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Hertz has made a significant devaluation to their award chart with no advance notice. The Gold Plus Rewards program has raised the number of points required for standard awards on daily and weekly rentals.
Key Details
At the low end of the devaluation, daily rentals on compact through premium vehicle classes went up 11% from 650 to 750 points. The worst change is weekly rates for specialty vehicles, which skyrocketed more than 70% from 4,400 to 7,500. The only positive change is that Adrenaline Collection vehicles, which were previously priced together with the Prestige Collection, went down from 2,300 to 2,200 points per day and from 11,500 to 11,000 points per week.
You can find current award pricing on the Hertz website. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much residual evidence of the old pricing. We built a comparison chart to highlight the price changes using an archived web history of the Hertz award chart.
Our Take
There is a difference between not giving members prior notice and making no announcement whatsoever about a change. When a loyalty program doesn’t give any advance notice, it severely undermines members' ability to plan for the future. This is a poor way to reward customer loyalty, but announcing a change—even after the fact—still provides a degree of transparency.
In this case, it seems Hertz is content to pretend that a change hasn’t happened at all. The current website has no mention of a price change, and we couldn’t find any official press release. Unannounced changes like this are extremely frustrating. When the Internet Archive Wayback Machine is the only way to hold a program accountable for changes, there is a serious communication problem.
Source: One Mile at a Time
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I just redeemed all my Hertz points. With the recent news of bankruptcy, it’s hard to say how long their rewards program would last or devalue again.
Hertz can be great at times in competitive markets. Out of way places are often a small fortune.
it’s a shame that this program took such a negative turn like this, i hope that it’s not a trend that others will follow 🙁
Hertz is quickly becoming too overpriced. I get better pricing through Costco.
Bad news at this moment, but it can be only a cycle. Ups and downs according to market. I hope and wish so.
is there any way to transfer hertz points to hotel or airline?
I believe you can choose to earn airline miles for Hertz rentals, but I’m not sure if you can transfer points after you earned them. If you can, the rate is likely to be a bad deal.
I think this pricing is way too high.
That’s quite a points devaluation. While Hertz cars are usually in good condition and the service is fine, I have found their rental prices higher than some competitors anyway.
That’s a rough devaluation.
Ouch. Already unapologetic about point inflation. No announcement is extra cold.
Yep, the final nail in the coffin for Hertz for me.
That’s Hertz for ya… Hurts Don’t it!!! 🙂
Not strictly related to the raise but I’ve never been a particularly big fan of Hertz since they didn’t give me a car advertised at booking as “guaranteed model” and then followed up with the explanation and I quote CS:
” that is not a guarantee on that particular car type being available , only a guarantee on getting that model should that vehicle be available”
Is this retroactive and affects reservations previously made but not completed?
I don’t think so. When you make an award reservation, points are deducted right away right? Any old reservation that was paid with points shouldn’t be affected. Likewise, the points earned for paid reservations hasn’t changed that we’re aware of.
It’s like they’re hoping most won’t notice the change. This is very disappointing indeed.
I hate when these happen suddenly and without notice
No advanced warning fits perfectly with what they did to my reservation in Wyoming 2 years ago. No notice, they relocated it to Salt Lake City 250 miles away. If I hadn’t checked online ahead I would have shown up in Rock Springs with no car reservation.
I wish they gave notice of the change.
Like all other devaluations, onward and upward.
It looks like they also completely got rid of weekend rentals, which were priced at 550 a day (100 less than a regular day) for midsize to premium cars. I know this because I just made such a redemption a week ago
I wish there was some more notice on these things, I have to plan so far ahead for award redemptions, then stuff like this occurs ….
This devaluation is even worse than you (and other bloogers) have described because Hertz seems to have also eliminated the option for a weekend rental day at 550 points. So the increase to 750 points per day is a 36% increase for a weekend day.
Standard. I am really curious who will be first who will reduces award prices…
Wow, not cool! At least give us a decent advance warning!
What I like the most is that this is Hertz: quality rental at a fair price.
We hear very little about the car rental awards redemptions. Sad to hear that they raised they cost. That is always hard to hear.
Mostly people are earning these points by rentals and so that makes it harder to have the higher amount. I know I don’t earn enough to ever make a redemption, especially since I like staying in places that I can walk around instead or ride public transportation.
I totally share your sentiments.
Devaluation in all sectors of fidelity (now also in the car rental sector).
As always, I try to use the points/miles accumulated before they lost some value.
Yes, if you follow this site and observe all the devaluations – especially those without notice – you will, unfortunately, realize that the best policy is “Earn them and then Burn them.”
Sadly, it is increasingly clear that “loyalty” programs in general do the bare minimum to reward loyalty.
Unfortunate indeed, although it should be recognized that part of the “loyalty” scheme is to keep members engaged in the program, continually striving towards an award redemption, and part of that equation is to continually extend the threshold that the member(s) need to reach.
A lot of people only noticed when the US Travel daily getaways 2019 point totals changed at the last minute to a higher amount. This is a serious middle finger to their loyal customers…
I do love national… executive asile is my friend!
It would be nice to have a list of all the devaluations this year, I cannot keep track of all of them.
This is awful. Though devaluations do happen, zero warning. Is ridiculous. I’ll use up my points then concentrate on a different car rental company.
Agreed. Something should be announced.
Booooooo!!! No notice devaluations are awful. Time to switch to another primary operator.
Thanks for making my next car renting decision easy, Hertz. I won’t be using you.
This is not good!
Why can’t companies give notice?
Seems the polite thing to do!
What the…without notice?
This is just terrible.