As you probably already know, Club Carlson is devaluing their program by removing the popular Bonus Award night.
With the Bonus Award Night, the last night of any award redemption was always FREE, meaning that if you booked award stays with Club Carlson in 2-day increments, it was essentially like a Buy 1 Get 1 Free award!
Strategy 1: Book your rooms NOW!
This probably goes without saying, but if you’ve got a large stash of Club Carlson points, now is the time to use them! If you book in 2-night increments (and you should!), then your points are worth twice as much now as they will be in June.
We’re looking at booking the Radisson Blu in Rome for our Europe trip later on this year
Strategy 2: Complain!
I don’t know that I’d classify myself as a “complainer” but I do think it’s important to let companies know when you’re not satisfied. In this case, I called up US Bank and they gave me 2500 bonus points, which should show up with my next statement.
My wife submitted her complaint online at usbank.com, and those have already showed up!
There were reports of people in this Mommy Points post of people getting 7500 points or even a refund of their annual fee. There was also talk of people filing a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Not sure that I’m going to do that, but it is an option
Strategy 3: Book a paid stay
There is a confluence of Club Carlson promotions going on, by which one simple paid stay of ~$100 can earn you back about 37,000 points. And if you do that sooner rather than later, you’ll have those points available to make bookings before the end of May, meaning those points would be worth close to 75,000 points!
Yes it stinks that Club Carlson pulled the rug out on us but a) this stuff just happens and b) at least they gave us a few months to make some final bookings. I can respect that a lot more than airlines or hotel chains that just change things unilaterally on the spot.
Any other good suggestions for how to make the most of the Club Carlson devaluation?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
You can get $75 refund and 20K or even 50k points if you file BBB & CFPB complaint . Include the card member agreement that says you get bonus award night after paying $75. Threaten to contact your states AG’s office for the scam! That’s real way to fight to get something back. it only took 5 mins.
I just tried this out…attached my email of the agreement. We’ll see how it goes. Did you get a response quickly?