Car Rentals and Helping Vets

We all deal with car retals everythime we go TDY and sometimes when it is just a family vacation.  Some general advice regarding miles is to never ignore them even when they don’t seem to be much.  The standard miles awarded for a rental is 50 miles per day.  Even when you can take advantage of a special double or triple miles deal, it really doesn’t seem to be many miles when you need 25,000 miles for a free trip.

However, there is a good use for these rental miles.  If you recall an earlier post, I said never ignore miles as you can someday use these miles or your situation changes and suddenly you are now flying airline x instead of airline y.  I call these orphan miles.  The only problem with orphan miles is that many mileage programs have a rule that all the miles you have in that program expire without any activity in that program in the last 18 or 24 months.  Since you mainly travel on another airline, this becomes a problem.  Car rentals are a great way to solve this little problem.  By crediting 50 or 100 miles to that program from a car rental, you solve that prolem and give yourself another 18 or 24 months to use those miles.  I’ve got miles on American and other programs that I have strung out for years using this method.

A car rental deal going on right now with Hertz aims to help returning vets.

Celebrate our troops coming home. Now through December 31, 2011, every Hertz
rental helps us reach our goal of providing 40,000 FREE weekend rentals
for our troops.

Book now and save up to $35.
Save $5 per day, up to $35 on a Weekend or Weekly rental of an Economy – Full
Size car with PC# 158303, now through December 31, 2011.
Click below to get a quote.

Save
$5/day, up to $35 on Weekly or Weekend Rentals of Economy through
Full-Size vehicles: PC# 158303

You can find out more on Hertz’ effort to give free rental to returning troops at www.hertz.com/heroes

If you have to rent a car, help a vet and help yourself at the same time.