Readers have been contacting us recently asking about Hertz Gold Plus Rewards as they find it impossible to redeem their Gold Plus Rewards points for rentals.
Hertz Rewards points have historically been useful for high-value rentals where rates are rather expensive such as one-ways and peak days, especially midweek.
For quite a while now it seems that Hertz has restricted the use of these rewards to the point of no date or location being available anymore for redemption which basically renders the program almost worthless as far as Hertz points are concerned.
I have performed several searches to find availability to redeem Hertz Points at the following locations:
- Anchorage
- Boston
- Detroit DTW
- Los Angeles LAX
- Miami
- Vancouver
Not one of these locations offered me to use my points for a rental even though I have a sufficient balance in the account.
I have written to Hertz to get some clarification but there wasn’t any reply. This wasn’t a problem before the pandemic and the subsequent bankruptcy of Hertz during and after which they suddenly started to clamp down on their rewards system while at the same time offering status matches all the time.
In my example displayed above, it wouldn’t make much sense to use points either way as points only eliminate the base fee for the rental but facility charges do apply. With a cost of $34/day you can just as well pay cash rather than using 750 points or even worse 1500 points for an AnyDay award day.
You can find the Hertz Reward Chart here.
This award chart makes me cry. I can still remember back around 2010 when awards were rather cheap, especially for a weekly rental. Availability was never an issue either but boy have things changed.
Nowadays I primarily look at Sixt and National but occasionally I’m still renting with Hertz, especially at LAX as the location is right next to the Renaissance so I can just walk back to the hotel after dropping off the car since Hertz has eliminated the hotel shuttle service several years ago.
Conclusion
For some reason, it’s impossible to use your Hertz Gold Rewards points at the moment which makes people rather upset and many Hertz members are now switching to collect airline miles again rather than going for Hertz own loyalty currency.
Have you tried to redeem points as of late and ran into the same issues we encountered when searching for redemption options with Hertz?
