IHG Rewards Club Select Card Free Night Certificate
I am back at it with more IHG related news. Yesterday I shared with you the answers to most of your questions about the new credit card refresh IHG is doing in a few months. The good news is most of the upcoming changes are positive. There were a lot of questions left unanswered initially in regards to the $49 legacy IHG card. I was able to answer most of them in yesterdays article, plus alert you to a new IHG card family rule coming. There was still one question about the legacy card’s free night certificate I didn’t have an answer to yet though.
More specifically I wasn’t sure if carrying both the IHG Premier card and the $49 IHG Rewards Club Select card would unlock both card’s free night certificates. With the new changes going into effect in March, IHG Rewards Premier cardholders will be able to add points to their 40K free night certificates for more expensive properties. The question remained, what if you held both cards? Would having the Premier card’s perk work on the IHG Rewards Club Select card’s free night cert too?
It was a valid question because, as we were first to discover, the perks of the current IHG cards stack. Would this be the case for this new perk as well? The short answer is sadly no. Here is what they had to say:
No, the IHG Rewards Select Credit Card’s Anniversary Free Night certificate will not have the option to add points on from cardmember’s IHG Rewards account. The Free Night certificates for Premier and Select are deposited into cardmembers’ IHG Rewards account separately. Therefore, even if both card have Free Night certificates available, cardmembers will see the distinction between the certificates in their accounts.
As we know from other credit card related terms, what happens in reality doesn’t always match up to the terms. So we can hold out a sliver of hope that this still works but I feel like that won’t be the case here unfortunately.
This distinction between the cards alone may be a reason to upgrade your card to the Premier version. Would you be able to hold two of the same card like you can with other Chase cards? Possibly. Benjy will dive deeper into the upgrade question with an upcoming post in another day or two.
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I’m holding both cards legacy and premier for many years.
The legacy is one of the greatest cards I have if not the best. Beside the free night certificate it gives you 10% back on IHG point resumptions regardless of which card/stay the points originated from. That for me results with around 30000 points a year. Adding the free night cert it crashes the 49$ annual fee by many hundreds.
A spectacular card to hold.
As long as I get 10% of my points back with the old card and a free night certificate that can be used on a $120 (or more) hotel room for $49, no upgrade. Sorry IHG. Quit offering me 5000 points ($20) to upgrade for an additional $40 per year.
Exactly! I’ve gotten so much value from this $49 AF card over the years.
Agreed. Having the Old and the New on my IHG profile (but not in my wallet, they’re not good cards for spend, although Premier is getting better/upgraded) has been a powerful combo that I don’t want to lose. Also sick of the buy-up/upgrade offers but they’ve quieted down in the past year or so