IHG hotels lost my loyalty
 

Hello, I tried several ways to publicize my experience with the IHG points program, but without success, so thank you site administrators for this opportunity.

Back in January of this year I discovered my IHG points disappeared since I did not make any IHG hotel reservations in 2017. Problem for me was due to financial restrictions. Upon communicating with the IHG Points department, I was informed my points disappeared due to inactivity in 2017, but due to a email address mix up they did not have my updated email address, so they were not able to inform me my points would disappear at the end of 20127. I explained to them my financial difficulty, but to no avail. My question to them was what about their loyalty to me? The response from the supervisor was what about my loyalty to them?

Loyalty to IHG hotels? Ever since I joined IHG hotels 8 years ago, the only hotels I stayed at were IHG hotels. That would be easily proved with my credit card statements. as proof of my loyalty to them. Now that my financial situation stabilized, since the start of this year, I have already booked two trips in which I did not stay at a IHG hotel and in an upcoming trip, I will not be booking with IHG hotels either. So no, now IHG hotels no longer have my loyalty, and they can thank the supervisor at IHG Points that I spoke with that day.

Thank you,
arbani93

Sorry to hear about that...I don't think there's much that can be done. Take a look here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/inte...-expiring.html

Btw, welcome to FT!

arbanii93 Welcome to FT

Replace "IHG" with any other brand and eventually the same may/will happen.
Expiry of ff miles/hotels points when no activity for xx months is common.
Not the hotels fault it did not have your current email address.

At a certain point, the businesses have a cutoff to where "loyalty" ends. To IHG, it is if you had no activity within a year, unless you earned a high enough status, which shows more loyalty.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it is the reality.

What the supervisor said to you is what points deadlines are all about. If you have not used the program in a year, what about your loyalty to IHG? If you are not a profitable customer, IHG will still take your money for a room, but it is not going to do anything to keep you as a customer or provide free nights and the like.

While it is unclear who made the email error, the fact is that the cutoff deadlines are in the programs terms & conditions which you read and acknowledged understanding.

The chances of IHG doing anything for you are slim and nil. But, it costs nothing to send a short and concise webform to customer service explaining your financial difficulties and asking for some help. Keep it to 2-3 short sentences. Don't get your hopes up.

You could have just booked and cancelled an award stay. Everything's good. No money required. Sorry to be harsh, but you failed somehow to take care of your own issues.

I think you are all just wasting bandwidth here. The OP, like so many others, will never be back. He just wanted to rant in as many forums as he could find. He said so himself in his first sentence. He does not want help - just others to agree how the big, bad IHG stole his points with no reason despite his unfailing loyalty and the couple of hundred dollars he spent with them 2 years ago.

Sad, but true. IHG didn't do anything other than follow its own program rules. Regarding any program, if your miles/points/account is about to expire, the worst case scenario is to just buy a couple points/miles (most programs seems to have a short amount for $10 or so) to reset the clock.

Nonetheless, because this is a public forum, these threads to serve a purpose. Somewhere someone is sitting and perhaps scanning this and it hits him that he has points/miles or whatever in some program that may be at risk and he goes and checks.

No you can't. IHG updated their t+c's some months ago, and under expiring section (point 24) specifically addressed this "book+cancel awards fiddle" and will no doubt not make any difference if you do cancel immediately or after weeks/month if you book award 1year out.

https://www.ihg.com/content/gb/en/cu...member-tc.html

24. Point Expiration. CLUB LEVEL MEMBERSHIP POINTS (SEE MEMBER BENEFITS, INCLUDING LEVELS OF MEMBERSHIP, HERE) WILL EXPIRE IF YOUR MEMBERSHIP ACCOUNT BECOMES INACTIVE FOR ANY PERIOD OF TWELVE (12) MONTHS OR LONGER, WHICH MEANS YOUR POINTS WILL BE REMOVED FROM YOUR ACCOUNT AND WILL NO LONGER BE AVAILABLE FOR REDEMPTION. To maintain the Points in your membership account, you must have at least one “earn” or “redeem” transaction posted to your account every twelve (12) months. Use of the one night per year provided to IHG Rewards Club credit card holders does not constitute an “earn” or “redeem” activity to prevent Point expiration. If you redeem Points for a Stay and subsequently cancel that Stay, the redemption activity does not prevent Point expiration. Points do not expire for current Elite Members, although Points may expire twelve (12) months after an Elite Member’s account moves to Club level if there is no “earn” or “redeem” activity during those twelve (12) months.

Must admit, I'm doing mad nights and points and for years and never knew this either!

Mind you fortunately there are more knowledgeable and diligent folks like Scubaccr and those in the thread who do, and keep us in the frame.

I did the same with Sirius Jumeriah a few years back .... had top deck status and for ages and were treated supremely well but had a year out of territory and lost the lot. It does hurt and can understand why that would smart some.

Has anyone else noticed how often threads that have a thumbs down (or angry) icon next to them are from a "one and done" kind of poster? I rarely see regulars putting these kind of emoji next to threads but I guess they tend not to start threads merely in order to vent.

Definitely a good reminder to all of us (and anyone else who later comes across this thread when research IHG expiration policy). Sounds like the best course of action for those whose accounts are about to become dormant is to redeem a few hundred points for a digital music download or e-book.

That just sows that you have to be diligent .... use something like awardwallet to keep everything in one place/ keep the accounts updated with your contact info/ check the spam /....

But the OP problem would have been the same on many other airlines/hotel/.... loyalty programs. ANA miles i.e. expire 3 years after earning no matter what. Know the rules of the programs and use the miles keeping expirations in mind.

On reflection, OPs post sdeems at minimum economical with truth or more likely outright false

If one accepts , OP says he was loyal regular until being unable to stay during 2017... Thus OP implies IHG loyalty and that OP stayed regularly with IHG during 2016 calendar year, and it then follows
1)OP Stays at least 10 nights (or spends at least us$1000++ = 10k points) in 2016 giving OP minimum IHG GOLD elite status for calendar year 2017 (else OP is neither loyal or regular)
2)OP with zero stays in 2017 would drop any Elite status earned from their 2016 nights on 1st Jan 2018
BUT
3)OP would not lose points in the first 12months of dropping down to club
From 24. Expiriung Points paragraph
" Points do not expire for current Elite Members, although Points may expire twelve (12) months after an Elite Member’s account moves to Club level if there is no “earn” or “redeem” activity during those twelve (12) months. "

So no way was OP a loyal IHGer, as just 10nights stayed in 2016 would mean OPS points would be safe until 1st Jan 2019 , 12months after dropping to Club level.