Hertz to become the first non-airline member of the SkyTeam alliance

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• Andrew says:

  15 Oct15 October 07:03

  I noticed these high charges recently when I was pricing up an upgrade with Avios from
  Club to First and so was expecting a fee to be payable for the upgrade. However when I came to upgrade, no cash fee was payable. So maybe the quotes are wrong?

  • pauldb says:

    15 Oct15 October 07:58

    Was the actual ticket booked departing from the UK (I.e. were you upgrading the inbound leg home)? If so you pay the lower UK charge, not this US one.

• Benylin says:

  15 Oct15 October 07:07

  OT: I need to send to money to a relative in USA, couple of thousand. Any recommendations for someone who charges less commission / lowest spread and/or can I earn some miles?

  • Margaret Brownlie says:

    15 Oct15 October 07:24

    PayPal?

  • Rob says:

    15 Oct15 October 07:50

    Search HFP for Midpoint

  • Susan says:

    15 Oct15 October 08:29

    Transferwise – no points but excellent rates and very efficient

  • BLT says:

    15 Oct15 October 08:29

    Transferwise, currency fair or Revolut.

    • Bagoly says:

      15 Oct15 October 08:37

      +1

  • MarkJ says:

    15 Oct15 October 09:47

    Benylin, I had a similar requirement a few weeks back and I used paysend to send to an overseas debt card. The transfer arrived within minutes but took a few hours to clear in my account at the other end.

    No points on this but the rate was very good for me so do have a look. The fee is 1gbp. They have transaction limits depending on the destination currency. I had to do 12 transactions to send 10k but it was far quicker and cheaper than SWIFT.

  • N says:

    15 Oct15 October 10:51

    I have the opposite requirement. I need to receive around 200USD from 5 different people into a UK GBP account. Would like to minimise fees, etc for the senders. Are recommendations the same in the other direction?

    • MarkJ says:

      15 Oct15 October 11:11

      Paysend lets you send a payment link so could work. Fee would be 1.5usd per transaction I believe. Otherwise set up a Revolut USD account and convert to a gbp account.

      • Callum says:

        15 Oct15 October 11:31

        It doesn’t look like they send money to the US. Regardless it is not a good rate (TransferWise is better) and having to send a series of small payments is a waste of time.

    • Jon says:

      15 Oct15 October 13:37

      Do you have to receive into a GBP account?. If you open an account with CurrencyFair you can receive the payments in US$, it effectively gives you receiving bank accounts in any currency you want; and then just change the whole lot into GBP at the spot rate (actually you can even put an offer on the exchange and do BETTER than the spot rate if it’s accepted).

• NS says:

  15 Oct15 October 07:08

  O/T re interlining. I’m flying from Colombo to Banagalore (SL cash booking) before transferring to London (BA lloyds avios) booking. Seperate tickets but wondering if theres any chance I can persuade SL check in agents to book my bags through to London? Else it seems I’ll need a transit visa in india (what a waste of money for a 4 hour layover!)

  • Matt says:

    15 Oct15 October 08:28

    You should be able to – Sri Lankan were certainly happy to for a UL to BA itinerary earlier this year for me. I believe their policy is to through check on separate oneworld tickets.

    There is always the risk that you get a rubbish check-in agent though, or the rules change if your booking is months away, or some other problem.

    • NS says:

      15 Oct15 October 09:02

      Great…thanks Matt. That’s encouraging

• Tom says:

  15 Oct15 October 07:13

  Actually, charging US residents that much makes all the sense in the world when almost anyone can sign up for a credit card in the US that earns a 100,000 Avios sign up bonus! Like BA’s seat selection fees in Club World if you don’t have status (which US mileage redeemers and bloggers also moan incessantly about), it ensures that BA’s bread-and-butter customers aren’t screwed over by the hoards of US blog readers.

  Look at what happens on Cathay Pacific routes to the US for CX’s Marco Polo members where it’s often incredibly difficult to find an F or J redemption seat because the US residents with all the free miles take them all within a day or two of them being loaded.

  • Lyn says:

    15 Oct15 October 07:30

    Not everyone in the U.S. spends $20,000 on a credit card in a year though, which they would have to in order to earn the 100,000 Avios.

    • Frenzie says:

      15 Oct15 October 07:48

      Spending 20,000USD in the US is pretty easy, I assure you.

      • Max says:

        15 Oct15 October 07:57

        I wish UK residents could get a USA credit card.

    • js54156 says:

      15 Oct15 October 09:59

      agreed. One would rather sign up for another card and earn 50,000 points with another $3,000 spending, instead of putting another $17,000 on the same card..

• Graeme says:

  15 Oct15 October 07:44

  We have two Marriott accounts – one won 50 on the first day and nothing on the second; the other won 50 on both days I’ve remembered to do it.

  The time I didn’t win anything is the only time I didn’t get the card-matching right first time – could that be significant?

  • Boo says:

    15 Oct15 October 08:11

    No, the card matching and question answering has no bearing on the prize, which was already determined the instant you accessed the game. (Just like the UK national lottery scratch cards – makes absolutely no difference what you do, the prize (or not) was already selected.) It’s a prize draw, not a competition (ie game of skill).

    Either the handful of people who won two prizes are mistaken or the IT behind the draw is badly implemented in a way that makes Marriott’s claimed “indicative odds of winning” even more misleading.

    • Dave H says:

      15 Oct15 October 09:16

      I won 50 points the first two days I played, but since then only had the sweepstakes entry.

• Alan says:

  15 Oct15 October 08:11

  Matching Hertz to Sky Team status would be even nicer, although unlikely! Good result recently with Hertz, after an initial bad experience (they didn’t stay open for my delayed flight so unable to pick up car on arrival) they wiped $120 of one-way fees and upgraded me to a premium Chrysler – pretty good customer service, left me feeling very positive rather than annoyed!

  • Alex W says:

    15 Oct15 October 09:01

    As presidents circle I don’t think I’ve ever received any kind of benefit from Hertz across maybe 10 rentals. Not even had the keys ready to pick up and drive off which base members are supposed to get.

    • Lady London says:

      15 Oct15 October 10:07

      In the US the keys in the car thing does work – papers are done at the gate when you drive out. Check the rate on the papers in the car matches what you booked.

      • thehornets says:

        15 Oct15 October 10:58

        +1. I find Ultimate Choice works really well. You can be in and out of the Hertz compound in well under 5 minutes.

    • Jovanna says:

      15 Oct15 October 12:24

      I can’t say that I’ve ever had really good service from Hertz as a PC.

      In Barcelona last month, I was told to join ‘any queue because they’re all the same’.

      At Fiumicino in May they insisted that they were not a ‘Gold Counter’ even though they had the little mat out and the roped off ‘HERTZ GOLD’ section etc.

      Somewhere in France – can’t remember where – they collected me in the shuttle bus from the terminal, dropped me at the un-staffed desk in the rental car park and then disappeared back to the terminal. When the driver re-appeared in the van, with another load of customers, he started to process their paperwork. I was a bit irritated at that point and complained. The drive (now desk agent) said they were ‘Gold customers’ and get priority. I was an hour from collection at the terminal to pulling out of the car park.

      This time last year I tried to book a car for a weekend over the Christmas period from Leeds. There wasn’t anything available, so I telephoned Hertz. Agent says there’s nothing available because they feed cars across to Manchester Airport at that time of the year, so I ask about the Guaranteed Availibilty for PCs. It turns out that they would rent a vehicle to me for a couple of days but it would be £900 and not the £44 that I usually pay.

      At SFO, I was so used to queuing, and not realising that the vehicle would be sat waiting with the keys / paperwork inside, that I just joined the queue. They looked at me as if I was daft after standing in line for 20 minutes. Even so, I found the vehicle in the back end of beyond and not a PC bay.

      Etc, etc

      • Chris says:

        15 Oct15 October 20:40

        Good: booked Jetta, picked Jag from OC section at JFK.

        Bad: walked away from my booking at MAD after waiting for almost an hour at the counter behind a single customer who simply wanted a walk up rental which was simply beyond them

• guesswho2000 says:

  15 Oct15 October 08:18

  I booked a one way award LHR-PEK the other day, two people in J was over £700 in taxes! I was astounded, my last one from the UK was around £250 (booked last year, not flown yet).

  The way out is booked ex-HKG, in order to get in before YQ gets stuck on fares from there again.

  • Anna says:

    15 Oct15 October 10:40

    When you add a return on the “taxes” should be adjusted so that effectively you’re not paying 2 x £700 though you may have to call BA to make the adjustment. That said, I have booked 2 x CW to GCM next summer and the “taxes” were nearly £1300 so I think BA just charge what they think they can get away with at the moment. When I booked the outbound leg I was charged £855 in fees with the remainder charged when I added on the return.

    • guesswho2000 says:

      15 Oct15 October 11:45

      Bit shafted really, as they’re Lloyds upgrade vouchers, both in my name, so for two to travel they have to be one way, as the cardholder has to travel (I believe). One way ex-HKG makes is slightly easier to stomach.

      Never mind, essentially £400 + 71,500 Avios each for a return in J, won’t be earning any more of those upgrade vouchers now anyway,

      I agree with you though, I think BA are just charging what they want right now. My BA status dropped to Bronze in Feb, and to change my seat on an existing booking in CW went from free to £85 or something like that – I understand that BA’s ridiculous seating fees have been there forever, but I’ve never been (nearly) shafted for them before – promptly adding my QF number to the booking extinguished that. Only wanted to move because the plane was swapped from a 777 to an A380, and they moved me!

      • Genghis says:

        15 Oct15 October 13:13

        I thought the avios guys will structure the flight how you want them as all manual anyway.

• Alan says:

  15 Oct15 October 08:23

  Marriott – not surprised given how useless they’ve been with programme integration.

  As to BA, surely this is clearly just their way of offsetting the insanely generous sign-up rates, transfer bonuses and overall cheap Avios available in the US vs the UK? Sure folks can use them on other routes but many will want ex-US to use their 241 voucher. Remember they also increased the cost of intra-US redemptions, presumably for the same reason…

  • Alex W says:

    15 Oct15 October 09:10

    Perhaps, but this is also penalising non-US people who want to do one-way redemptions from the US to the UK.
    It really is ludicrous, you could do NYC-LON via DUB in Aer Lingus 1 way for £1700 in business class, even cheaper in a sale. You would also earn about 7000 Avios as a silver. Or, credit the flight to a program which is less of a rip-off.

    • guesswho2000 says:

      15 Oct15 October 11:49

      I agree that the programme is a rip off long haul, but Avios do still have genuine value on non-transatlantic longer flights and short hauls.

      Bookings on CX, originating anywhere which isn’t the UK, are a steal, for example. And short hauls on LA/QF have saved me a fortune, especially on monopoly routes (LIM-IQT, for example) or last minute commuter flights (MEL-SYD a few days in advance, for example).

      We’ll see how much longer it lasts, there’s more devaluations on the way I expect, announcement today that VA-SQ transfers (currently 1.35:1) are devaluing to 1.55:1 as of January. Never mind! Earn and burn.

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