Originally Posted by Stubtify

There is a lot of confusion here. My experience has been check in, either m.foursquare.com or on the mobile app, get points.

The points you mention are the ones that foursquare gives you. Yes if you are too far foursquare does not award you points for the checkin. These points are not related to the topguest promo points awarded for checkins. I've been standing in the actual property and had foursquare say I'm too far away--their app is just not precise enough sometimes due to GPS issues. But topguest looks at your checkins, not your foursquare points. So it seems to have an automated check that searches your registered foursqure account checkins for hotel keywords and then give you points based on this. I also sync these checkins to my facebook, but have not tested if it is actually these foursquare checkins posting to facebook that are generating the "hit" with topguest.

There are Problems:

Topguest is very sporatic in actually seeing your checkins. Sometimes I check in and immediately get an email that I was awarded points. Somtimes I check in, then later in the day I'm at a different place and I check in there, and all of a sudden it is like topguest gets "unstuck" and points from both checkins hit my email. Another issue is that their "day" ends around 3-4pm my time so a checkin around that time may count for the next day. Then when you are at the same property the next morning and I check in, you won't see an email ever because I technically already checked in that "day." This could lead to confusion and thinking that they are not correctly offering points for checkins.

Then there's the issue of waiting for them to push your points from topguest to your actual loyalty accounts. This is usually delayed days/weeks as well.

Basically: There is no way to audit this program, there is no predictable pattern of the company's behavior, there is no way to know what points have already been awarded, and there is no way to keep a good total of what points you should have. BUT it sure has been a nice way to get a boatload of points for me, so I'm just shutting up and enjoying the ride. Many times I've thought "oh great, its over... no more points." And then the next day I get 3 emails in a row giving me points for checkins from the past two days.