Triangle Trip

As a a Hertz Five Star Gold customer, I have been reserving mid-size cars at Hertz for the past four months and they’ve been giving me Toyota Corolla’s, Dodge Stratus, and cars that I would considered compact or economy class. I’ve tried to add NeverLost, Hertz’s GPS device, to my mid-size reservation in hopes to get a real mid-size car and still end up with a Corolla.

Recently I found a new best practice to add to Captain G’s list of best practices for renting cars. If you want a mid-size car or get upgraded to a full size at no extra costs, make your Hertz rental car reservation as a mid-size reservations and add satellite radio (Sirius XM) as an option. Satellite radio cost you about $5 per day depending on the city you’re renting from but it almost guarantees you a mid-size if not full size car. The rationale behind this logic is Hertz will not put satellite radio in their Corolla and other compact size fleet. Regular renters will not rent a compact car and upgrade to a satellite radio. So if you’ve $5 to spare per day and want to ensure you have a midsize to full size car, make sure you’ve Sirius XM radio as an option on your rental reservation. And if you’re lucky (this happens to me about 75% of the time), you’ll also end up with a Neverlost too, at no cost!

United is merging with Continental to form the largest airline in the world (see news). United will carry the name, and probably its poor customer service, to the newly merged airline. I’m not sure how combining two non-profitable airlines will make the company profitable; the merger will create more United 1K and Global Service members. The merger will further dilute and devalue airline miles and making redemption of airline miles harder. This is why hotel points are much more valuable than airline miles.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t be shocked if United will follow Spirit Airlines’ lead and begin charging for carry on baggage for non-Premier members. You heard the prediction here first! Vacationers and casual flyers are going to get squeezed either way, whether they pay for carry on or get the Premier Baggage membership for $250.00.

The good news here is it will take these two inefficient airlines another 18 months to 2 years to merge their internal systems. It is definitely time to burn your airline miles and consider switching to the SkyTeam or OneWorld alliances, or JetBlue or Southwest if they’re available in your market.