National Free Day Warning

[RweTHEREyet]

If you use National and have selected the "free day" option rather than airline credit miles for your rentals, you might want to be aware that those free days do expire.

I have earned one free day and was waiting to earn another before I used them to "really" make a difference in one of my trips. Sometimes the free day is worth less than using a coupon. I got to thinking that I had had this free day for a while and wondered if the free day ever expired. I started poking around the site and could not find this information anywhere for my particular free day, no information as to when I had earned it or if/when it would expire. I called National and ended up talking to 3 people, each of which assured me the information was there, when none of them could find it they said they would call me back.

They ended up e-mailing me and this was the response I got:

Quote:
Regarding the expiration dates of free day awards, the only information is
found in Terms & Conditions - I will suggest to our website designers that
the expiration dates appear in the profile summary. Rental history,
including dates, should now be available. Please contact me if you have any
questions.

The Terms & Conditions say that a free day award expires in December of the year following the year in which it was issued.

Since they don't tell you when the award was issued, you have to go to your rental history and calculate when you think it was issued and then figure it from there. I determined mine will expire in December of this year.

If I had not started tracking this down, I would have lost this free day. I didn't use it for our trips in March or May because I was saving it for later, and if we didn't have a trip scheduled for October, I would have lost it altogether.

So, moral of the story is, it appears that National does not do anything to keep you informed of these free rental day expirations, you have to stay on top of it yourself. I am betting there are tons of folks that have lost their free days and aren't even aware of it.

Come to think of it, unless I had noticed it in my profile, they don't notify you when you are awarded a free day either.
__________________

 

[AllyBri]

They don't warn you because they want you to be responsible and hopefully maybe you will forget and then it's money in their pocket.
I would never expect any of these companies to warn me or keep me informed of anything.
Car Rentals, airfare or hotels. I keep a close eye on everything.

 

[RweTHEREyet]

I understand if they don't warn me it is about to expire, but at least put enough information on the website so that you can track it yourself without having to spend over 30 minutes on the phone trying to find the answer. It seems to me that they make it extremely difficult to even keep up with yourself.

 

[AllyBri]

Actually everything is there, all your rentals, how many points you get for each rental, etc., etc., etc.
Go to your profile, there is a list of things that you can check on from there.