tangey

My experience is that it is the HOTEL that appears on my credit card statment, not IHG. This is borne out by my current BRG, for which I have a charge on my CC that says Intercontiental westminster. IHG pass the booking onto the hotel. The hotel does the cc charge. Often it is 2-3 days before the hotel does the charge.This is the reason you can sometimes game the system, if a BRG claim is denied on an adv purchase, if you act quickly you can cancel the reservation before the hotel has gotten around to processing the card.

In fact I once did an adv purchase, turned up some months later, and the hotel (holiday inn mayfair) had totally forgotten to process the payment charge when the received the booking from the IHG engine. I argued at length that it was an adv pur, but when I checked my cc bill there were correct that they had not charged.

tangey

They will say, "this email comes from IHG, this is not a legal representative of xxx holiday inn". That's like me buying a box of chocolates from a shop, paying with a cc and having an email from cadbury's saying I will get my money back. If the shop fails to honour the email, its a problem between me and cadbury's, not between me and the shop. Now if the system is being properly implemented for best customer experience, then the shop SHOULD refund.

Perhaps people are not aware that 99% of hotels on the IHG website are not owned by IHG, they are merely paying IHG for advertising and corporate identity. IHG and the hotels on the IHG website are totally and completely separate coporate bodies. As such, I can not see how a financial institution such as a credit card company can enforce one corporate body to honour another coporate body's promise.

And BTW, it is revealing to remember that even IHG seemingly can't force the hotel to pay up, hence why IHG corporate is having to directly refund customers. IHG can't enforce its own promise on the hotel, but you expect the cc company to be able to legally do so based on an IHG email ?

lfc84

i can only speak from experience tangey

when the transaction is disputed with the card company, the hotel promptly pay up

tangey

Good result for you, and I suppose leveraging the cc company's muscle is always worth while. However the hotel paying up, and the cc deciding there was a valid cause for a chargeback is two different things. One assumes the hotel knew they would have to pay up in the end, either to you directly or back to IHG after IHG refund you, and so eventually went for the lesser of two evils.

travelkid

I was arguing that your initial contract was with PC, including stated BRG terms. No matter if it is the hotel charging and providing the room. The hotel doesnt get more rights than they get from your contract with PC.

Rusell

[QUOTE=lfc84;20146143]Russell is correct.



Thanks IFC84

nacho

It's one of those 'due to technical issues we are not able to adjust the rate blablabla' thing. They told me to stay, pay and they will refund the $ back to me. I posted several posts at this thread a while ago about all this mess.

They promise to pay me back but they haven't (I gave them my bank account details but instead they sent me 3 USD checks that I can't cash in here in Sweden ).

Rusell

No not really...you only get your cc company involved when you can't get Fair Trading involved.

Rusell

The hotel actually gets less rights...the guest gets more rights with the BRG email that is sent.

It's just when the hotel GM then decides to make up their own Terms and Conditions on the refund as they go along, that's when i'm not happy. One hotel decided to say they will refund my deposit on check in and specifically wrote it on the BRG email.

nacho

Yes and No.

You use your card for booking the hotel stay - and in theory you show your CC company your BRG email and they should be able to go for the charge back. However it's really up to them if they see the BRG thing a contract between you and IHG - they have nothing to do with it or they are obliged to do anything about it.

lfc84

In the UK I have successfully paid a USD cheque into my GBP current account without any fees or deductions. That was for a Hilton BRG claim. But every time a IHG property has charged me, a polite email to the BRG team results in a refund. It has on ly been necessary for GBP transactions though.

Since claims are limited to one every 30 days, and therefore 12 per year, even if i had to lose £2 on a transaction fee, I would deem it worthwhile on balance.

nacho

I think cashing a foreign currency cheque always incur a fee. I remember my dad received some tax free cheque in French Francs (yes long time ago), and he said that cashing that 150 Francs in a bank means that at the end of the day after all the fees he will get less than 50% of it. That's Hong Kong.

Here in Sweden my bank doesn't accept cheque that is not in either SEK or EUR.

The worst with IHG is that they claim that they put in a 10% margin to cover the fees - nope - we calculated and the amount matched the value of the night in USD (we got some points for those stays so I can see how much it is in USD).

Claims are not limited to once every 30 days - do they put the restriction back on?

tangey

You're a bit out of date.

The 30 day limit was drop many many months ago. You can now have a claim every night, with the only limitation being that consecutive nights must be in hotels more than 50 miles apart.

lfc84

30 days restriction got removed - my mistake

IAN-UK

I can only imagine the exchange rate was pants!