yyliu88

No, lots of promotion valid for US member only. In addition, he had a couple of stays with 20+ nights, he only get 15K for stay 18/15 nights and base points+Plat bonus, some hotels in china have very low base rate and last summer FFN, no base points at all. or some quarters where you earn max 20K bonus, so after max out, nothing else.

Happy

Completely illogical argument.

My husband does not handle family finance at all. Almost all expenses are put on MY credit cards, regardless who is staying at the hotel.

For many FTers, there are often times spending is concentrating on ONE single credit card until the goal of reaching specific spending threshold for extra bonus is met.

Can you say such FTers have multiple accounts simply because the spending is put on one card in the family?

To take this further, my ex-boss used to pay EVERYONE's bills by his personal card so only 1 expense report is required, AND, he earned the rebate on the card. But we all earned the pts on our own accounts in the loyalty programs.

It has nothing to do with CC at all.

Besides, there are no violation of rules that each person in the family cannot have his / her own account in ANY loyalty program. Who pays the bill is none of the issue here.

It is about the points earned via promo codes that the users are not the targeted of such promo. Large points were "earned", and award nights were redeemed for guests other than account owners - this type of behavior must be in big scale in China recently.

Instead of doing proper audit on accounts to identify the offenders, IHG took the broad-stroke approach to close accounts with sizable point redemption if such account owners happen to be Chinese, in particular if their IP addresses are used to access accounts based in China.

That is my take of the matter after gleaning the posts on the Chinese sites.

fireworksboy

While it may not be as simple as that, it certainly would set off a huge red flag and be a valid reason for an audit. Doesn't mean it should result in a closed account but definitely a second look. Although that doesn't seem to be the case in this instance.

Happy

I disagree.

The program does not say one account per Household. It is one account per individual.

How each individual pays his / her bill, has nothing to do with the program.

What could raise red flag would be, accounts earn a lot of points with few nights (many here fit this picture, by the way). Award redemption in large quantity of points, with additional guests having different names than the account owner.

And that seems to be what have been happening in China recently and caused a crack down by IHG.

yyliu88

Well said summary, I have said few months ago when they just started to shut down accounts" I am happy with the action taken by PCR to prevent fraudulent activity, but I hope they can do this by review the account case by case. What they are doing is they’d rather mistakenly close innocent people account than letting criminal go away."

One more to add, the person who is handling the cases is Josh Ellerman, the assistant to Mr. Chris Zoloth,Director of Global Customer Care for IHG. Unfortunately, Mr Ellerman doesn’t really listen to the explanation and showed to respect to any Chinese.

This is email everyone received if u try to contact him to re open account

You are not able to re-register for Priority Club Rewards, as this decision to close your account is final and definite. Rest assured, we are very confident in the case work we have to support this position, and if we discover that you have created another Priority Club Rewards account in the future, we will very diligently locate and immediately terminate that account, and you will forfeit any remaining points. Again, I can not reiterate enough that due to confirmed fraudulent activity, you no longer will be allowed to participate in Priority Club Rewards, and this decision is final.

If you ask him what confirmed activities are, he will tell you" register too many codes"

He enjoys what he is doing now and telling Chinese members"do whatever u want to, I don't care. your account is gone, but welcome to stay at IHG hotels"

spunk_tokyo

Although I have no Chinese name nor I don't live in China, I registered for promotions codes that are posted in Flyertalk and to consolidate points earnings, I use my cc for all my families PCR accounts.

Recently, I booked several PB reservations, 8 nights for 40K points, at a CP hotel. In this particular hotel, another phantom reservations, with exactly same details with the one that I originally made, appeared and another 200K points (8x25K as the hotel was off the PB list) was deducted from my PCR account in a day. So at least 240K points deduction in a week.

After several emails, the missing 200K points were credicted back to my account, but looking at the postings, this may alert my account as well. I guess I have to be prepared with a print-out page of my account, so I could at least have someting to argue upon, in case that my account suddenly dissapear.

yyliu88

if u read my previous posts, u will see I have been a member for 7 years, redeeming countless number of points, never been a issue.

After Chinese members incident happened, my account was ok as I did not redeem or earn any points, as soon as I redeemed 150K for 6 nighst at HIX last Friday, account is gone.

And as I said, it should not affect my father's account as we shared nothing in common other than both are Chinese name and same IP. What's the reason of closing account?

If they really audit every account before closing, you will not see so many wrongfully closed accounts.

spunk_tokyo

I believe that PCR/IHG awares about FT and other online communities that are referring codes among their members, even if it is a targetted promotion. Even their official online community is doing it as well.

In Offer Registration, the Where did you hear about this promotion? Pullout answer even have the "Chat Room/Blog" and "Referred by a Friend" options.

How many is too many? I don't certainly know. If PCR/IHG wants to limit the offer participants, they could reprogram their offer registration to accept registration from the targetted member only, like airlines offer registration and do not take obsolete codes. That would solve the problem.

John_OHST

don't discrimination suits typically carry substantial punitive damages?

no idea what statute would be applicable here though.

fireworksboy

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. While I will almost always side with the customer in these types of cases, that doesn't mean that anyone here and elsewhere isn't apt to receive an audit at any time for cause or at random. I understand you may feel differently.

Multiple guests using one cc - imho - is enough to survey an account although not enough (on its own) to close that account.

wpyeh

been member for over 20 year since college. had holiday inn card (SSN with $10 fee), CP card (free promotion, also SSN), and SC card and finally all merged together as today's PC card.
Now I am curious about why targeting on Chinese name account? Just read the Chinese web and post, feel that the argunment is between the knowledge "taking advantage" vs "loop hole" or "abuse rule".
Hopefully PCR can give everyone a reason.

yyliu88

because there was program abuse earlier this year, in order to prevent further abuse, they just chose to close any Chinese who have registered "codes"

Happy

You obviously haven't even read OP's post number 44.

While you and another poster think using same CC for multiple accounts would be enough to survey an account - in post number 44, OP uses his own PC card for his account, his wife uses SPG card, and his father uses his own card in China - All 3 accounts use 3 different credit cards. Obviously the CC usage has NOTHING to do with these 3 accounts being flagged / closed.

To take this further, if one is systematically to commit multiple accounts fraud, he would be stupid to use one credit card only. That means using this one CC as lead to flag accounts is a stupid and useless approach.

Frankly I am not even sure IHG can track down the CC being used at check out if the account does not have any CC registered.

A couple years ago a HIX in Edinburgh put a full rack rate authorization on an award stay guaranteed by CC. After 30 days the authorization was still on my card. When I contacted PCR about this matter, the reply I got was, IHG had no way to track down CC number if it was not a card registered with the PCR account. Finally Citi agreed to remove the authorization when I explained to them the merchant was not responsive to release the hold and it had been over 40 days passed the stay which was a no charge stay to begin with.

The major issue here is, the ill-gotten points thru promo codes are being redeemed for room nights that most likely are for trades, not any different from those happen in the Coupon Connection forum, albeit may probably be in much larger scale and wide-spread. Hence comes the crack down.

The crack down is fine if it is done with proper auditing instead of "Account Profiling" tinted with racial tone.

Jaimito Cartero

I have had exactly 0 paid stays in the US this year. All paid stays have been in Asia. Including Bangkok, Jakarta, Singapore and Hong Kong. Most of the stays have been at IC's and I still averaged 5-6k per night, even on longer stays. I'd think he would at least be an Ambassador, or should be an RA.

yyliu88

PCR knows that, but they choose ignore the code on Flyertalk because without those code, PCR is the least attractive program among big 5 chains.

they can't/don't want to piss off members here, but they think they can do whatever they for member in China.

Most Chinese members on this forum either not long enough or not many posts, do you want to believe someone with only less than 10 posts to tell something about this.

I maybe the only one who can at least make some people believe me.