Do National Rental Credits Expire? — AwardWallet
National is one of the three Enterprise Holdings members, including Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Alamo Rent-A-Car. The company is headquartered in Clayton, Missouri, and operates over 1,500 locations globally.
National has a complex expiration policy for its Car Rental Credits and Free Days. Both have different expiration deadlines, so you’ll need to keep track of each separately.
When Do National Rental Credits Expire?
National has a complicated expiration policy for its Rental Credits and Free Days. Per the National FAQs page:
“Rental credits do not expire.”
However, this is where things get complicated since National Free Days expire. Again, according to the National FAQs page, Free Days are valid as follows:
“Once you earn enough credits for a free day, the free day is valid through December 31st of the following year.”
How Many Credits Do I Need for a Free Day?
How many credits you need to earn a free rental day depends on your status within the Emerald Club.
- Basic Emerald Club members require 7 credits for a Free Day.
- Executive Emerald Club members require 6 credits for a Free Day.
- Executive Elite Emerald Club members require 5 credits for a Free Day.
Plan Your Rentals Carefully
With a complex structure, your rental car plans need a little forethought and planning. If you know you won’t rent a car from National Car Rental over the next year or so, and if you are close to being awarded a Free Day, you may opt to rent from a different company.
Why? Your National Car Rental credit balance won’t change in the meantime; credits don’t expire. However, if you pass the threshold into earning a Free Day, those expire, so you shouldn’t earn one if you won’t use it in the next year.
National also has an interesting credit-earning policy that ultimately penalizes longer rentals. Rentals of seven days or less earn 1 credit, while rentals of eight days earn 2 credits, and rentals of 12 days or more earn the number of days divided by 4. A 12-day rental, for example, gives you 3 credits.
This creates an unusual situation. If you need a car for 12 days, you could do a 12-day rental and earn 3 credits. On the flip side, you could make 4 separate rentals of 3 days and earn 4 credits. Even smaller reservations would earn even more credits. 12 separate single-day rentals could yield 12 credits (though the pickup/drop-off process could be annoying).
Related: How To Get Rental Car Elite Status for Free
Using AwardWallet To Track Your National Car Rental Credits & Free Day
When you consider that National Car Rental Credits don’t expire but Free Days do, keeping track of your National Car Rental account is more important than ever. The best way to achieve this is by using AwardWallet. That way, you’ll receive a timely reminder if you have Free Days about to expire. Then, you can take action to prevent the loss of your hard-earned Free Days.
To add National Car Rental to your AwardWallet account, all you need to do is log in and then link your National Car Rental account.
Related: How To Track Your Rewards Using AwardWallet
Our Take
With unusual earning and expiration policies, the National Car Rental Emerald Club is a unique program. To get the most out of your rentals, you should keep your rentals as short as possible (one or two days). To maximize the lifespan of your credits, you should time your rentals to maintain your balance as credits for as long as possible. This is because National Car Rental credits do not expire, yet Free Days do.
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