Hilton HHonors - Double HHonors Points on Amex 8-10/03

Received a postcard today on wife's account. Limited to 60,000 bonus points/month; I read this to mean $10,000 in non-Hilton purchases. All purchases count. No promotion code. I don't know if this is targeted or not. If not, I'd love to get my own card and combine it with the 20,000 bonus point e-mail offer I posted yesterday.

zachary, previous double points promos had the codes embossed above your name on the address label, such as B218: 0015.

If you could check for a code that could help people who weren't targetted to get registered.

Also, are you sure there was no minimum spending limit?

Rutdog, No minimum. I read it carefully because I expected there to be one. In fact, my wife had gotten one a number of months ago with a very high threshold.

Code above the address is C224:0001

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by zachary:
Code above the address is C224:0001</font>Zachary, that's great, thank you for posting it!

Anyone who didn't get targetted should, in theory, be able to call Amex customer service (don't call HHonors, call Amex) and use that code to register.

And from your subject, you're saying the qualifying time period is Aug 01 to Oct 31, 2003?

Qualifying time period is transactions posting 8/1-10/31. Limited to 60,000 points/month. The way I read this is 60,000 points earned 8/1-8/31, 60,000 points earned 9/1-9/30, and 60,000 points earned 10/1-10/31. I don't think your billing cycle mattes.

Just tried to register for this promo. I gave the promo code. The customer service rep. said I was not targetted to receive this offer. He said if I was there was no need to register. I asked if I could be targetted. He said that is nothing they have control over, it is a marketing decision.

I got a slightly different code and it gives double points only for the amount charged over $500 in a month. I'm relatively new to this card and don't know if there have been similar offers before; what I'm wondering is: how do they determine that HH hotel charges are subject to doubling? If there are $500 in other charges, are all the hotel charges doubled (10 points/$)? Or do they look at the first $500 charged chronologically during the month (say I've done $400 in other charges before my hotel stay, do the first $100 at the hotel get 5 points, then after that they get 10?)?

Question.

I received the postcard and must spend over $175 per month. My postcard states that "Double Hilton HHonors bonus points earned as part of this promotion are limited to 60,000 bonus points per month."

I am interpreting this as $20,000 per month of non-Hilton hotel spending, since the Double points are 60,000 and the regular points are 60,000.

A previous poster interpreted this as a non-Hilton hotel spending limitation of $10,000 per month rather than $20,000 (assuming his postcard said the same thing as mine). It all depends on what the definition of "Double" is.

I am planning on spending $38,000 during the promotion period if I get the full Double points. (A last hurrah for buying savings bonds and transferring balances to 0% interest cards.) Otherwise I will spend $30,000. The promised return call from American Express marketing has not occurred to clarify the spending cap.

Any thoughts?



[This message has been edited by Andy2 (edited 07-29-2003).]

Drag City: My threshold limit is $1700 each month. Not sure I can get too hyped up about this; my AMEX Starwood, with the analogous promotion, had a threshold of $1000. I charged $11,000 over the two months, buying some home furnishings.

Not sure I'll use this Hilton one, unless I've got some office equipment to buy for work. A miserly promotion, imho.

Not targeted and CS tells me that we can't be registered for this -- 'you've either gotten the postcard or you haven't'...

--Grog--

Yeah my threshold is $1700 as well. In the past I have beat this threshold just out of fluke so now I'm sure I'm stuck with it instead of a lower one. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

My interpretation (confirmed, for what it's worth, by a CSR & supv at AMEX) is that the 'double bonus' points are capped at 60K/month. These 'double bonus' points are in addition to the regular 'bonus' points always earned. Another way to look at it is the 'double bonus' points are the promotion points -- the additional 3 pts/non-HH $$ and 5 pts/HH $$.

So, for dollars spent at Hilton hotels, $12K spent w/earn 60K 'double bonus' points. It'll take spending $20K to earn 60K 'double bonus' points outside of HH hotels. (I ignored the spending threshholds req'd for this example).

Looks to me like I can spend $20K/month for three months (assuming no HH stays) and end up with 120K pts/month (60K 'bonus points' & 60K 'double bonus' points)...360K points total. Time to finish buying those savings bonds...

I also received the offer with no minimum spend required. However, the Visa double points offer is better, so I plan to use the HHonors Amex everywhere EXCEPT Hilton for now (through 8/31).

Long story short: I'm now convinced that the one report by alfaman (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum57/HTML/005733.html) claiming someone not targeted signed up for an Amex targeted offer was NOT accurate.

Short story long, with a decently happy ending:

I, too, have been told in the past by cust service that I couldn't sign up, only enrolled through targeting. But I wasn't about to give up that easily.

This time, I did not receive the offer, so again I called Cust Service, who said I was not targeted and couldn't get the offer. I said, "Can't you just put the code in?" and she said, "There's no way possible for me to do it even if I wanted to." She was the second or third rep, and the friendliest and most competent one I had talked to. So I believed her.

Not deterred http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif, I asked her who I could take this up with:

Attn: Beth Lacey
Executive Office Consumer Relations
AE SC-FTL
777 American Express Way
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33373

"Is there a phone number or fax number for Beth?" "No." Undeterred again, a Yahoo Yellow Pages search soon got me the phone number (look it up yourself).

"American Express, may I help you?" "Hello, may I speak with Beth Lacey." "One moment please." "Customer relations, may I help you?" "Is this Beth Lacey?" "I'm one of her assistants, and I'd be happy to help you." "Is Beth a real person?" (she chuckles) "Yes, Beth is real. She's my supervisor. I can escalate something to her if need be." "OK, great. Here's my problem...."

Heard me out, put me on hold (to speak with Beth?). Came back in a minute, "I'm still working on this, please hold on" (that was a nice touch), then finally came back with "OK, I can understand how you feel. Your friend got targetted, and I can tell by your spending patterns you would stand to make quite a few points off of this promo. Unfortunately we have no control over it, and no way of overriding the system or making an exception to get you in this promo." "Can't you just put the code I gave you in the field?" "Honestly, I would if I could, but it is not an updateable field in our system.

"HOWEVER... I can offer you a one time bonus credit of 10,000 points. I know you'd probably earn more from the promo, but that's the most I can offer, if you'll accept that."

Enough time and effort on this spent, I took the 10K and ran. And I'm holding onto that number! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

[This message has been edited by Rut Dog (edited 07-30-2003).]

Has any who was targeted for this promo back in July received their bonus points for August? Or will the bonus points be posted 8 to 12 weeks later?

Funny you should ask. I just looked at my wife's account over the weekend and she just got the standard 3 points/dollar. I will probably call when I have more time.

For everyone's info my August double bonus points posted on hhonors.com today. It was *a little* off, but I understand they calculate by month not by statement period, plus based on each transaction and not on ttl amt so rounding can make it off.