chrism20

Chances are your status will not have updated on the hotel system, for some reason the system picks up level when booked. If you have the phone app it would be handy to have the virtual card ready to show. A decent front desk though will rerun the system and check your level and points balance when doing the pre-checkin

Even if it is still showing as gold on their system it will post to your account as platinum. If they rerun their system it will update

parklife

Good to know. Have the app so will be ready just in case!

EDIflyer

Managed to downgrade back to standard and get the card fee refunded (I requested it a few days after the fee had been charged). Of course as is usual with Barclaycard they mucked up the downgrade so now getting an extra tenner in compensation!! Have retained Plat through points anyway so hope them sending through the Gold status from the free card doesn't overwrite this, although anything's possible with IHG IT!

chrism20

That sounds like a fun one to sort if it happens. Hopefully you have a screenshot from December though and it will be straightforward to sort out.

EDIflyer

I have a vague hope that Barclaycard's IT is so poor it won't send the status across and an even vaguer hope that if it did IHG would ignore it as it's lower status but if not then I'll be onto the IHG Social Media team to get it resolved! I think I might have a screenshot but most of the transactions were in the last 6/12 anyway so still viewable in transaction history.

chrism20

Even an old statement email if you have it will do as it says on them how many points you need to maintain platinum so if you have Decembers and made it on points or nights before then that will have everything you need.

EDIflyer

Good thinking, Batman!! Just checked my December statement and it said "Points to Maintain: Already maintained. Platinum" ^

parklife

So I have made a few purchases on the card, and had a statement but no sign of the sign up bonus. How long does this take to appear?

BP3

Signed up end of December, made first purchase early January and the points appeared today.

blindman

Same here

Mrs B signed up 1st Jan, spend a few days later.

Upgraded to Plat the next week ^

Points for spend, end of Jan ^

Bonus points yesterday ^

All very quick and painless^

parklife

Thanks both, Mr impatient needs to wait some more! My first spend was on 23 Jan so hopefully will see them in the next couple of weeks.

I really do find it amazing at how much better Amex is on these things where everything happens within a couple of days!

igc324

Having upgraded to Platinum Visa, paid £99 for the privilege, and then read all the horror stories on here, I hoped that Barclaycard might just get my first statement correct. But there again, I hope to win the lottery ;-)

As posters on here have previously pointed out, the points total for the month is completely unrecognisable from what I think it should be.

Do I not receive 4 points for every £1 spent at IHG hotels? Surely this includes hotel reservations as well as dinner, drinks etc? I have 2 payments to Holiday Inn on my February statement - total £185. Does this not equate to an extra 740 points? Or am I missing something?

A complaint to Barclaycard in writing has resulted in my receiving a message to ring them on an 0800 number - and then of course to repeat the whole complaint! What was the point of putting it in writing?

No way - I have messaged back to say I want the reply to my complaint to be in writing also.

chrism20

Yes everything spent with IHG attracts double points. Reservations, car parking on the folio, bar, restaurant, room service, telephone calls, mini bar etc all qualify so long as it's paid to the hotel using the card.

It is a little bizarre the way they do it and is the opposite way to how it showed up in the old card or on the website. Point purchases and points and cash also attract double points when paid for using the IHG card.

For example

You spend £100 in IHG hotels and spend £100 elsewhere. Thats 400 points for the hotel spend and 200 for the other stuff.

This will then show up on your IHG account as 400 base points and 200 hotel bonus points.

Only the additional points show as hotel ones which confused me to start with. Of course it doesn't help that you have to wait nearly a fortnight for this to show up on your IHG account so you can attempt to crossmatch them.

I'm not sure if they have managed to fix the issue with the retail ID codes either (If you scroll back a few months I posted that Barclaycard had eventually admitted this error) where only the hotels that had identified themselves to Barclaycard as an IHG hotel were crediting the additional points.

I now run a spreadsheet and pull the information from the statement to double check that it is accurate, it has been for the last few months however I tend to visit the same hotels over and over with work so obviously they are now sorted but there may be a few out there which haven't identified themselves to Barclaycard and are only crediting single points instead of double.

Always keep a close eye on hotels where the PDQ receipt says something other than brand name. Eg if the hotel is HIX but shows up as the operating companies name.

New hotels to IHG are also one worth watching, particularly in the few weeks after they switch for one brand to another. You have no idea the hassle I had explaining to them that Aston Hotel Dumfries changed to Holiday Inn Dumfries the day I stayed.

parklife

Do you run this when the points have posted to IHG or on the individual txns on the card? My points haven't gone across yet, and have been trying to work out the number showing on Barclaycard - I am only a few points away, but assuming that being charged in GBP in Sweden would count as foreign spend (item bought off a website in GBP)?

chrism20

I generally update it once a week or so and just copy the transactions across. It's a pain but it was sending copies of this in the end that helped barclaycard work out what the problem I had was.

Overseas transactions are strange in gbp I've seen some count and some not although the majority do. Apple definitely does as well as Tom Tom and a few others I've used.