chrism20

A quick update from my contact in the Exec Office.

Apparently they are still looking at whether or not it would be possible to put a tracker bar back online however in the meantime they are trialling an email system where you will receive an email when you reach £5k and £7.5k in your spending so that you know where you are with the £10k target.

Not ideal but another small step in the right direction.

MsCapricorn

Am I correct in assuming that if I cancel my card I will retain platinum status until the end of my membership year?

chrism20

You should keep Platinum until December 31st, I don't think I've heard of anyone having it taken away when cancelling the card. You only need 40k for Platinum as well now so if you get to 40k in points before the end of the year you will keep it for another year.

Jermyn

My girlfriend and I both applied for the IHG premium visa during the 60k sign-up bonus period.

My 60k points posted fine but she only ever received 20k.

After calling and getting transferred 3 times she was finally able to speak to somebody who acknowledged that IHG points exist and that Barclaycard is responsible for ensuring they are posted to customers' IHG accounts.

However she was then told that because the current offer is 20k and she cannot prove that it used to be 60k she wasn't entitled to the full 60k.

After having this issue escalated she has now (2 months later) received a letter saying that Barclaycard are doing everything they possibly can to investigate her complaint.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to break out of this absurd kafkaesque situation? Surely it shouldn't be this difficult to get the correct points to post from an offer that was publicly available for 3 months. I'm thinking that our only option at this stage is to use Barclaycard's logic against them and wait for the offer to go back up to 60k because in their mind, the only offer that has ever existed is whichever one is on right now.

chrism20

They have twelve weeks to sort out your complaint under their complaints procedure what you have received is the eight week holding letter by the sounds of it, so technically they still have four weeks to respond to you.

Valerie Sorano Keating is their CEO, however she recently announced she is leaving and the stand will be Amer Sajed. Emails to Val directly normally managed to nudge your complaint to the top of the in-tray with a response within forty eight hours, sometimes within hours.

Barclays operate the usual business email address system of:-

[email protected]

I'm sure you will be able to work out how to contact them. I think Val may still be there at the moment but am not 100% sure.

IIRC the 60k offer ran until March 31st.

voodoofish

Did you speak to anyone in the UK or just at the overseas call centres? I'm just curious because usually I find the overseas call centres pretty useless but the UK ones much more reasonable (although if you were transferred so much it seems unlikely you weren't eventually transferred to the UK, I still thought it was worth asking).

blindman

Update to this:

I can’t say that Barclays have got this correct yet, but I’m not complaining.

Working on the premise that I get 8 x points for International IHG (maybe wrongly ?) the last three statements have been incorrect.
(Didn’t help that some UK hotels did not get the 4 x points either.)

So after several private messages clearly stating my calculations and the exact number of points I was requesting Barclays ignored my calculations and incomprehensibly misread the comms and awarded an extra 10,000 points. ^^

Pity the points don’t roll over to qualify for Saphire next as at this rate it would be a breeze to do so.

BTW Points seem to be calculated as £Spend rounded down x4

Keefy-boy

I would say wrongly, it's 4 x for IHG at home or abroad, it doesn't double up twice for foreign IHG spend!

chrism20

It shouldn't be doubling up but having seen screenshots of what Barclays actually see and details of what points are accruing and being classed as nothing would surprise me if some were slipping through and counting double. To say their counting system is a mess is a complete understatement.

On one of the files I saw of my account Asda was counting as 4 points to the pound!

Enjoy your 10k! Just in time for the new PB list.

blindman

The thing is I clearly laid out the breakdown of Intl spend + IHG spend and specifically stated I was claiming 4 x for both and no-one came back to me quoting the T&C's 3.4 para. that says the max multiplier is only 4.

I now have the Travelex Supercard aligned to this card. ^

Anyone used this Supercard overseas with the IHG card and got the points ?

I assume I book the hotel with the Supecard and this then gets transferred to the IHG card which in turn awards points?

Raffles

Works fine with Supercard, that is what I am doing at the moment. Hoping a £3k foreign hotel bill next week will go through OK so I can trigger the free night.

Janusian

I have had no end of problems with this. I was on the original card and then upgraded to the Premium one as I wanted the Platinum status. Three months later, several phone calls to both Barclaycard and IHG and still stuck on Gold.

The two organisations seem incapable of even the simplest communication. Some of the reps at Barclaycard seem to think you have to spend the £10k to get the status where the online advertising clearly states you just need to have the card.

I would counsel anyone thinking of upgrading to beware.

chrism20

The status change should have been straightforward. A couple of my colleagues have upgraded theirs this year and never had an issue.

Ask for the case to be escalated to the Customer Relationship Unit, they can sort things like this very quickly - ie within days.

Make sure you tell them that you have missed out on the additional bonus points from stays etc and emphasise the length of time to sort is unacceptable.

I'd also send it via secure message rather than telephone, it's much more difficult to fob you off when you have an audit trail of the communication.

Janusian

I tried the Secure Message route. It was a partial success. Barclaycard were very apologetic and refunded me the annual fee........but their best advice was to phone IHG and just give them the new Barclaycard and it would all be sweet.....needless to say on phoning IHG I got someone in the customer team who didn't have a clue what I was talking about and so I got no joy.

Is there any way to speak to someone in IHG Rewards with any sense?

chrism20

I'm surprised they never told you to contact Chase that is a common one.

I've sent you a PM.