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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