Posted by Seth on January 15, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points | 
JetBlue’s TrueBlue program has added two new partners this week, Avis and Budget. The rental car programs join Hertz as TrueBlue partners. The earning rates are not tremendous – one point per dollar spent – but still a decent way to accrue a few extra points here or there. Also, the company is offering triple points for rentals through March 31, 2011.
Definitely not the greatest earning option for car rentals – even the new Rapid Rewards program from Southwest has much more generous earning on car rentals – but it is nice to see the partner portfolio of TrueBlue growing. That has been a shortcoming of the program since its launch and they are now fleshing it out a bit.
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Posted by Seth on November 9, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Thanks to United’s liberal airplane swapping policy we ended up without our first class seats on our flights to and from Oklahoma City this weekend. The tickets we bought were instant upgrade seats that technically were coach fares, but we bought them for the first class cabin, not for coach. A bit of prodding this morning at the counter, along with explaining that we really did need to fly OKC – DEN – PDX – SFO – SNA instead of a more direct routing (“business” in Portland), resulted in getting a CR-1 upgrade voucher each. This is my first United upgrade voucher and I’m still not sure exactly how to use it, but I’m looking forward to trying.
The other freebie of the weekend came courtesy of National Car Rental. A few weeks back they loaded a coupon code into their systems that was supposed to be something like a free day – up to $50 – with a three day weekend rental. The problem is that they didn’t actually load the details correctly. The result was that it was just a $50 coupon with no minimums. Once they realized their mistake they went back and cancelled out a lot of the reservations that were made with the code that shouldn’t have been there. For some reason, however, my reservations never got tossed out.
When we showed up at the counter yesterday to pick up the car they guy actually thought it was a mistake and was trying to figure out what was broken in my reservation because it came up as a $0 rental. No taxes, no surcharges, no fees. Just $0. He saw that there was a coupon and eventually handed me the car keys, still somewhat in disbelief. Nineteen miles and about three hours later we returned the car and headed off to the hotel. And it was still $0 for the rental.
Posted by Seth on September 29, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Part of the fun in the ridiculous trips I plan is the hunt for elite status with the various programs I participate in. So when the programs offer to just sell the status outright it seems to take away some of the fun. But what I really cannot figure out is how I got the two offers that I did in the past month.
The first offer is from Hertz. The email talks about my “President’s Circle Upgrade” as if it is something that I was supposed to already know about and be a part of. It highlights some of the benefits and then, at the very end, reminds me that the offer is about to expire and that I need to pay the $450 now to claim it. $450. Are you kidding me? For a guaranteed one-car upgrade (which I rarely want) and a 25% points bonus on rentals. I have only used Hertz for a car rental once in the past year, so I cannot figure out why they think I’d pay for this, but I keep getting “reminder” emails about it.
The second offer I received is from US Air. This offer is for a 90-day US Air Club membership and either Silver, Gold or Platinum status for 90 days. Apparently I can actually buy the Club member ship ($120 for 90 days) or the status ($215/$430/$645 for 90 days, depending on the level) separately, even though the email doesn’t mention that. Of course, I have no idea why anyone would willingly fly US Air, certainly not enough to be elite with them.
Suffice it to say that I am not going to pursue either of these offers. That being said, it is interesting to see the various companies trying to raise money through offers such as this. I wonder if they are actually successful.
Posted by Seth on June 17, 2008 under Uncategorized |
One of the most annoying rental car policies is the fuel issue. You have to return the car with a full tank or face exorbitant refueling prices. I’ve been fortunate to use a discount code from Avis for some time now that includes the refueling at pump prices, but contracts such as those are rare; the profits are too high for the rental car companies to ignore the opportunity. Or so I thought.
Hertz has decided to remove the fuel mark-up on their refueling option effective July 1. They will still charge a refueling fee ($6.99) but the fuel will be provided at local prices rather than 2-3x local price. They are also still offering the option to pre-pay for the full tank, at a 15 cents/gallon discount from the regular prices, but that is still a terrible deal. If you take the 15 cent discount you’re saving ~$2 over a tank of gas, so unless you can return the car with a half gallon of gas in it you’ve paid too much for the fuel. With the $6.99 refueling fee you’ll need to return the car with ~2 gallons to make it profitable. But the frequency with which that happens is pretty low.
The deal isn’t awesome, and it certainly doesn’t match the Avis deal I’ve got, but it is a nice move towards making things slightly better for car renters these days. There have been enough situations where I’ve been running a bit late for a flight that the $7 fee would have saved me quite a bit of money versus paying their high-priced gas bills.
