MarkOK

I checked into a stay November 11, checked out November 17th. Registered for the promo on November 16th. Stay was for work, but I booked directly online at Hyatt.com. On November 18th, 24 hours after check out, I got 1. My double points on my base point earnings (including food charges) for the entire stay, and 2. My upgrade to Explorists from the CC promo (this stay got me to 29 nights).

I must say, I am somewhat surprised that people are surprised that bookings on Concur and other indirect means don't count -- I ALWAYS book my flights and hotels directly, and one of the reasons is because it is a NORMAL part of the industry to treat their direct customers best.

I don't know what Concur collects as fees (other than that really lame 7$ on airline tickets), but they quite literally are the definition of a useless middle-man business vendor with a terrible product but somehow has the connections to get corporate buyers to bite in. Concur has never had a cheaper flight or hotel offered in my experience. And their website is cruddy-- I once had a major flight change (afternoon itinerary became a morning itinerary). Concur didn't email me any information on this, and on their site had both the old and the new flights shown as an itinerary (it had two departures, two connections, and two arrivals, all with 'layover' times between each occurrence -- it gave me a 11 minute layover between the arrival of my original later flight at DFW and the departure of my new earlier itenerary out of DFW). It didn't 'fix' ever. Anyways, I have to use it all the time to take screen shots to 'prove' that I couldn't have gotten a cheaper rate (airline or hotel) with concur but I never purchase through it.