no advance notice.

To me it’s such a slap in the face when a loyalty program makes changes without notice. We often collect points with a specific reward in mind, so to have those goalposts changed without any notice is bad form.

Hertz Gold Plus Rewards isn’t even really acknowledging this change, but rather has just updated their award charts. So let’s take a look at some of their before and after pricing.

For example, here’s their former pricing for daily rentals:

Then here’s their new pricing for daily rentals:

The most basic redemption increases in price from 675 points to 750 points, which is an 11% increase. Meanwhile the price for a specialty vehicle rental increases from 1,000 points to 1,500 points, which is a 50% increase — ouch!

Here’s their former pricing for weekly rentals:

Then here’s their new pricing for weekly rentals:

As you can see, the price increases here are significant as well. For the most basic type of car, we’re seeing the price increase from 2,750 points to 3,750 points, which is a ~36% price increase. For specialty vehicles the price increases from 4,400 points to 7,500 points, which is a ~70% price increase — ouch!

Bottom line

While Hertz Gold Plus Rewards isn’t a program I’m active in, I take big issue with a program making award chart changes without notice. This isn’t cool…

Are you impacted by Hertz’s award chart changes?

(Tip of the hat to The Gate)

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Jaak Saame Guest

October 18, 2019, 12:58 pm

Hertz only gave me one notice in early July 2019 that my points would expire on 07/26/2019. I did not realize that airline, hotel and other promotion points would not extend the expiration date of my points. So I added 150 promotion points to my Hertz Gold Reward account on 07/18/2019 still thinking it would extend the expiration of my points. It took my by surprise that my Gold Rewards points were increasing for last 2.5 years and then bang they expired. I did not read the fine print of the Hertz policy changes that were made in January 2018. I asked Hertz to forgive my misunderstanding shortly after I discovered that my points had expired, but Hertz refused. Hertz deleted over 3400 Hertz Gold Reward points from my account. As a result I have decided to no longer rent from Hertz. I recommend others to be careful with or not collect Hertz Gold Reward points.

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Gregg Guest

September 11, 2019, 3:53 pm

I believe Hertz also discontinued the 500 point bonus after the 15th rental of the year. .... very frustrating !

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Erika Angulo Guest

August 28, 2019, 1:17 pm

I tried to rent with Hertz Rewards as I do every December for a family holiday and was told that despite the fact I have enough points and have President's Circle status, there were no reward rentals available. Have never had a problem before renting with reward points at that time of the year. After years of renting only from Hertz, I'm trying out AVIS and have been very happy with their service so far.

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Ankur Jain Guest

August 9, 2019, 1:44 pm

Wow ! I didnt realize Hertz change their point redemption until I saw this article. I have 12k points ( which were enough for 4 weeks rental of a mid-sized car. But with the updated options, I could hardly rent for 2.5 weeks. Feels so cheated ! this is betrayal of customer trust on a brand. I think I should soon utilize the points and move over to Alamo or Avis. They seem to provide much better deals these days as well. I would not recommend anyone in my circle to go ahead with Hertz going forward

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Maurice H. Smith Guest

July 15, 2019, 8:24 pm

This thread may be more about the devaluation in the point system but I am disappointed that Hertz also took away what they called customer milestone rentals where after your 30th and 40th rentals you'll be able to upgrade to any available car on the lot This was part of the President Circle benefits before - I called customer service today to inquire how I go about using this "benefit" and I was told it no longer existed.

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