Welcome to the next post in the Earning Stories series right here on Rewards Canada.
For years we have provided you with the details on earning points and
miles (both regular earning and bonus opportunities) and these stories show the actual offers in action.
This story revolves around a family trip from back in April and looks at the
earning story for our car rental by crediting the rental to Carlson
Rezidor Hotels Club Carlson program.
Related:
Earning Stories: 10,822 Gold Passport Points on a 5 Night Stay at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay
The
car rental was made through Budget as they had the best pricing on
the vehicle type we wanted and of course if you read FFB you’ll know
that Club Carlson has some huge bonuses for Avis and Budget rentals. I
booked the offer using the Budget promotion for Club
Carlson members of 8,250 Bonus Gold Points that I took off of our Club Carlson Bonus Points page:
Although
the rental ended on April 10th, I didn’t see any points post until May
2nd and this is typical of Budget to post on the 2nd day of the month
following your rental. However on the 2nd I only saw 750 points which
was the base amount for the rental post to my Club Carlson account:
I
called up Budget and asked them why only the base point posted. Budget
looked into it and told may their system showed them submitting both the
750 base points and 8,250 bonus points. Budget said to wait until the
next sweep to see if the points post to the account and if not to
contact Club Carlson. So I did just that as the points did not show up
in my account and after a little bit of back and forth with Club Carlson
they posted the 8,250 bonus points, albeit as a discretionary bonus
rather than a partner bonus:
At the outset of this rental we ended up earning the 750 base Club
Carlson Points plus the 8,250 bonus points from the offer. All told 9,000 points posted from the rental which is
enough points for a 9,000 point award night redemption!
Overall I think this was yet another great earning action for the rental
and for
what we paid. Considering we get a potential free night worth upwards of
$150 for a ~$350 rental. We like to rent SUVs but I could see people
getting an
even better return on a promotion like this by renting a smaller vehicle
that does not cost as much!
There you go. Once again
you can see bonus Points offers in action! Granted there was a little
leg work involved in getting all the points to post but all in all it
wasn’t that bad. We’d love to hear your experiences with this promotion,
have you had difficulties in it posting?
—
Tips for Car Rentals
– Watch the rates that include bonus miles – For us it is about 50/50 in
terms of earning bonuses on rentals, many times rates are out there
that are quite a bit cheaper and provide more value versus paying more
and earning more miles. For a complete list of car rental bonus offers
see this page on the main Rewards Canada site.
– Read the fine print – When a bonus offer is available be sure that
your rental meets the criteria. Those are primarily minimum number of
rental days and vehicle type. There are many promotions that don’t get
awarded on the smallest/cheapest vehicles.
– Join the Car Rental company’s program – Hertz Gold Plus Rewards,
National Emerald Club and others all provide great benefits such as
dedicated check in counters, bypass check in counters and more