Hilton HHonors - Mutual Account with a Stranger?

My husband and I have had a mutual account with each other for years. In January our account was suddenly demoted to Blue from Gold and the points had disappeared. When I called HHonors Customer Service the representative told me that I had requested the account be merged with another and that the account number had been changed.

When I looked at the activity in the new account, it was ours up to December then someone else's stays also were posted to the account. Someone else's address was entered in the profile. Fortunately the credit card number listed in our profile was an outdated one but I removed it anyway.Their frequent flyer number was entered along with ours.

The Customer Service representative told me she could not remove the other stays or points and that we would retain the Diamond status. She insisted that it would all be taken care of including sorting it out for the other person. She agreed to send us new cards.

Today I noted that although I had changed the address to ours and changed the PIN number, the address had again changed. Another stay had posted to the account. This time a different Customer Service representative kept me on hold while checking with a "manager". When she returned she told me that I should fax my latest statement and all the receipts since December so that they could remove any stays that were not ours and demote us back to Gold.

Apparently they did not find this merging of strangers' accounts to be that unusual. I find it quite disturbing. Just to make things seem even stranger, when I was checking out of my last stay, my receipt had my name, someone else's (not the merged address) and yet another HHonors number.

In another posting (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum57/HTML/001277.html) there are reports of Hilton deleting stays. I find these kinds of computer/human liberties with HHonors accounts disconcerting. Has anyone else had an experience anything like this?

[This message has been edited by 2bgrounded (edited 02-22-2001).]

Sounds much like identity theft. How screwy. The weirdest thing that happened to one of our accounts was when a hotel became a Marriott the night my husband stayed there. Some deskie decided to "help" and when my husband returned home, 3 months of stays had been deleted from his account. Fortunately, I still had the records of the stays and the receipts. A supervisor and I doped it all out and got the stays restored - AFTER a regular agent told me that computers do not make errors and since it was on a computer, there must not be an error!!

Suggest you get a supervisor (with a name and phone number for follow up) pronto and if that does not fix your problem, email Adam Burke at adam_burke@hilton.com He is awesome at straightening out really hairy problems.

2bgrounded -- I'd greatly appreciate it if you could e-mail your name and account number as soon as possible. Like you, I'm quite concerned about the circumstances, and would like to address it immediately! My apologies for any worry this may be causing you -- we'll get it straightened out.

Best regards,

Adam Burke
Hilton HHonors Worldwide
adam_burke@hilton.com

Hilton certainly has a good employee in Adam. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif It's too bad other programs don't have someone like Adam helping us frequent travelers fight city hall in these matters. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

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Thank you Adam for your timely and gracious response. I have sent you a message. FOOLISHRUNNER I couldn't agree more!

Originally posted by Karen2:
A supervisor and I doped it all out and got the stays restored - AFTER a regular agent told me that computers do not make errors and since it was on a computer, there must not be an error!!


Obviously this agent has never seen "2001: A Space Odyssey."

You said it ClassicGal!

Adam's help is appreciated and I've been told 7-10 days it should be straightened out. In the meantime, it certainly is disconcerting to:
1. Have no account number
2. Have no status
3. Wonder how many of our points we will end up with.

My husband was off on a trip today. Rather than try to get points for a stay with no HHONORS account number, he is at a Marriott.

Do mutual accounts still exist? Where may I find information on this topic? The Hilton websites seem not to know "mutual accounts".

From skimming through other HH threads in the past, for a while, Hilton had mutual accounts for spouses, but has discontinued this practice. The previous mutual accounts have been "grandfathered" into the current HH program, so they're still around, but there's no more mutual accounts.

As you can see from this thread (in the year 2001), this was less a mutual account with a non-spouse than a fear of identity theft.

If you have an existing mutual account, you can keep it. If you don't have one, then you aren't able to open one, as Hilton did away with it ages ago. At best, if you're looking to use a spouse or partner's account for benefits, you can try to have your name added to the reservation as an additional guest, and it might work.

A few months ago, a Hilton CSR told me that our mutual account had been converted to an individual account due to inactivity. I knew this was wrong as I'm careful to not go inactive, plus if the account had really been inactive, the points in the account would have been zeroed out.

I asked for a review and asked them to tell me the specific period of inactivity which caused the mutual account status to change. Two days later, they called back to apologize and said the account was again labeled mutual.

I think part of the problem may be that there have been no new mutual accounts in about 10 years, and as the number of them inevitably dwindles, CSRs (and maybe Hilton's computer system) has less contact with them and less proficiency as well.

AI think part of the problem may be that there have been no new mutual accounts in about 10 years, and as the number of them inevitably dwindles, CSRs (and maybe Hilton's computer system) has less contact with them and less proficiency as well.

To be accurate its more live five years since they were eliminated.
However I do agree that the HH CSR know less and less about them and I even had one told me there is no such thing.
I got a supervisor on the phone sort it out:)
I suppose I wont get too concerned until they stop sending out two membership cards in each individuals' names.

mike

Actually, I believe it is a misconception Mutual Fund Accounts have not been offered for x years at all. They are still offered, but they are now restricted to joint purchasers of HGVC properties AFAIK. (So, if HGVC can open / create a Mutual Account, why are some HH staff so dense about them? Left hand - right hand?)

From HH T&Cs, "Effective April 1, 2004, new HHonors Mutual Fund accounts are no longer available. HHonors members who have a Mutual Fund account as of March 31, 2004 will continue to receive Mutual Fund benefits."

Obviously, that is not entirely correct, but OTOH you may not want to buy into HGVC.

Do mutual accounts still exist? Where may I find information on this topic? The Hilton websites seem not to know "mutual accounts".

They are/were called "Mutual Fund accounts." See: http://hhonors1.hilton.com/en_US/hh/terms.do#hhonors_mutual_fund