Free Avis First got me a Premium Upgrade and Free Weekend Rental!

I learned from the Frequent Miler Quick Deals (which I highly recommend you sign up for) that you can get Avis First for free if you have a Mastercard World Elite credit card. The link to sign up is here.

Luckily my Barclays Arrival credit card is a world elite card, so I signed up using the link and entered my credit card information. So what does this mean when renting a car? It means free upgrades when available, 2 day weekend rental rewards earned with every fourth rental of two or more days, dedicated reservation line, and you can skip the lines and paperwork and go directly to your waiting car (I hate waiting in lines so this is great!).

Once you sign up online, you will get an email stating that you need to Activate your Avis First membership.

activate avis first

The great part about this free upgrade is that it comes with a free 2 day weekend coupon. According to the agent, this coupon takes a couple of weeks to post. Also when you sign up now, your Avis First membership will be valid until 12/31/2015.

Update: I receive my free weekend rental coupon code via email within a week from signing up for Avis first. The email states that the coupon will expire Jan 2015 and it is non transferable.

After I became Avis First, I made my reservation online for an intermediate car, but when I went to pick it up, I got upgraded to a premium car, a 2014 Ford Taurus. LTD FWD with leather.seats and all. Talk about getting spoiled.

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Avis receipt

Also a reader reminded me that you can credit your reservation to participating airlines, hotels, and other partners to earn points. Here is a list of all their current partners.

If you have a World Elite Mastercard, then I recommend signing up for this free Avis First.

5 Comments on "Free Avis First got me a Premium Upgrade and Free Weekend Rental!"

  1. Great quick deal. Also important to mention that once you get the First status, you need to “sign up” with Avis First separately and just for signing up they send you the first free weekend rental voucher, so no requirement to actually rent anything before getting the first free weekend.

  2. Avis First is terrible – from personal experience not worth the sign up or hassle. I had nothing but customer service problems and their reward system often breaks and does not give you proper credit. After a year of trying to work through the issues, it just isn’t worth it IMO even for the occasional upgrades. Hertz and Enterprise are certainly more worthwhile options.

    • Giddy for Points | August 17, 2014 at 9:11 pm | Reply

      This was my first experience with Avis first…hopefully I dont run into the same problems. Thanks for letting me know

  3. “If you have a World Elite Mastercard, then I recommend signing up for this free Avis First” … you make it seem like this is a prerequisite … not true … you don’t even need a credit card to sign up for the promo …

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