leland

Looping back a bit late here, UR points do count as elite. Should make it with a few of those and a 5k bonus package. Of course with ten IC nights in Jan I should have just tried the Ambassador method instead.

thunderlounge

Going off topic a tick here, but this is a known issue and even has it's own thread somewhere here. It is an absolute pain in the butt. It's not the hotels fault, really, but IHG's. The hotel posts the points for the stay as they are used to. They shouldn't have to keep track of who gets how many points per whatever unit of currency.

You point activity shows your qualifying spend in the local currency, and then shows their conversion to USD in parenthesis. So they can do that, but can't convert the points. When you look at your base point total, you can easily see points being credited per Euro (or Pound), not per Dollar.

A call into IHG can do one of 3 things, depending on the agent you get:

1) The agent looks at your account, has you send a copy from your account activity (screenshot or print page works), and then adds a point credit adjustment.

2) The agent goes off on some imaginary crusade, calls the hotel(s) in question, you sit on hold for possibly an hour or more total, and you may or may not get things set straight.

3) The agent cannot grasp the situation, and doesn't understand the problem at all. No points.


On 2 and 3 above, hang up and call again until you get a #1 type of agent.

I ran into #2 above yesterday, and was on the phone for almost 2 hours. 85% of that was on hold while they called each hotel and verified this and that charge, etc.

I wasn't disputing any charge, they were all correct. I simply tried to point out that the points were credited per Pound, not per dollar. The statements clearly showed that, but they went off on some made up holy crusade and blew the entire situation out of control as they couldn't grasp a simple concept.


Now, whether or not it is worth chasing is up to the individual situation.

For me I thought it was, as it was a point difference of close to 60k. After the first hour, I began to question my decision. Once I could finally get the agent back on the phone, I finally caved, thanked them for their time, and hung up. I'm going to call back later today or tomorrow and try for another agent.

leland

@thunderlounge Tick off topic but appreciated. I'll have to find that thread although it might make my blood boil. Turns out that fixing things wasn't too bad to get to a decent state - sent two emails for two stays. One got answered by Agent #1 and resolved. The other answered Agent #3 . Fortunately the big point swing was answered by the right person. Oddly enough my stay in Japan was posted just fine. What really annoys me is when IHG online doesn't have a copy of the invoice. This isn't unique to IHG - not sure what's so hard about enforcing a standard across hotels to share billing records back to the big brand.

In Jan I have stays that will post in CAD and SGD, somehow I doubt that currency conversions in my favor will work the same way but if so I'll hope that Agent #3 reviews

thunderlounge

I can't say off hand for sure when it swings the other way, but I'll go out on a limb and guess not. 10pts per peso? Sure, I'll take that.

It is a bit frustrating for sure. It's not a difficult concept to handle. Hilton gets it right, and their IT has been crap as of late.

dontippet

What I've done in the past, is call up the hotel I reserved and just tell them what I'm doing. I tell them that I booked a room only for the points, and that I'm not even in the same state. I just want to check in over the phone, but never actually enter the room. They didn't mind. They got their money, and saved on cleaning, breakfast, etc....