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Hertz is one of the major global players in the car rental market. The company operates in a massive 160 countries worldwide. In addition to Hertz, the parent company also operates other car hire subsidiaries, Thrifty, Dollar, and Firefly.
The Hertz Gold Plus Rewards program is Hertz’s loyalty program. Similar to most programs, you earn points and redeem them for free rentals. However, when it comes to points expiration, Hertz points expire according to a two-pronged expiration policy. Here is all you need to know.
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Do Hertz Points Expire?
Hertz Points expire according to a dual policy based on activity, plus the points have a finite lifetime. First, your points will expire if there is no activity on your account for a 12-month period, per the Hertz FAQ page.
“all points in a Hertz Gold Plus Rewards member’s account will be forfeited and removed from a member’s account after twelve months of no rental activity.”
In addition to the above, even if you have plenty of regular activity, your points have a finite lifespan and will expire five years from the date they are earned — unless you are a Canadian resident. Again, per the FAQ page:
“Points are valid for five years from the date that they were earned. If a Hertz Gold Plus Rewards member does not redeem the points within a five-year period, the points will be considered forfeited and removed. This five-year point expiration does not apply to residents of Canada.”
Once expired, there is no way to reinstate your points.
Track your points and miles expiration for 630+ loyalty programs and get email alerts before your miles expire by signing up for a free AwardWallet account.
What is Qualifying Rental Activity?
Although Hertz is somewhat vague in its choice of language, you must earn points from a paid booking to qualify as a rental activity. This can include a straight cash booking or a cash and points booking. Point redemptions do not count towards resetting your points expiration, per the Herts FAQ page:
“Point transfer to an immediate family member does not count as rental activity. The redemption of points, which occurs at time of booking, does not count as rental activity, however, the completion of the rental in which points were redeemed, will count toward rental activity.“
Keeping Your Hertz Gold Plus Points Alive
If you have Hertz Gold points that are about to expire due to 12 months of inactivity, your options are very limited. In a nutshell, you can only do one thing: Earn points on a completed rental (which must include a cash component) to reset your expiration clock. You earn 1 point per dollar spent on base rental fees.
However, if your points are about to expire due to reaching their five-year lifespan, there is nothing you can do but use them.
Using AwardWallet To Keep Track of Your Hertz Points Expiration
The best way to keep track of your Hertz Gold Plus expiration is through AwardWallet. Connect your Hertz Gold Plus account to AwardWallet to receive reminders in the months leading up to your points expiration. After the one-time setup, you won't have to worry about tracking your point expiration since AwardWallet will do that for you.
Plus, AwardWallet will help you automatically track your car rentals in your AwardWallet Trips timeline.
Redeeming Hertz Gold Plus Rewards Points
Hertz has a two-tier award pricing. You can redeem your Hertz Gold Rewards points in any of the two following ways:
- Standard Rewards is the standard price. However, bookings do feature blackout dates.
- Any Day Rewards have no blackout dates. This flexibility comes at a premium, with prices double the standard rewards rate.
Keep in mind the pricing differential is enormous. After a Hertz Gold Rewards award chart devaluation, the pricing in points also depends on where you rent. One day-free rental standard rewards price as follows:
- North America: Standard rewards start at 950 points, and Any Day Rewards cost an eye-watering 1,900 points.
- Europe: Standard rewards start at 900 points, and Any Day Rewards cost a massive 1,800 points.
- Australia and New Zealand: Standard rewards start at 700 points, and Any Day Rewards cost a more reasonable 1,400 points.
Boosting your Hertz Elite Status
While being a program member is great news, having elite status is even better and gives a ton of additional perks. Fortunately, you can receive complimentary Hertz Gold Rewards elite status from various travel rewards credit cards as well as other loyalty programs.
If you hold Delta Medallion, United Premier, or IHG Diamond status, you can leverage your status for Hertz Five Star status. Plus, cardholders of several premium cards can enroll to get Hertz President's Circle status.
Related: How to get rental car elite status for free
Our Take
Hertz Gold Plus Rewards is on the stingy side. It couples a short 12-month activity-based expiration policy with a five-year fixed expiration deadline. Throw into the mix the serious restrictions on what counts towards resetting the validity of your points, and things can get difficult. If you want to continue using Hertz, you must plan ahead a little more than before to ensure you hit those activity deadlines and keep your points valid.
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Based on the comments, the article is from 2021 but updated in 2023.
Here I am caught in the crossfire. Had points expiring 11/18/2023 per AwardWallet warning and my verification by phone on 9/6/2023 and I was preparing to rent on 11/7/2023 to keep them alive. Yesterday AwardWallet tells me my points dropped to zero (thanks for the service by the way). So I double check and, sure enough, points are GONE. This is some serious BS on Hertz’ part especially since I have rented TWICE in the past three years to keep these alive and they take them away in my month 18 to match their 12 month strategy. I can understand a go forward basis but this is awful to just take them without warning. I am going to call but previous experiences with Hertz have been horrendous so will only give it short try as I will be happy to be done with horrendous company and their horrendous website and app and horrendous customer service.
If I have success, I will update here.
Edgar – If you call customer service and complain plus show you have this upcoming rental, you should get a one-time points reinstatement like I did. 888-999-4900, Option 4. Hours of operation are 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. CT Monday through Friday.
Thanks for the information, so can I redeem my elite status points until January 2022?
Yes, you should be able to redeem your Hertz Gold Plus Rewards points anytime between now and January 2022 – or generate activity to extend the expiration date.
I wish Hertz had an awardwallet point thing like American does.
In the past, we have transferred soon to expire Hertz points to Southwest. It successfully counted as an activity to reset the clock.
It is nice that the EU members also have options to extend the expiration dates.
I rent cars so infrequently that the one Hertz rental I did have was auto-credited to Accor ALL.. which then auto-transferred to Iberia.. which then was combined into British Airways. Sounds silly, but more useful to me than having orphan Hertz points that probably would have expired.
Hertz has been my go to company for years, but since the pandemic, customer service has been very disappointing. Hope they get their act together soon.
I don’t have elite status and had some points expire. Called up customer service and they reinstated my miles with a 6 months extension because of the pandemic. Never hurts to ask.
Hi Stan, how did you get them to reinstate your points? I asked and they said no. I have 7000 points that expired without any notice at all. Customer service is not supportive of this.
It’d be awesome if AwardWallet could track the expiration date for Hertz points. Any chance of this in future?
Yes, we will do our best to implement this in the future. The best scenario would be if the expiration date was shown on the Hertz website. But now you can set the expiration date manually or mark that your points don’t expire.
I rent from Herz quite often so I have elite status. However I guess I also could have received status through one of t credit cards. I’m going to have to look up how to do that because it seems that it’s not automatic or obvious.
Thanks. Curious as to why AW told me today that despite being Presidents Circle my points expire in a months time.
Is that correct or is this article?
I am bit confused as I pay and to be honest rely upon AW.
Hertz announced in January 2021 that all points for elite members will be extended through January 31, 2022. However, it doesn’t look like they’ve implemented this in their system.