At one point in time, the Plenti program seemed so promising. Designed by American Express to be a single loyalty program among a large number of disparate businesses, there were many partners and even a credit card that earned Plenti points. Then all of the partners went away, until there were only four (ExxonMobil, Rite Aid, Chili's, and a grocery chain) plus the credit card. When Chili's and Rite Aid pulled out, AmEx threw in the towel. The Plenti program will completely cease and any residual points will expire on July 10, 2018. And while the AutoSlash team has already burned our points for fuel at various Exxon and Mobil stations, a small subset of users will find that their points won't expire but will be rolled over to a new program.

Planning a road trip and looking for some actually useful accessories? We looked through hundreds of products and plucked out 7 "WOW" products that you're seriously going to need before you hit the road. They're going to help you stay cool, connected, clean, and rolling.

In our posts about rental cars, we occasionally talk about car-sharing companies such as Car2Go and ZipCar or peer-to-peer companies such as GetAround or Turo. These companies have a great purpose in the market, especially times when traditional rental car companies are closed and/or sold out. Recently, Daimler-owned Car2Go decided to add another benefit for all U.S.-based members that's something every driver can appreciate -- free courses (normally priced at $50) from the National Safety Council on safe driving and avoiding distracted driving as part of the Vision Zero initiative.

Just in time for Mother's Day, Audi-owned Silvercar has decided to partner with Peg Perego to provide free car seats in rentals. And in some ways, we have to say we're surprised -- as we noted in our initial review article, the founding principle of SilverCar was four cool guys needing a vehicle for a golf outing. Yet SilverCar does have many included services that usually result in hefty fees at other rental car companies, such as satellite radio and GPS, WiFi, and actual cost for tolls; adding the potential for a car seat included in the price means many families might begin to consider Silvercar at one of their 21 existing sites!

In our blog post about finding the lowest rates for a rental when the driver's under the age of 25, we noted how there are some existing ways for drivers to get the underage fees waived, whether by being a member of AAA or an insurance-eligible member of USAA. Years ago, there was another way of getting the under 25 fee waived by using the Student Advantage discount code at Dollar. Now, there's an under 25 fee reduction available from Student Beans at Dollar. And in the vast majority of cases, we would still recommend asking for help to book under the AAA rate code at Hertz or the USAA rate code. So why does this new "deal" not really qualify as a deal?