One of the basic tenets of the miles and points world or anything where you have to follow “rules” to get achievements / prizes whatever is that many times you don’t get what you “should” (whether due to poor company’s IT systems, misreading of the rules, dishonest companies trying to wriggle out of their obligations, etc). I learned this maxim first about 10 years or so ago when I did a deal that involved getting a laptop for free after filling out 47 mail-in rebates (SEE: The parable of the 47 mail-in rebates – a lesson in persistence). The lesson being that a) you have to track your promotion requirements and b) you often have to call / follow-up / fight
Since then, here are just a FEW of the times where I’ve had to do that
- Filing an EU261 compensation claim against Aer Lingus (they eventually paid me $1306)
- Getting British Airways to refund me 25,000 Avios after I paid for a business class award and was bumped to economy (they did, nearly a year later)
- Finally getting all of my IHG points after their Priceless Experiences (aka filling out 104 envelopes) promotion (family assembly line pic below)
Choice Hotels Fall 2017 promotion
Back in 2017, Choice Hotels had a promotion where you got a “free night” (actually 8000 points) after 2 stays. I had a few paid stays coming up, so in October 2017 I decided to hotel hop in Colorado Springs between the Econo Lodge ($56 / night) and the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center
($84).
Fast forward a month or so, and I noticed that I hadn’t received any points for the stay. I emailed the Choice Privileges Service center, which I have generally found to be a giant waste of time, and eventually (after WEEKS delay) I finally got a response that somehow my account had been set to earn “miles” instead of points. I’m not sure what had happened as there was an account number listed under “miles” but no actual airline listed. So not only did I not get any Choice points, I didn’t get any airline miles either!
Then it was time to call in to the Choice Privileges service center. The first person I got was not helpful, but after HUCA, I got a friendlier agent who credited me my points (560 for the Econo Lodge stay and 840 for the Clarion stay).
But here we are nearly at the end of February 2018, and I haven’t received the bonus points from the promotion. So given the waste of time that is emailing Choice Privileges, I called back in. The first lady I spoke to was nice, and sympathetic, but said there was nothing she could do. I asked to speak to a supervisor, who, after about 15 minutes of hold, granted me my promotion points!
Sweet success!
Have you had to “fight” to get a company to honor a promotion? Leave your stories in the comments
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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 
— yes, with the IHG 94 envelope promotion
— yes, with Citi for the annual 10,000 point spending reward when $700 of spending didn’t credit because a Hilton Hotel codes their charges as “Hotels…Not Elsewhere Classified” (the catchall category for a bed & breakfast, campsite, etc., because a 12 story hotel thinks it is a b&b?) and the offshore customer support braintrust can’t get it thru their heads that “Hotel…NEC” from a Hyatt Hotel must, indeed, be hotel spend.
— yes, with Hyatt/Chase for the 5x points on Hyatt spend when a Hyatt Hotels codes their charges “Hotels…Not Elsewhere classified” — heard this one before?
yes, we are whiners (but winners!)
It’s unfortunate how prevalent this is….
You think that’s bad, I tried to chase down one of the $2.50 Amazon bonuses that they refused to award (around the same time, if memory serves).
I used Twitter, sent emails, even called. Definitely way overdid it, considering it was for a $2.50 credit – but mostly it was during time I had nothing else to do (or so I convinced myself).
Eventually I figured I would never get it, so I signed off the last correspondence with “thanks, don’t think I’ll be using Choice again, since it’s this much trouble for a lousy $2.50”.
Couple of weeks ago, I receive an email with a link for a $2.50 Amazon GC. Still pretty sure it wasn’t worth all the effort, and haven’t stayed at a Choice since – and likely won’t for a while – but it was nice that at least something came through.
LOL – that reminds me of a story the other day. I had (have) an iPass from the Illinois Tollway department and somehow my account got closed and the $11 that was still on my transponder they sent to the “unclaimed funds” government department. I checked the unclaimed funds section of both Ohio and Illinois but was not able to find anything. I sent emails, I searched online, and called multiple times but eventually I gave up. I mean as you might figure, my threshhold for the amount of work I will do to chase down $11 is incredibly high but even so it was still too much for me…. 🙂
I wish your content was more current