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IHG Extends Status and Free Night Certificates
- All members’ program status will be automatically extended through January 2022, allowing members to enjoy all the benefits of the status they earned during 2019.
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- For Spire Elite members this includes the Choice benefit of 25,000 bonus points or gifting of Platinum Elite status to someone each year
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- Ambassador Free Weekend Nights are granted an extra three months of validity.
- All expiring Chase credit card Free Night Certificates are now automatically extended through December 31, 2020.
- The status extension will be valid even for matched members (I still have Spire Elite from this promotion so I guess now I have it through January 2022!
Below is the revised criteria for earning IHG status if you didn’t already have status to extend.
More details at IHG.com
Global Entry Renewals Now Come with 18 Month Grace Period – Except New Yorkers, Of Course
OMAAT reported yesterday that once you renew your Global Entry, you’ll get an automatic 18 month grace period.
Lots of credit cards, like the Chase Sapphire Reserve (among about a dozen others) will cover your renewal fee of $100 once every four years.
Because of COVID, there’s going to be a massive delay in processing applications so they’ve extended the grace period to 18 months.
However, you may recall that a few months ago, the administration basically told New York State residents (like myself) to go suck it as punishment for the state government allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses.
Of course, other states do similar and NYS has provided all that the federal government needs to continue processing renewals securely. They just won’t. Even renewals that were submitted before the change were retroactively cancelled, so this extension won’t help New Yorkers.
I fully expect some comment on this post that New Yorkers deserve it for electing officials that do whatever they do, which I’ll counter right now is akin to you saying you deserve ANYTHING any elected official you did in your state – even if you disagree or didn’t vote for them.
I’m sure the comment will come anyway…
Which is why I’m happy to see that New Yorkers are suing the Trump administration over it.
A New Round of AA Account Terminations – With a New Reason
Nearly every blog reported on this today, but I think Dan’s Deals hit it on the head. Most are aware that American Airlines embarked late last year on a campaign to shut down the accounts of and permanently ban thousands of AAdvantage members (even some high-value Executive Platinum customers from a status and revenue perspective) for the heinous act of applying for multiple credit cards using mailer application codes sent to other people (or, actually, in some cases to themselves). No recourse was offered, no conversations were had.
This time, the subject is crediting a car rental’s earned miles manually to the program after a member’s miles expired, forcing the miles to be magically restored from the dead. You can read the linked Dan’s Deals post for more details.
Like the credit card debacle, there were clearly some people that did something very wrong (photoshopping someone else’s receipt to submit as their own) and some others that (it seems) simply made a habit of submitting them way after the fact to unexpire miles.
I agree with Dan that it seems there are some auditors there that are afraid they’ll be made redundant (fired) if they don’t come up with new and innovative ways to fire customers and take back their miles to reduce the liability on the AAdvantage balance sheet.
I fully understood when the job of this AAudit department was to catch people selling miles. That’s very much against the Terms and Conditions. And those customers were generally offered a way to pay AA for the claimed damage and remain a program member, which I don’t think they should have been. AA would have even been in the right to sue them for damages as brokers cost them real money.
However, he recent terminations since late last year are just vicious, with no way to appeal, no way to discuss, and a lifetime ban.
I’ll say this until I’m blue in the face: A member should be given a warning or, at worst, a chance to make good on a “first offense.” What they have been doing has substantially degraded the overall trust in the AAdvantage program. Why take part in a Lifetime Status promotion like this one when next year they may decide you violated a rule that wasn’t anywhere in the AAdvantage terms and conditions, take away your lifetime status and miles, and then ignore your appeals to discuss?
It’s a bad look.
Thoughts?
Let me know here, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group.
You can find credit cards that best match your spending habits and bonus categories at Your Best Credit Cards.
New to all of this? The MilesTalk “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available on Amazon and at major booksellers.
