The American Express Platinum card comes with Starwood Preferred Guest Gold status (late checkout is the key benefit) and National Car Rental Executive status (choose a better car from the Executive Aisle rather than the Emerald Aisle).
They advertise Avis and Hertz benefits as well, but for US cardmembers those are not meaningfully better than what someone gets from those providers on their own.
Head for Points reports on a new Hertz benefit — their first ‘elite tier’ “Five Star” for Platinum cardholders. This benefit is only for Platinum card members resident outside the United States.
The benefit page for this offer (which has a “GB” at the end of the website URL, presumably for ‘Great Britain’) allows signup of new accounts at the Five Star level.
That the terms and conditions say cancelling a Platinum card will mean losing status, and also that the offer suggests current Hertz Gold Plus Rewards members with Platinum cards (perhaps needing the Platinum card number in their profile) will be upgraded automatically suggest that they have some process in place to validate accounts or at least to check later.
It’s interesting that the intend to make this offer available outside the U.S. only. I’d guess there are contracts that one or the other party has which involves exclusivity in the U.S. with another entity which would prevent them offering this in the U.S. market at this time. But it’s good to see American Express getting closer with another travel provider. They’ve mostly suffered losses in the benefits packages of their premium products, so any additions anywhere gives hope.
Note that links in this post do not earn any referral credit for me. There’s an American Express Platinum link that does, but last month I surveyed a variety of better offers for the card that you should consider instead.
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Not surprising, since Hertz USA and Hertz International are separate companies, loosely tied together by a brand name and common standards. From an operational perspective, the left hand doesn’t seem to have a good idea what the right hand is doing. I found this out when dealing with a claim (which thankfully was resolved in my favor). The US side had very few details about my rental in Europe and was unwilling to help further because of operational separation, which forced me to make several int’l phone calls to achieve resolution.
Amex Plat DOES give you Hertz Five-Star status, you just status-match the National Executive…
Does Amex Plat in USA offer free Cathay Pacific Gold?
@Tim no it does not
Exactly what Alex said above. You just have to know that you can status match to Hertz Five-Star.
I’ve already got a Hertz Gold Plus account located in the UK, and a UK-issued Amex Platinum card (a real Amex Platinum, with all of the associated benefits). When I go to the above site it only let’s me create a new Hertz account, not “upgrade” my existing one. I also can’t find mention of the benefit on the authenticated Amex Platinum site that would otherwise mention benefits (such as CX Gold, Avis Preferred, etc.). Any suggestions or ideas?
Created a new account – shows Gold, not 5*