Aeroplan and car rental?

[OttawaDisGirl]

Hi there,

Does anyone have any experience with renting a car through aeroplan? The amount of points needed seems to be going up every time I check! I'm close to having enough points for a rental but I'm worried I won't wind up having enough. Has anyone know if historically the aeroplan points go up or down closer to the date?

Anyone have any experience with this? Any advice welcomed!

 

[amw]

I have only booked the rental once ... So I don't know if anything has changed. When I was researching, it didn't matter point wise how close to your travel date you were. But, I was able to tweak my points by playing with pick-up/drop-off times by an hour either way. Sometimes it makes a big difference with the points. Also, at the time we were staying at Disney so I did Magical Express and then arranged the pick-up location to be at the Hilton Downtown Disney. That saved a lot of points too.

Aeroplan sometimes offers gift cards instead -- either with rental companies, or "cash cards" with American Express. I have done that in the past too and it worked out better booking things on my own.

 

[OttawaDisGirl]

Thanks. That's a handy tip. I'll tweak the hours and see what happens.

 

[stefanospops]

I only do car rentals using my aeroplan miles. The required miles is per day and does not change, but availability may change. Car rentals go by the hour so if you pick up at say 1pm and return at 2pm the next day they consider that 2 days, not 1, depending on their grace period of course. Aeroplan miles work the same way but no grace period. To use less miles I sometimes take Magical Express to WDW and rent a car a day later from somewhere I can get to using Mickey Transit. Or I get the car at MCO and drop off at same.

 

[CanadianPaco]

I have used Aeroplan numerous times for car rentals but i have noticed the points required change. I'll track my potential rental over the course of a number of weeks, sometimes months depending on how close we are to the trip. The required points do change and that's with using the exact date/time. When I see the point requirement go up, i book it.

 

[OttawaDisGirl]

Thanks. I'll keep futzing with it!