Air Miles or Car Rental

[crazyfordisney2000]

**(I meant Air Miles FOR Car rental, not sure how to modify the title )Anyone have experience renting with air miles?? I popped in our dates (August 16-29) and I can rent a midsize car for 2400 air miles , I just have to pay the tax (about $100). It just seems too good to be true. I can choose from National and Alamo. I haven't been able to get anything below $500 including taxes for our dates. Any opinions? Thanks!

 

[wizardman]

I'm going from August 9th to 16th. I was able to get a Mini Van for about 27,000 pts from Chase. (27,000 pts is about $270.) Someone had mention on this board earlier about renting cars with your credit card and I think it's great. I don't recall having to pay anything but I have to look since you said something about taxes.

Also, I'm going to call in (soon) and see if I could get my National rewards number added to the order so I can skip the counter.

 

[Lewisc]

**(I meant Air Miles FOR Car rental, not sure how to modify the title )Anyone have experience renting with air miles?? I popped in our dates (August 16-29) and I can rent a midsize car for 2400 air miles , I just have to pay the tax (about $100). It just seems too good to be true. I can choose from National and Alamo. I haven't been able to get anything below $500 including taxes for our dates. Any opinions? Thanks!

You won't be able to use your credit card coverage. You'll lose much of your savings if you have to buy damage waiver

 

[crazyfordisney2000]

You won't be able to use your credit card coverage. You'll lose much of your savings if you have to buy damage waiver

We have rental car insurance with our personal car insurance policy for travel to the US so that's not an issue for us, but a good point to make if anyone else is considering it!

 

[Donald - my hero]

You won't be able to use your credit card coverage. You'll lose much of your savings if you have to buy damage waiver

Is this true even though we need to use our credit card to pay the taxes etc on site in US funds???? I already booked for 2 weeks in October/November for 1,995 miles & $73.30 taxes and i had no idea about this

 

[GillianP1301]

Double check the pickup location. I booked car rental through Air Miles last year, but did it by phone (wasn't available for online booking) and everything was fine, worked out well for me.

When I looked this year to try booking online, I noticed many of the options that came up when I put in MCO were offsite and several kms away from the airport. I never did call, because I decided to just book without Air Miles, but wanted to throw that out there so you don't end up booking something that you aren't expecting.

 

[Lewisc]

Is this true even though we need to use our credit card to pay the taxes etc on site in US funds???? I already booked for 2 weeks in October/November for 1,995 miles & $73.30 taxes and i had no idea about this

Any US credit card I've researched requires paying the entire cost of the rental on that credit card. You're not paying any of the cost of the rental on a credit card, just taxes and fees. There is some question if using a free day coupon/voucher is enough to invalidate credit card coverage. That's a gray area. Using miles to pay for the rental isn't a gray area. I wouldn't bother calling. The language in the terms of the coverage prevails over what you might be told over the phone.

Looks like you have a non-US credit card. Go to their website and check the terms. If it requires paying for the entire cost of the rental on that card you don't have credit card coverage.

You might have coverage on your personal auto policy. You might have coverage if you take travel insurance. You can even buy travel insurance which just covers renting a car. You can buy the $$$ waivers from the rental agency. If you're feeling lucky you can assume the risk.

I can generally find a way to have the extra driver fee waived. You might be stuck paying an extra driver fee, if you need that ability.

 

[Donald - my hero]

Thank you a thousand times for making me check into this!! I spent many hours experiencing mini-freak outs! Would hate to have to pay $26/day when all i'm currently paying is $73 for taxes.

Quick call to our insurance company and her answer "Just don't rent a Hummer, you're covered for up to $50,000.00"