Beware of ACCURACY and LOSS of Hilton Honors PoInts
 

Hello all:
I am new here, but thought to share my experiences with this points program (which I have now been a loyal member at "Silver" status for a few years).This topic may be "old news")?) but thought to present my experiences nonetheless so others can avoid my frustrations in claiming lost points recently.

First, I am not leaving the program as I think it gives me what I need in a Hotel chain that I like staying at for their friendly service and nice clean hotels. My beef is with the very poor I&T systems and the Claims Staff that basically don't know what they are doing. Here are the issues:

1) Missing Points: I noticed that 3 out of about 10 of my stays this year, had missing points - others were close enough but not spot on. Not a lot of points, but some were as low as 300 and others as high as 5000, so if you don't check and claim your legitimate points, you might stand to loose a lot and you cant go back that far in their on-line systems.

The math you see on the system when logged into Hilton, just does not add up to what they promise. I understand it is based on "net" paid costs but still some numbers do not add up. In other words, check each stay and do not assume the points allotted are correct. There is no pattern to this and that is what scares me! How much have I lost in the past??? Good news is that their Customer Service are very good at reassigning the points back. One CS rep told me that they are about a few months behind in manually adding peoples points back into the system - MANUUALY! HUH??? The HH I&T systems and are simply CRAP, and they should be fired for designing a system that poorly, and will thus affect business with a chain that has great hotel's and wonderful front-line staff (at least so far in my experience).

2) NOW THE REALLY BAD...
It has been a month and running now, in my wait for my claim of lost points. They keep saying they are on it but I never get it solved and have to email them all the time on an update (they NEVER email me on status). Now to be fair, their CS staff gave me some points in kindness for all my troubles which I appreciate very much,

However the big mistake I made was that I BOOKED A HILTON HOTEL ON-LINE THRU THEIR Hilton SITE, USING A COMBINATION OF POINTS, AND PAID NIGHTS!!! I noticed later that my nights that I PAID (which I am thus owed points), were all "0" on the online system. When I inquired, they said I was NOT eligible because I "used points to book". Well, I didn't for those nights and PAID money by credit card! They did not understand that after a few emails and calls!!!v I think that area is in another country - not Texas where CS staff are and much more helpful. . Only when Customer Service sent them an email to give me my points, as well as the kind Manager of the actual Hotel we stayed at in Singapore, did they open the case! I also sent all docs to the Claims Dept but that did not work! They don't hold those invoices in their system. So YOU HAVE TO SAVE YOUR INVOICES YOURSELF AND DONT THINK THEY DO THAT IN THEIR IT SYSTEMS.

Any ways, I am still waiting and the pattern is clear: Do NOT reserve using a combination of points and paid nights during a single stay duration - regardless of what they say, Otherwise you will loose your "paid" nights!!! I was told this is an I&T issue and limitation in their technology. They are fixing it but its been a month!!!. At this time, I am just going to triple check my records and NOT reserve Hilton rooms using OTH points and money for a single duration stay. BEWARE!!!

Harvey

Hilton did an IT "upgrade" at the end of October, and since then their systems are fubar. If you read a few of the recent threads, you'll see that points are missing all over the place, for various reasons.They are still trying to fix the system (and occasionally breaking different things in the process), I am holding on to hope that they will eventually get their systems fixed, and everything will credit properly, but I am also keeping tabs on how many points are missing.

Good luck getting your issue resolved.

First off, not sure this needed a whole new thread. We already have threads that discuss IT issues..

The issue with stays that have points used is known. It is effecting a lot of people. It's not counting the nights as qualifying.

AS for points theyre slowly but surely getting things fixed. I agree their IT contractor should be fired.

Thank you!

I think the only "new" thing is that there is a problem with bookings using both points and money. That's a slightly different angle that I hope some might find useful as I have never experienced that before in any other system besides HH. But thanks!

Was this referring to the first thread the OP started, or the second one that was an exact copy?

I was told that the points calculation was based on US $ so it would constantly change for non US$ charges

I haven’t done a “Points and Money” booking before. Do they let you pay one night with money and another with points? Or do they allocate the ratio of points/money to each night?

To the OP: did you book your stay as two separate stays (one with points and one with money)? Or was it all one reservation?

You can do the first with separate reservations. It isn't really allocated to each night, rather just based on the total price (think of it as you selling points to Hilton for money which is then used to pay the bill)

Typing words in CAPITALS for EMPHASIS isn't necessary.

You don't want people to discuss what you have posted? That is the purpose of what Flyer Talk is. Even if you don't like what people are saying. Sorry, people are going to disagree with you.

Good riddance.

Thanks. That was my assumption.

Without more details from the OP, it's hard to know what happened here -- but it sounds like the OP made a single reservation for X nights, and adjusted the slider to pay cash for Y/X of the stay, and thought he would get points back for Y nights -- thinking he paid Y nights in cash, and X-Y nights with points. When in reality, he paid for X nights with Y/X cash and (X-Y)/X in points. In other words, the system allocates Y/X across all nights in the reservation, and disallows points because the entire booking was a "Points & Money" booking.

Had the OP made two separate reservations: one with Y nights paid in cash, and one with X-Y nights paid in points, then he should have received points for the Y nights. If he made a single reservation using "Points & Money," I don't think there is a legitimate complaint here.