Originally Posted by
Happy
I quickly read thru the thread on posts that have relevant information On The Topic, but find one important thing that no one seems to mention / speculate on - WHAT may trigger an account being audited?
HOWEVER, at least the poster whose account was reinstated after a warning, did NOT call in for anything. The trigger seems to be the 70K Chase credit card bonus posting. Shortly afterward, the person's account was suspended, then being audited and a stay with untargeted codes in Feb 2013 was discovered. There was also a PB stay in Feb 2014 that a sibling was the additional guest and the poster not present. But that stay was never mentioned in the 2 hours phone call - the only violation mentioned was the registration of codes in a Feb 2013 pay stay which less than 5K pts earned. Incidentally the poster has an Asian last name if that matters.
What is bothersome is, it seems very likely the 70K bonus from Chase has triggered the account review probably because the account is only a few years old and the holder has an Asian last name. And the account also has gotten 70K in the past. Chase has no problem to hand out bonus again because the previous one was from Visa and the latest one is from MC - a product change, so the person is entitled the 2nd bonus when the Visa was canceled a few weeks before applying MC.
Thanks for adding more info to this debate. But as far as I understand, we do not know what exactly have triggered the audit.
So far, I knew people got audited at when:
1>, called help line to ask for manually adjust stay due to incorrect online stay post (this is especially the case last year)
2>, recently made several redemption stays
3>, Booked PB (especially the case of IC Hangzhou this year)
4>, A particular stay pattern was discovered due to murky situation of multiple accounts (husband and wife for example)
5>, Relatively new account with code registration that yield large number of points in one go
6>, New IHG branded credit card that caused multiple accounts
AND MOSTLY SEEM TO BE THE CASE OF 7>, no apparent reason (although you can almost be certain that a large number of balance is with that account)
Like many others, I am eager to learn what is exactly the reason IHG decide to do the audit and what criteria accounts got suspended. But so far, conclusion can not be reached.