Originally Posted by
akr1970akr
Separately to the poster above who mentioned making concierge bookings in 2020 etc - why do you think those will not count towards the 2 night usage going forward? that seems unlikely to me. i also suspect that there will be difficulty with getting those credits if anything actually goes wrong. Our usage of 4NF is generally 3 times a year (over peak school holiday periods) and I would estimate that a 1/3 of those have problems or extensive delays in getting the credit. (My last one paid for in Oct 2018, didn't arrive til March 2019). I don't think there will be much customer support for this after Sep, especially for glitchy bookings/stays
Because that is what Citi states (
https://information.citi.com/prestige/intro):
Only bookings made on or after September 1, 2019, will count toward the 2019 cap.
That is very much attached to the way they are implementing the limitations (i.e., through the Thankyou Points portal - which has not way of knowing and counting how many reservations you had through the concierge).
There will be some customer support, although I guess in limited form after September because booking can go for more than a year out. I suspect it would be hard to reach and hard to resolve issues - but I doubt it will go away completely. The concierge provide many other (mostly useless) services apart from booking the 4th night free one, and that function remains. I've made my far in the future booking with the full intention to track the price and change the booking when the price drops. But now I'm not limited to the portal offering. I wonder if they will resist doing that, but I think there is a good case that they act as the travel agent and should be able to service the reservations.
As for timing - I just got a recent stay post within the same billing cycle by being proactive and sending in the invoice.