quartinsession

Hi,

I've read a couple of previous threads where BW has not deducted points right away, but my situation is a little different and I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on possible implications.

I got 60K BW bonus points when I signed up for a certain credit card, and I stay at the same BW fairly frequently so also earn bonus points for that and for using my credit card for various transactions. The 60K bonus points didn't come in all at the same time, so it meant that my points were in flux over a period of a few months.

During that time, I stayed at the same hotel a bunch of times using my points, not noticing that points weren't being deducted because I was new to the program and thought my bonus points for signing up to the credit card + using the credit card etc. were still accumulating. At some point though, I thought that I was being credited too many points so I started to look into the situation, and once I did the math it became apparent that this particular hotel has never deducted any points, and I've stayed approximately 6 nights 'for free' (ie I used my points to book the reservations, even though the same points should have already been deducted for previous stays).

Any thoughts on what could happen in this case? Could the hotel demand payment for these stays at some point in the future? Would you contact BW to advise them, and pay the total amount for the previous reservations?

The incident that made me look into the issue was that I stayed at another BW on points and the points were deducted the day of checkout. It seems to be an issue with this particular property.

Thanks for any thoughts.

sdsearch

I had a 5-night stay back in late July in Alaska that should have cost 180000 points. Still absolutely no points deducted over 5 months later, even after I mentioned it to BW customer service once (a couple months after the stay).

Meanwhile, back in late November, I had a free nigh cert stay for one night in the California desert and the hotel mistakenly took out 20000 points instead, and promised to return it (after I checked in with the free night cert) but those points are still not there, and I keep forgetting to call them in the narrow window of time certain days of the week when the right person is there at the hotel.

Anyway, in your case, if it won't take that long to build up enough points to cover that, stop staying on points at that hotel, and wait until you've built up enough to cover all your redemptions, and then contact them.

jm1991

points are deducted manually by the properties front desk agents either the day of the reservation or before check out. Still, there some newer agents that dont know how to process these reservations and deduct the points, or they forget to. If it has been a while already, i doubt the property would do deep digging and just let it go. I would only go back to see if theres any charges to card you used and just be sure the charges were billed to BW and not your card. From what i understand, award nights only get minimal revenue for the property like 30 or 40 bucks a night. If your card was charged, i would just leave it alone as you probably still earned points and got a super low rate.

quartinsession

Thanks to both of you. Interestingly, sometimes my card has been charged $30 or so - I figured it was taxes and didn't contact the property so thanks for explaining that side of reward points, jm1991. That sounds like a fair trade off to me!

okazon69

I believe the $30 is what the hotel normally gets reimbursed for an award stay. So they seem to have screwed up completely in charging you that amount and not deducting points at all. Enjoy!

yscleo

Really? Does it matter how many points were needed for that hotel stay, because some hotels require many more points than others.

jm1991

i dont think so, just enough to pay for the labor, and utilities the guest is expected to use which is about 30 bucks. thats one of the reasons why hotels may limit the number of award rooms specially in popular or expensive locations and why it may be hard to find rooms on points. They take a big hit if the rates are going for 200+ and they only get 30 bucks out of points stays

sdsearch

But is it flat at BW?

At several other programs, it's low until the hotel gets above a certain occupancy rate (85%? 90%) and then it goes up quite a bit (though still not to anywhere near the going cash rate necessarily).

pirossalma

It is similar with BW. (At least for a part of BW hotels.)

There is a BW in SD that we visit only on points. (Usually when the cash price would be close to $200 with taxes). Nevertheless they always very kind to us, providing their best rooms, early check-in, etc. (They did it even before we had any status with BW).
Expressing our - genuine - guilty feelings, the manager assured us, that they are very well compensated IF they have high occupancy rate. (I do not remember the exact %, but it was really high.)
We got similar assurance in three other hotels in Palm Springs, Vegas, Paris.
These are all BW Plus hotels, in very popular places. I think that without high reimbursement these places would not offer any award stay.

As for the original question: probably a less experienced front desk agent did not know how to do this. It happened to us twice, we waited 6 months, then spent the points again.

UA Fan

Why does BW make this so complicated. Just made a reservation for 2 nights and noticed the points have not been deducted.

sdsearch

They never seem to deduct right away. They leave it up to the hotel as to when to deduct, rather than the main program doing the deduction. That appears to be what leads to all the confusion.

It probably has something to do with this "every hotel is independently owned and independently operated" mantra of theirs. I guess it means the rewards reservation system is less centralized therefore than at most other programs.

PHX_SOUS

New to BW and surprised to see points weren't deducted at time res was made. Out of curiosity what happens if you don't have sufficient points in your account at time of check out or check in??

jm1991

you will have to pay the raack rate

highlanderfil

Looks like I'm not the only one this has happened to. Curious - what do you guys do when you see points aren't being charged? I called and alerted my hotel in Chicago yesterday, but am kinda regretting it now, having learned about the 10K promo Furthermore, what happens if you don't notice (or choose not to notice) the lack of deduction, spend your points elsewhere, those ARE deducted and then your hotel comes back and tries to charge the points but you don't have enough in your account?

sdsearch

As I mentioned in my post # 7 upthread, I've had some hotels not deduct points at all, while others deduct too many (and no number of calls fixed the latter). So I decided to let both kind of errors sit.

In my case, I go long enough between redemptions that it's very unlikely by the next redemption that a redemption from over a year ago will suddenly be charged. And I try to make sure that I have enough points to cover all the redemptions I made in the past year, just in case.