When booking a car rental two common membership discounts you may qualify for are either AAA or AARP.
While Hertz is AAA’s official car rental partner (and offers a number of special deals and extra benefits to AAA members), Budget also provides a AAA discount.
As for AARP members, Avis, Enterprise, Budget and Hertz all offer discounts. If you quality for both AAA and AARP, then you should compare them but at Hertz usually AAA will trump other discounts.
Here are the codes you need in order to check the rates on-line or with a call center:
| Company – | AAA discount – | AARP discount |
|---|---|---|
| Hertz | CDP # 005 | CDP # 16131 |
| Avis | n/a | AWD # A359800 |
| Budget | BCD # U089000 | BCD # Y508500 |
| Enterprise | n/a | Cust # RP72X7 |
Notes:
Each AAA club has its own CDP # but if you belong to AAA in northern California or Nevada (CSAA – California State Automobile Assn.) then your club code/CDP # is 005.
The AAA club codes won’t change but the other codes that Avis, Budget and Enterprise employ can change over time.
Other car rental companies I checked (Dollar, Thrifty, and National) did not offer either AAA or AARP discounts. Alamo said they do offer a AARP discount but refused to disclose the pricing code so you’ll need to call Alamo directly.
Other regional car rental companies may also offer AAA or AARP discounts.
Author’s note as of 16 October 2012:
For some reason this particular post is no longer accepting comments and the Enterprise-Record does not seem interested in responding to my requests to correct the problem. Here are comments from a reader that I am simply placing into the body of the post.
From Jenny:
I found the AAA website very helpful in getting the best rates for
Hertz because they show you all current discount promotions going on.
Note you have to go to their advanced search to see the discounts. The
California AAA url for their advanced search is
http://www.res99.com/nexres/cars/search.cgi?src=10021453&lang=ENG
If you just put in your criteria on the home page, you will NOT see
any of the promo codes offered.
The best rate I got with one of their promos beat the lowest on the
public websites, by far!
Great blog by the way! Loved the airline fare school!
Anyone know a good coupon from enterprise.com?
I checked Alamo and, for the car rental I was interested in, the price with AARP discount was MORE than the pre-pay price available to anyone without membership. Sadly Alamo did not offer a combination of AARP discount with pre-pay. Note that membership #12341234 lets you check prices although one would hope they would ask for your membership card at the time of rental.
I am a AARP member and need to rent a van to travel this summer from CO to MN.
Thank you. I just called Hertz and got an AAA discount because of your informative information.