One of the most messed up promotions I’ve incurred and read about is IHG’s “Into the Nights” promotion. The terms were beyond vague, peoples dashboards were changed overnight, and stays are taking forever to be reported. I actually wrote about this dysfunctional promotion previously in this post: “Can IHG Be Trusted with Changing the “Into the Nights” Terms?”.
My personal offer required 4 nights to ultimately give me 52,000 points and 3 free nights to use in 2015. It was one of the better offers I saw and I decided to take advantage. I ultimately had two necessary nights during the promotion, so spent about $200 out of pocket for two mattress runs to complete the other nights. Overall, I thought $200 was well worth it for the amount of points I’d earn plus the 3 free nights that can be used at any high end IHG hotel. My goal is to ideally use them in Europe.
My last stay was completed on December 21 and still 9 days later my dashboard has not been updated. While I understand there are lags in the system, this is a huge lag when IHG is offering additional bonus opportunities once you complete all tasks. So once my dashboard is updated with all three tasks completed, it will unlock additional tasks to earn additional points. These are also targeted for the individual account and there is no way of knowing what is required until the dashboard is updated. Well since the promotion ends tomorrow and the additional offers are still locked, I probably will never know! This also means that I have no way to actually partake in them. Most likely they would not have been worthwhile but you never know. Maybe I am missing out on a huge opportunity and should be checking myself into an IHG hotel tonight?!
Of course I was annoyed that I am not even given the opportunity as the system takes FOREVER and the promotion will expire. My assumption is most folks who completed their last night in the last three weeks of December will not be able to take advantage. My prior stay in November took 16 days to upload to the dashboard! I called IHG to ask if they are able to manually update my dashboard, voiced my frustration, and of course was told no. I was told that it takes 7 to 10 business days, which of course is not correct as my prior stay took more than that. I then asked for a supervisor as they are able to do things in the system that others cannot. Again, I explained the issue and was told there is physically no way for him to update the system, that it is all run by technology. Whether he is right or wrong I do not know, but he wouldn’t do it for me. Without pressing him too much and even asking for it, he voluntarily gave me 10,000 points as a courtesy. The points were in my account instantly.
Again, I’ll never know if I would have taken advantage of those locked bonus opportunities, but my assumption is I am better off with 10,000 points from the supervisor. So, to make a long story short (if you are still even with me here), if you are facing the same issue, call IHG, ask to speak to a supervisor, explain to him or her that you can’t take advantage of the bonus offers due to a massive lag time in the system update and hopefully you’ll get some points. If all else fails, you can always ask for them.
Anyone have any luck?!
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
I too have been frustrated with this. They did manually give me points for one of my targets but never updated the website to show achieved. Another one took over 2 weeks to get posted. I complet d all my stages last night so I am hoping to eventually get all my points sometime in January. I will not participate in the new program that starts in January