Hertz has quietly doubled the rate to rent a car using your Hertz Rewards points during most of the year. A reader tipped us off to the fact that Hertz is pricing free night awards at the “Any Day” rate meant for “peak” dates for more than 2/3 of the year at every single Hertz rental location we’ve checked. That effectively doubles the number of points that you’ll need to use for a single free day on 249 days out of the year or more at every airport we’ve checked.
As a reminder, Hertz has a “standard” award rate as well as an “Any Day” reward rate. Here’s a snippet of the award chart for daily rentals (the chart goes on with further rows on the Hertz website).
Here is the full award chart for weekly rentals:
And here is the entire award chart for one-way rentals:
As you can see above, the “AnyDay Rewards” are all double the cost of a “Standard” Reward.
Whether your chosen date will qualify for a “Standard Reward” or an “AnyDay Reward” depends on the blackout dates calendar, which shows the dates during which Standard Rewards are blacked out. You can view that “AnyDay Rewards” calendar here on the Hertz website.
That page allows you to enter an airport code or city location to see the peak date start and end periods for that particular location. Rentals between those peak start and end dates will be at “AnyDay Rewards” rates.
I searched more than two dozen locations, both major airports and small airports and also neighborhood locations. All of the locations I checked had one of the following two numbers of “peak” dates where you will have to use AnyDay Rewards:
- 249 peak dates (68.22% of the year)
- 256 peak dates (70.14% of the year)
Most locations fit into #1 with a few smaller locations having the greater number of peak dates.
I was surprised to see no variance here — every airport I tried had either exactly 249 or 256 peak dates.
In other words, a “Standard Award” isn’t very standard since, at best, one will be available during 31.78% of dates. While “AnyDay Rewards” implies that they would always be available, I think that awards must be further capacity-controlled as I have several times looked to use points only to receive a result saying that no reward days are available (despite cash bookings being available for small to mid-size cars).
While I don’t know how many dates were Standard vs AnyDay in the past, it’s clear that moving forward, you’ll need enough points for a double-priced AnyDay award more often than not — and if you happen to find a “Standard” award available for a day you need, it probably makes sense to snag that award while you can. That’s generally sound advice for using Hertz points, especially considering the latest change to the points expiration policy.
H/T: Reader Mark
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