It is amazing the kind of value you can get from rental car promos and free days! I have saved quite a bit before using “free” certificates from the Daily Getaway deals but this deal is the most insane one I have ever had!
I Just Saved $250 With a Single Free Rental Day!
Link: About the One Two Free Promo
How I Got the Free Rental Day
The best rental car promo around is the National One Two Free promo. It is so easy to earn points (and therefore free rental days) thanks to their different activities for points.
I had some rentals I had to make over the last month so did them through the app (bonus points), did a weekend rental (bonus points), rented in Europe (bonus points), referred a friend (bonus points), and earned a free day with two separate rentals. With 600 points, you also earn a free day. So, that is how I got the free rental day with National.
How I Saved $250 With the National Free Rental Day
Check out how much money I saved with a free rental day!
I planned on using these free rental days for isolated daily rentals (when the rental cost for a weekday is around $70). However, with a trip to Europe this weekend and weather threatening delays and cancellations for the flight I would use to connect to my European flight (different itineraries), I decided to cancel my flight to New York City and drive down instead.
I was in my National profile and just clicked on to redeem a free day for fun. Most free day certificates do not work for one way rentals (which is what I needed). But, to my surprise, the free days with National do work for one way rentals!
With heavy snow and wind on the horizon, I wanted something big and heavy (as well as comfortable since I may sleep in it for a few hours). Even though I know I can pick almost any vehicle in the lot (thanks to being a National elite member), I chose to pick a Standard SUV class to ensure that they had that vehicle there for me (my pickup airport does not often have such vehicles all the time).
$243 Saved Thanks to the Free Day!
The total was quite large – $243 for the one day, one way rental to NY! However, when I applied the free day credit, that dropped to $0! That’s right – not even airport fees were assessed to the rental!
A strange thing is that if you do add things like a full tank of gas at dropoff (which I was going to do to save me the headache in NYC), then the airport fees get added. So, I will deal with the headache! 🙂
Takeaway
If you have National Free Days, it is sometimes the best value to use these for one way rentals! These are easy to get so make sure you grab a couple to have for those situations when you may need a rental that costs a lot of money. Even for an economy car, the total would have been almost $200 so this was a legit savings for me – that I earned with just doing what I had already planned (car reservations).
What was the most you have saved with a free rental car day?
