I recently became a Gold member, and had a stay about 2 weeks ago at a HGI. I wanted breakfast instead of the points and said that in the "Special Requests" textbox. I got breakfast, but also the points posted (750).
I have 2 stays coming up in the next week one HGI and one Doubletree, so will be interested to see how it posts. In the meanwhile, can someone tell me how to choose points vs breakfast option?