jsammerman

Choice Privileges members must remain active in the Program to retain the Choice Privileges points they accumulate. If a member is not active within 18 consecutive calendar months, that member will forfeit all accumulated Choice Privileges points. To maintain an active status in the Choice Privileges Rewards Program and retain accumulated Choice Privileges points, you must engage in qualifying activity, such as completing a qualified point-eligible stay, earning points, airline miles or Amtrak Guest Rewards points, redeeming Choice Privileges points, earning points from a purchase using your Choice Privileges Visa® card*, earning points with one of our partner programs, purchasing points, and referring a friend**.

Beginning February 1, 2016, members have until August 1, 2017 at 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time to engage in a qualifying activity before this forfeiture policy is enforced. Any qualifying activity after February 1, 2016 will keep members’ points active for an 18 additional months. Starting August 1, 2017 at 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time and continuing on the first day of each subsequent calendar month thereafter, Choice Privileges points will be forfeited in accounts with no qualifying activity during the previous 18 consecutive calendar months. Qualifying activity keeps your points active for 18 additional months, beginning on the first day of the month after your activity is completed through the 18th month of inactivity. A qualifying activity is completed when points post or are removed from your account.

Not all activities count toward maintaining an active status in the Choice Privileges Rewards Program. The following are some examples of non-qualifying activities that do not count toward maintaining an active status in the Choice Privileges Rewards Program: completing a non-eligible stay, registering for a promotion, gifting points (only counts as a qualifying activity for the member who receives the points, not the member who gifts the points).


Members who earned points between January 1, 2015, and January 31, 2016, under the former point expiration policy, which carried a firm expiration of points on December 31, 2017, and December 31, 2018, respectively, will be eligible to request any points forfeited under the new forfeiture policy (stated above) be reinstated to their member account by contacting member services. This point reinstatement is only available for points earned between January 1, 2015, and January 31, 2016, and forfeited on August 1, 2017, where the member had no qualifying activity under the new forfeiture policy but whose points would not have expired until December 31, 2017, and December 31, 2018, respectively, under the previous point expiration policy.

lougord99

This is outstanding. It sounds like points will no longer expire 2 years after earning as long as there is qualifying activity every 18 months.

DCABarry

Perhaps this change is an "And" not an "Or."

Both 1) Points are valid for use for at least 2 calendar years (respectively Ending on 12/31 two years from acqusition) from the date points were earned,

And,
2) Points will expire, if account is not refreshed within any 18 month period (exception the period of Aug 1, 2017 and Dec 31, 2017 for points earned in 2015 or Jan 2016.)

So the Choice managers are tightening their grip on our points. (Marriott is doing the same thing on Feb 1, 2017 --- Choice Management = Marriott retreads/wannabees.)

sdsearch

jsammerman, where did you find this?

DCABarry, while anything's possible (especially until we know the source of this and until the T&Cs are hopefully updated next month), the way I read the last paragraph:
The part I highlighted seems to be calling the firm ("hard") expiration of points on December 31 of each year a "former point expiration policy", and later a "previous point expiration policy", both of which imply that the "hard" expiration will no longer apply!

DCABarry

In reading this all over again, I think YOU may be right (I hope you are right.)

They speak of "former" and "previous" "point expiration policy" so I'm guessing that a so-called "new point expiration policy" is exactly that, NEW, and that the previous policy is now dead and gone.

Wonders of wonders, Choice has come up with something positive for all us point hoarders - I hated being forced at the end-of-year to burn points or lose them.

So now to protect our shores (so as not to lose any points from 2015 and 2016) we all must now have some kind of points action after this Jul 1 to get us into 2018 safe and sound.

sdsearch

Which would make the no-fee Choice credit card valuable to hold for more people. It makes it easy (for those based in the USA), by using it for a small purchase at least once a year, to keep your points from (presumably) ever expiring, in case you stay only very occasionally at Choice hotels.

jsammerman

Here's the link to the news.

https://www.choicehotels.com/choice-...s/news-updates

DCABarry

My new interpretation of this whole thing is that points that have been earned prior to Feb 1, 2016 will still expire at the end of the respective 2 year + period that we have all been accustomed.

After that, points will accrue without deadline as long as there is current activity in the respective account every 18 months or less. If 18 months + 1 day elapses between activities, goodbye points (the entire stock of accumulated points.)

In my case I have 30,000+ that expire 12/31/16 and 85,000+ that expire 12/31/17. So I will have to use up the points within that timetable or they will disappear in each yearly subset. Those earned Jan 1-31 2016 must be used by 12/31/18. Points accrued from this Feb 1 onward are in a new "basket" of points that don't expire as long as there is some requisite activity within the 18 month window.
(So there is no grandfathering of "old" points into the "new" system. - That's my read on it.)

Confused? Yep.

sbbi

I am not sure about that

Firewind

I don't have the card. Doesn't just having it keep the affiliated Choice account alive as with other programs? Guess that didn't matter until now. To be wished for when the full t&c are rolled out? Though a tiny purchase is a pretty gentle requirement.

sdsearch

It's easy to have a no-annual-fee card "closed for inactivity" by the bank. There are plenty of threads about that happening to people in the various credit card forums on FT. So most people who want to avoid that make some small charge at least once a year just to keep the card open. At most hotel/airline/rail programs, including Choice in the future (but not necessarily including Hilton, where the expiration is tight at just one year), that is good enough to also keep the partner program points/miles from expiring with the same once-a-year purchase.

Btw, having the card keeps you at Gold level minimum. So there are two possibilities (neither guaranteed) for mechanisms whereby somehow having the card could keep your points from expiring without purchases*: One, that the card itself keeps the points from expiring (like the Chase Amtrak Guest Rewards card used to), or at that the card bestows Gold status (which it does) and any elite status keeps the points from expiring (like is the case at IHG Rewards Club).

* One other way to keep a no-annual-fee from expiring is to carry a (presumably promotional) balance transfer. That doesn't earn points. And you don't particularly want to make a purchase while you're carrying a balance transfer, since that can cause you to not have a grace period and thus get charged for interest on the purchase starting on the posting date! So I can see how especially for people who have a balance transfer on the card for the long term it might be nice to have the card defer Choice expiration without needing a purchase. But how likely that is, I don't know.

Firewind

Thank you again, sdsearch.

charlesonmission

This is great news.

Travelomania

Could someone please chime in with an interpretation of the new rules - in particular what happens when expired points (12/31/15) that have been used for a booking in 2016 that gets cancelled before or after 2/1/16 ?
Would the redeposited points count as "new points" for the new rules as of 2/1/16 or under the old rules and get confiscated because these were technically "old points" ?

TIA !

sdsearch

Presumably the new policy is not in effect until 2/1/16, so what happens if you cancel before 2/1/16 is presumably what happened last year in the same situation. (But no guarantees!)

Impossible to say at this point what happens if you cancel after 2/1/16. There's a third possiblity, which IMHO is even more likely: They'll be deposited as old points, but expire or not based on the new policy. In that case, it would behoove you to have newer activity before you cancel if those points were originally earned more than 18 months before when you cancel the stay.

And since this is not something Choice is necessarily likely to publish, we may not know how it works before we get some datapoints from people (such as you?) who actually try it.

At any rate, we're not likely to know it before Feb 1 has passed.