toomanybooks

I currently hold this card and am the "primary". My wife is the "secondary" signer.

Recently I tried to convert 5000 Choice points into 2 RR credits for her, to put her over for a RR ticket. Did it online, her RR number, her name, etc.

A few days later the credits showed up for ME, not her. It took a while, so I am assuming a person got involved in the transaction somehow.

Her last name is different from mine, a hyphenated form of her maiden name and my name. Our address is of course the same.

Choice tells me that the "transferee" must be an equal signer on the account, "not a secondary, and has just sent me a simple form we can fill out to set this up, allegedly.

Presumably you could put your parent or an adult relative or friend on as an equal signer. Whether one could put a minor child on there as a co-signer I did not ask.

NEW PROMO FOR CHOICE POINTS; SEPT. 1 to DEC. 15, 2006:

I think a repeat of a past one, NOT TARGETTED. Apparently just announced:

"This fall with the Choice Privileges® rewards program, stay 2 separate times in the U.S., Canada, Caribbean or Mexico and you'll earn a free night at over 1,000 hotels."

"Available at Comfort Inn®, Comfort Suites®, Quality Inn®, Sleep Inn®, Clarion®, and MainStay Suites® hotels

Book online for the Best Internet Rates Guaranteed"

"The free night is based on an 8,000 point Choice Privileges reward night. A free night may require more points at certain hotels. Members can earn points for stays when paying eligible rates. A stay is defined as any number of consecutive nights at one hotel regardless of check-ins or check-outs."

"Bonus points will be added to points earned from every two qualifying stays, with arrival between September 1, 2006 and December 15, 2006, to reach the 8,000 point reward level."

http://www.choicehotels.com/ires/en-...Ix.w1LUMgjgi.5

rove312

So I take it it's not targeted and there's no need to sign up for it. Do we need to request Choice points instead of airline credits for the stay?

Edited to add: I have the Choice Privileges Visa and have two Sept. stays booked throught my Choice account, with my profile showing a preference for RR credit. Ideally they would know about my membership even if the stay credit is on RR.

rove312

I don't know if anyone else was wondering this, but I e-mailed Choice Privileges and got this response:

nsx

Tomorrow is the last day for this promotion!

iahphx

Yeah, I just applied. I REALLY didn't want another freebie card, but this offer was too good to refuse.

Hopefully, BofA won't hold it against me that I already took a different card from them this year for the free miles, but only made the single required purchase.

im_blue

Details of fall promotion where you get 8,000 points for 2 stays from 9/1/06 to 12/15/06, which is equivalent to 3.2 RR credits!
------------------------------------------------------------------
This fall with the Choice Privileges® rewards program, stay 2 separate times in the U.S., Canada, Caribbean or Mexico and you'll earn a free night at over 1,000 hotels. It's just our way of saying, "Go on, get out there!"

- Stay 2 times, earn a free night at over 1,000 hotels.
- Available at Comfort Inn®, Comfort Suites®, Quality Inn®, Sleep Inn®, Clarion®, and MainStay Suites® hotels
- Book online for the Best Internet Rates Guaranteed

Fine print:
The free night is based on an 8,000 point Choice Privileges reward night. A free night may require more points at certain hotels. Members can earn points for stays when paying eligible rates. A stay is defined as any number of consecutive nights at one hotel regardless of check-ins or check-outs.

Bonus points will be added to points earned from every two qualifying stays, with arrival between September 1, 2006 and December 15, 2006, to reach the 8,000 point reward level. Allow 72 hours from check-out for points to post to your account. For program details and point redemption rules, visit choiceprivileges.com. Best Internet Rate Guarantee - Terms and Conditions apply.

Palal

Sounds like a good deal. I guess that means 24K+8K = 32K points = 12.8 credits.

gregorygrady

You can take advantage of this promo as many times as you want. Basically you get 1.6 RR credits per stay at Choice hotels for the next few months. This promo happens quite often and is a great deal if you can tolerate Choice hotels..........I surely will try to take advantage of this promo if/when the other chains have nothing better going on.

nsx

sdsearch

And pray tell, how often do other chain have something better going on, especially at comparable prices?

Even if you don't want RR credits, it works out to 800 miles per stay. Which is even better (slightly) than the upcoming (mid Oct) BW promo for triple points or triple miles if you're a AAA/CAA BW member, which gets you 750 miles (but no ability to get RR credits).

From a miles perspective, you could do better if a chain that gives you 500 miles per stay (HHonors other than Hampton, for example) gave you double miles (as that'd be 1000 miles per stay), but from an RR perspective the normal earning at almost every hotel is 0.5 credits, so double credits wouldn't come close to this Choice promo and only triple RR credits (which seems pretty rare at other chains, tho is in fact another recurring Choice promo) would match the net effect of this Choice promo.

gregorygrady

Hmmm, I value 1.66 RR credits at ~ $32. So off the top of my head things that would be a better value for ME:

1. SPG: 3 stays for 10K bonus points (targeted promo), plus three 500 pt. SPG Plat amenities plus normal points (~1000 pts for 3 stays?). = 12,500 SPG points = $250 (at $0.02 per SPG point) = ~$83 back per stay

2. IC: (Double points/1000 pt online booking bonus). I've got some stays coming up in China where I'll be at an IC for ~$70 per night. 2000 pts + 2000 pts (double pts bonus) + 1000 pts (online booking bonus) + 1000 pts (50% Plat Elite bonus). = 6000 PC pts for one night. = $40 back (at $0.0066 per PC pt).

3. Hyatt: Faster Free Nights (buy nights at ANY Hyatt, get one free night at ANY Hyatt), if it comes back. This promo can routinely get you back $150-200 per night if you book cheap sub-$100 Hyatts and use your free nights at $400+ per night Hyatts in Hawaii or Europe. I'm hoping for this promo to come back......

4. HH just had a promo that ended a month ago called 5/10/15 where you stay 5 nights and get a free night at the highest category HH hotel. Add in the Miles (1/2 RR credit) and Points and I was getting back ~$60 per stay at HH hotels.

Those are a few of the promos that are better than this one. Plus those hotels are nicer than Choice hotels. But this Choice promo is definitely a good one when I'm leisure traveling and having to pay for hotels out of my own pocket. I'm sure I'll take advantage of it at least a few times during the course of the promo. Just no more Econolodges for me. I learned my lesson the hard way at those piles of #@& a couple years ago. They are just dumps!!

sdsearch

Ah, well, there you go. You seem to be comparing apples and oranges. I meant what promos are better relative to the price paid. If you're not paying at all (because someone else is paying for you), well that completely changes any game!

Yes, if you can find cheap sub-$100 Hyatts where you travel and you get a chance to use those free nights before they expire, that's cool. (The one time a few years ago I was able to do the former, I was not able to do the latter because I didn't have any weekend trips to cities where they had a hotel during the window of time the free night was good for; since then I've not been able to find sub-$100 Hyatt nights near where I most often stay, and I'm still not sure, given how far ahread I plan my leisure travel, that I'd be able to use such a free night "in time" if I ever earned one again).

I hate programs (like Hyatt and BW) that give you limited-time certificates. I never get good value out of them because I always end up using them at the last minute (because I didn't have time to plan a trip where they'd be good enough value).

I guess that's because all my flying is also on my own dime, and thus I don't requalify for status unless I fly enough, and to fly enough on my own dime at good fares I have to book far in advance. So I've used up my "airfare budget" for the next half year usually by the time I get one of those pesky free night certificates (rather than points) which I can only use for a few months!

Well, Econolodges aren't part of Choice Priveleges, even though they are part of Choice. They're part of EasyChoice instead, and that program is just as to-be-avoided as the properties that use it!

toomanybooks

gregorygrady:

If it's "value out vs. dollars in," it would seem hard to beat a $40 Comfort Inn room under the current Choice promotion. I managed to snag this in Orlando, near Disneyworld, in a newly redecorated Inn right as the summer season was heating up (June 9-11), and was pretty surprised; presumably as the fall approaches, this will also be doable.

Two stays for $80 yields 8000 points (ignore sales tax). And if you pay with your Choice Privileges Visa, it's another 5 points per dollar, or 400 points. That's 8400 = 3.68 RR credits.

You say you value RR credits at $19.27 each (1.66 RR ~ $32). So that's $71 value from the Choice points for $80 expended.

And if you are trying to make progress toward a WN Companion Pass, which you otherwise would not reach, those points are a whole lot more valuable.

Say you normally accumulate 60 RR credits in a twelve-month period, with no hope of reaching 100 because you can't travel any more than you already do. Those credits aren't worth anything to you by comprising 60% of a putative CP.

But now, by getting the extra 40 RR credits, you receive a CP worth, pick your figure out of the air, maybe $2000 (a companion once a month @ $166 per RT flight).

Those marginal 40 RR credits have an extra value now of $50 each! And a tax-free $50, I assume (has anybody been taxed on the value of a CP?).

It all depends on your personal situation of course, but this seems a great promotion to me and I am starting right away.

zzyzx

Have you made the credits posted into your wife's RR account yet?

I may need to do the same thing to save some orphan credits by Dec., in the lack of double wn credit offer.

toomanybooks

No, at the moment we each have a couple RR tickets, so I am waiting for a more opportune moment.