ashbjr

As December approaches, I began looking at the Status Renewal/Upgrade Qcalculator to make sense of what the number of required Qpoints its say for me means. My assumption has always been that like in past years, if I reached my requisite 540 points within a 12 month period, that my Platinum status (and analogous numbers for Gold and Silver) would be renewed on the date that I reached that magic number. But given the current Qcalculator is as nebulous as it can be and the old Qcalculator with dates and 12 and 24 month periods is gone as far as I know (someone point me to it if you know where it is), I called QR to check. The agent told me that this year Qatar is calculating its status renewals or tier upgrades on December 31st as all members were renewed automatically for the COVID period at the end of last year for one more year. So even if I reach my 540 points before that date, the system would not renew my status (even though I would have earned that number within 12 months) and it will wait until December 31st to calculate the number of Qpoints in 2022, letting any points expire through that date (so for example if you had a 100 point trip on December 28th of last year, those would expire on the 28th, and removed from your Qpoint tally and you'd be 100 points short with three days to get them back- or how many ever you are short). Given that Qatar has renewed statuses over the pandemic, this is probably fair. I wanted to put this out there to confirm whether this has been the general understanding among members here on FT or if you have different interpretations. And if you are hoping to retain, renew, or upgrade your tiers, given this new methodology, I thought it would be good to put this out there so that those of us who are at the cusp of the magic numbers but not quite can plan our year end travels - or Qpoint purchases - accordingly. Would love to hear thoughts!

Alchemist007

I renewed my platinum status early on in the year. Back then I contacted QR to ask when the benefits of renewing the status would kick in. They informed me it would be in September because that is when I renewed my platinum status the last time before Covid started. Sure enough, in September my platinum status was renewed, I received an email and I got my benefits like Qcredits. So a bit confused about this December 31st date.

ashbjr

I am confused as well. This is what the agent explained to me. I mean if I hit 540 points at any point within a 12 month period, I don’t see a reason why Qatar shouldn’t use that date as the beginning of my next status year and renew Platinum. I will hit 540 this month, but according to the agent, I will have to wait until December 31st for them to assess. I have about 90 points expiring in December, which means I will have to earn atleast a part of those back. Is there a way to raise this to QRPC?

chrisbangkok

I hold Platinum status since 6 or 7 years but missed to collect enough Qpoints in 2022...I think this year I even didnt manage to collect enough to reach Silver Tier...how do these Status downgrades work with QR? Will I fall down from Platinum to Burgundy or to the next lower level what would be Gold if I missed to requalify for Platinum?

roadwarriorafrica

You will drop from Platinum to Gold

chrisbangkok

Great, thanks for that info, very much appreciated

florin

On the QR website, this is what is says for Platinum:
What the agent said runs contrary to that.

Traveller999

I did renew Platinum status recently with 540 Qpoints, exactly as the rules are showing

KingCanute

It can be a little confusing at first but it's important to separate the calculation methods for renewing at your current level vs upgrading to a higher level.

If you were, say, gold and hit 600 qpoints in a rolling 12 month period (or less) you would be upgraded to platinum on the date the 600th qpoint credited to your account. Your new 12 month membership year would also start from that date.

However, once your are platinum there is no level to upgrade to. So qpoints earned within the full membership year are what count, not during a rolling year. When you reach day 365 of that membership year, if you earned 540 qpoints during those 12 months your tier is extended for another year and the benefits for that new year are added to your balances (eg. qcredits) on the first day of the new membership year. If you did not earn 540 qpoints during those last 365 days (or 1080 during the last 24 months) you will drop a tier and receive the reduced benefits of the lower tier.

There is a logic behind this. Let's assume for example that membership years are always calendar years (and there have not been any covid extensions). If you are already platinum and earn 540 qpoints during 2022, your tier will be renewed for 2023. Because you were platinum on 1 Jan 2022 and are not upgrading to a higher tier, the rolling 12 months does not apply and qpoints earned in December 2021 would already have been counted in assessing your 2022 membership tier. Asking for those to be used in assessing your 2023 tier would mean counting them twice. Those December 2021 qpoints could only be counted again as part of the 24 month assessment, requiring 1080 qpoints during the whole of 2021 and 2022.

So I make the agent right on this one. They will assess how many qpoints you earned during your 12 month membership year on the last day of that membership year, to determine whether your tier is extended or reduced.

That’s not to say though that there may not be some winners and some losers around the margins from the automatic extensions for everyone to 31 Dec 2022, depending on people's previous year end dates and travel patterns (I would include myself in that second group). But we are where we are now and at some stage loyalty programmes like this have to get back to normality.

fender5787

I recently talked with a QR agent about the rolling renewal issue and they kinda spun it positively in an interesting way that makes sense. Say if you reach 540 qpoints in October but your tier expiration date is dec 31st, if the tier renews in October, you will in effect loose 2 months of platinum status in 2023 since your new expiration date would be oct 2023 rather than December 2023. That said, this does kind of screw members that earned a lot of qpoints at the end of 2021 but didn’t do much earning now at the end of 2022. So like all FF programs, there’s gonna be winners and losers. That said, the agent ensured me that once the clock hits midnight on Jan 1st, 2023 Doha time, all of us that have earned 540 q points in 2022 will have our plat tiers renewed for another year.

florin

I'm guessing the calendar year logic only applies to Plat then, because there is no higher tier to upgrade to., while Silver and Gold use the rolling 12 months logic. Right?

KingCanute

Partly. The rolling year applies to upgrades from any tier to the next, and yes there is nowhere to upgrade to from platinum.

To renew at the same tier (any tier, not just platinum) the fixed year applies, whereby your points earned in the previous 12 months prior to your renewal date are assessed. So this could also result in downgrading you to a lower tier if you did not meet the threshold to renew at your current tier.

florin

But for Gold, the website says:
I qualified for Gold in May 2022. Based on what the website says, my status would be reassessed in May 2023 based on the 12 months leading up to that.
What you are saying is that it goes to calendar year instead. Does that mean that I am gold until 31 Dec 2022 as well as all of 2023, and whether I qualify beyond that is based on my 2023 QPoints?

KingCanute

I said "your points earned in the previous 12 months prior to your renewal date are assessed". And of course there is also the 24 months prior to that date as you point out.

But it's not a calendar year unless your tier expiry date is 31 Dec.