uncommonsensical

anyone who was told they could be used in 2016 and ended up losing your nights....

i asked point blank about the wording long ago and was told redeemed (wording in T&C) meant 'booked' NOT stay by 12.31.15. unfortunately, the call info was written on a notepad in a hotel somewhere and lost. yeah. dumb.

anyway, tried to book 12.31 and was shot down by MNL and MNL 'manager'. after 30 minutes he offered me 50k points 'goodwill' (i HATE the 'we're doing you a favour' crap when it's their doing)- i declined but told him to put everything in comments and i'd call back for US CS. MNL makes out that getting US is not possible- this is a LIE. they can tfr, they just don't want to and lie about it.

anyway..... today i got a very snotty rep in SLC finally (i feel so special as spire! no breakfast. no late check out. no anything and snotty no recognition agents). all he did was interrupt me and quote incorrect T&C language just like MNL (claiming it says 'stay by' and interrupting me when i try to read him directly from the T&C and recount past calls with IHG).

sorry, kinda ranting as he pissed me off. i told him i'd like to be transferred to a manager IN THE US (he said there are no managers in the US! lol) both about the points and to have someone listen to the tape of our current call. he asked me if he could put me on hold. sure. 5 minutes later, still snotty (he didn't seem pleased i 'won'), but 100k points put in my account representing the 2 50k nights i wanted to book.

i always ask csr's to enter comments (and read them back to me) whenever something is ymmv- so perhaps a US mgr (that doesn't exist) looked at the history and saw comments from months ago. idk. but, for me anyway, worth the frustration and bs to get a resolution...

hopefully this will help someone.

Points Scrounger

Problem is that availability became zero anywhere after 1/1. I, too, burned mine last month.

Enigma368

Interesting. I summarized my experience previously but I will go into more detail as I had similar experiences to you.

I initially called to check what "redeem by" meant at start of December and am told categorically that I just needed to book by Dec 31st and can book at least 6 months into 2016.

I then call Dec 31st to book my hotel, got through to MNL, "no sir, we are being told all into the night certs expire Dec 31st, no exceptions". Ask for Manager, Manager is snotty, says things like "well sir, you had a whole year to use them"(not really the point when his own call center told me I could still book with them by Dec 31st). Eventually he says "since you were misinformed about expiry, the best I can offer you is 10k points a night". So he is conceding they messed up, but then offering me 1/5th their value! I ask for his manager, I get put on a silent hold for 20mins before the call disconnects(I am almost certain he did this deliberately). I call back and get MNL again and again get put on a silent hold, I give up after 20 mins.

I start to get a bit upset at this point at being treated this way as a customer, let alone a spire member - regardless of who is in the right, hanging up on me or putting me on fake hold is seriously bad form. I call again and through some luck I immediately get connected to the US center(is this random?). Spoke to the nicest CS agent there who could not have been more helpful, she could tell I was upset and frustrated about MNL basically hanging up on me and she says she will make sure to call me back if we are disconnected for any reason. She looks into it and says "I can confirm that yes you have 2 free nights and I can also confirm that you should absolutely be able to book these until the end of today", "I have checked with my manager and many people are calling in about this, unfortunately we have a system issue that is preventing us from booking these the normal way", she takes my dates and desired hotel and promises to sort it out. Calls me back an hour later and all is sorted and I have been booked into a suite for the inconvenience(they have had to book it as a cash night but I have been assured in writing that I will not be charged).

Anyway all good in the end thanks to the great US agent. I should stress that I am never rude on calls, I never swear, I never get aggressive or raise my voice. At my worst I am firm and say things like "I am sorry but I feel this is unacceptable given what I was told, could I please speak to your manager". BTW, if the MNL manager had offered me 50k points for the 2 nights, I would probably have taken it at that point as I felt like I was hitting a brick wall. The offer of 10k a night was a joke though.

P.S. Someone posted in a different thread here on flyertalk that you needed to get through to the US call center on this issue as they were the only ones who had the authority to do something e.g. comp a cash rate room, or give you 50k points for each night. I would strongly urge anyone who were advised they could book by Dec 31st and then told on Dec 31st that they couldn't, to push this issue as it is really not fair.

yann

I kind of wish I had called and asked for favours as some did, but the terms for redemption were pretty clear to me from the beginning and I didn't feel like wasting hours on the phone arguing with them.

I ended up booking a night that I did not really need in a 35000 points location, but they managed to mess it up and made me pay for it afterwards (see below).

Neither the hotel nor IHG have responded to my mails after a week so, to add insult to injury, I now may end up spending hours arguing with them anyway.

uncommonsensical

can relate- well, except for getting a nice and competent agent at the end. i never spoke to anyone competent who acknowledged anything. he had no interest in continuing the conversation once informing me the points were being put in my account.

i think situations like this are where FT is useful. i was armed with the knowledge that others had received 100k points when they couldn't book after the great disappearing act all our nights did. i also knew i wasn't the only one told the 12.31.15 deadline was for booking (though i was told anything thru EOS was bookable, you 6 months). without FT i'd have only had my experience. with the collective, there was no way i was going to just accept it. i waited to call on the 31st so that i didn't get a 'well, you still have time to use them' answer like i was reading here. i had called long ago to clarify the ambiguous 'redeem by' wording and got my answer. if the answer had been different, i'd have used them before.

anyway, i imagine the much ballyhooed (by ihg and NOBODY else!) Spire helped us both along with sticking to our guns.

cheers.

Enigma368

I would not say we were asking for favours. Its not like we secretly knew we had to burn them by Dec 31st but decided to try our luck. I genuinely wasn't sure what the terms meant so I called IHG to clarify while I still had the month of December to use them if I had to. However IHG's agents reassured me that I could unquestionably use them for 2016 stays if I booked by Dec 31st so I spent the month of December deciding where I should use them and called on New Years Eve to book. Having them say "oh yeah we told you that you could use these for 2016 stays but we were wrong, you cant, and now its too late to use them at all so tough luck", is completely unreasonable.