Priceless Surprises Missing Points
IHG Rewards Club had what was perhaps one of the most generous promotions in recent times. Called Priceless Surprises, the promotion was designed to award bonus points to loyal customers for each stay during the promotional period. After the first stay, bonus points were awarded through an online game.
Staying at an IHG hotel wasn’t the only way to play. You could also mail in up to 94 handwritten postcards to IHG. These postcards needed to contain a ton of information and took awhile to fill out, but many including myself felt it was worth the time and cost of a stamp. Unfortunately, some of us never received credit for sending in all of the cards.
Mailing in the Cards
My wife sent in her entire batch of 94 postcards at once back in January and then I sent in my entire batch of 94 cards a few weeks later. A few weeks after my cards were sent, I began receiving a small trickle of emails to play the game. Most of the time I won 500 points, but occasionally I got a bigger prize. My wife’s entries never came.
In total, I received 67 game entries and my wife received 0. This meant this I was missing credit for 27 entries and she needed credit for all of her 94 postcards sent. Thankfully Points with a Crew shared how he was able to contact IHG and get them to credit points for the missing entries.
Getting the Missing Points
To request the missing points, I sent an email to ihgservice@ihg.com with mine and my wife’s account numbers and an explanation of what was going on. Within a few hours I received the following reply:
I have submitted your details to our IHG Rewards Club Service Center for review. Please expect feedback from them as soon as information will be available. Feel free to email us back if you have any other concerns. For your reference, your concerns were documented under case number —-. I have created a separate case for your wife’s account.
After receiving that email I also received a second one with my wife’s case number and then began to wait patiently. It took 9 days to finally hear back from IHG Rewards Club. First my email came through:
I have reviewed your account and unfortunately, since the promotion has ended, we can no longer send out game plays. However, I have posted 500 points for the 27 missing entries on your account. Total points credited is 13,500.
And then a few minutes later the same rep sent an email to my wife:
I have reviewed your account and unfortunately, since the promotion has ended, we can no longer send out game plays. However, I have posted 500 points for the 93 missing entries on your account. Total points credited is 46,500.
Why only 93 entries? My wife actually completed her 55K single night stay during the promotion and received 1,000 points for Priceless Surprises, so my guess is that she only qualified for 93 instead of 94 entries.
Only 500 Points Per Entry
The truth is that we probably would have earned more points if we had received actual game plays since 500 was the absolute minimum amount of points you could win per entry. Based on my 67 plays that I did receive, I was able to get more than 500 points about 10% of the time. With that said, I am happy with the 500 point minimum and feel given the circumstances that IHG has definitely delivered on their side of the agreement.
Conclusion
If you have not received game play entries for the postcards you sent in during the Priceless Surprises promotion, then stop waiting and send them an email. Based on their response to me, there won’t be any more game plays sent out, so the only way to get credit for your entries is to ask. Now only one question remains. Where did all of those missing postcards go?
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[…] tax). We are flush with IHG points between my wife’s mattress run and writing all of those postcards, so that wasn’t a problem. In fact, we got a huge value. On a night when all of the hotels […]
wrote to IHG, they said it’s helloworld, then Helloworld said they stopped sending out game entries on March 15. Should I try to contact them again???? Talking to a IHG will improve my chances? I got like 73 of 94 all posted, my family got 0.
I would definitely contact IHG directly.
I second that. Tweet IHG publicly and tell them you’ve had the run around with HelloWorld and you’re disappointed with the lack of help. It’s how I had someone with IHG contact me directly within 24 hours.
data point here: did not receive all my entries, got 75. Wrote as recommended to request missing credits the day before the promo ended. Got email back saying essentially “tough tooties, the game is over now”. I suppose I could escalate but I’m out of energy for this promo and got enough points out of the 75 I did receive.
I had issues receiving the game plays and receiving the credit for game plays. I didn’t get any responses to my postcards, so I emailed HelloWorld. HelloWorld then sent me all 94 game plays (this was during the promotion). I entered 94 times recording the outcome of my entries. Most were 500, but I had a few 1,000 point and 2,000 point winners and one 5,000 point winner. Then I got credited 100 adn 200 points for my entries to my IHG account. After three rounds of emails, I finally called IHG this weekend.
At first, they only credited me the 47,000 points for the minimum 500 points per play. Then they told me I was never registered for the promo. Then they upped my point total to 50,000. Then they offered 5,000 to make it go away. I just wanted another 1,500 to bring it to the total I actually earned and had to fight for it. After I threatened to write IHG corporate, the phone rep upped my points to 61,000.
Time in for this one probably topped several hours between filling out and sending the entries and fighting for the points. Still worth it IMHO
My case is different. I sent 94 entries. Received all 94 plays. I do not have the breakdown of the points i won but it was over 50,000. Only 1000 points have been posted to my account. I have sent e-mail to IHG and they tell to contact Hello World. I contct them and they tell me promotion is over and they have nothing to do with it.
[…] All of My Wife’s IHG Priceless Surprises Entries Were Lost: Here Is How IHG Fixed the Problem &… – How to get your points from this promotion if you never received the game plays. […]
[…] All of My Wife’s IHG Priceless Surprises Entries Were Lost: Here Is How IHG Fixed the Problem […]
IHG came through with 500 points for missing entries . On the phone the lady made very slight reference to Helloworld . Although she didn’t say as such directly I thought I heard disdain in her voice .I’m happy to have the points . Thanks to all who advised and Good Luck too .
I too have been at war with IHG. I got 82 of my 94 and my hubby got zero. IHG claimed that he never registered but I know for a fact he did because I did it at the same time I did mine. I have gone so far as to threaten reporting them to the states attorney general office for fraud. Still no response. I will keep trying though. Any recommendations?
Go to twitter and make it public Be polite about it obviously. If its anything like what my experience they’ll ask you to message them directly on Twitter and it’ll be followed up by someone who actually cares. They don’t want anything negative being posted about them for others to see.
Which Twitter account? IHG or Hello World
IHG. HelloWorld at this point has wiped its hands clean of this and appears to be of no help (haven’t been for a while now).
Pretty cut and dry here… Do you have the email proof that he registered? Every person that registered received an email confirmation.
After sending in a complaint on missing entries, i got the 19 missing entries via promo emails. All had 500 point credit.. BUT only 1 of them posted to my account. So I’m still waiting to hear why the other 18 game play emails that resulted in 500/ea haven’t posted.
I was missing 18/94 entries and after at minimum 6 attempts to be compensated at the 500 IHG points per entry I eventually had to twitter to get anything done. Of course, what really got the wheels moving was publicly threatening to report IHG to the BBB because their initial response was a cookie-cutter about needing to have sent them in on time. As soon as I threatened, I was told someone would email me within 24 hours. Less than 24 hours later I received a detailed email and for whatever reason they paid only 11 of the 18 which is good enough for me at this point. First time I’ve ever done anything of the sort, because I don’t want to be that person airing dirty laundry that could’ve been solved otherwise.
Overall, HelloWorld was useless, telling me quite bluntly twice that I received my entries (that was all the email stated). IHG on at least 3 occasions simply deferred and told me HelloWorld would be in contact, which of course never happened. This promo was obviously worth it when a stamp guarantees you 500 points and you’re allowed to repeat it 94 times per person. However, I cannot recall the last time I had to fight so much to get what I’m owed. I’ve read varying reports of some people getting them easily and others, like me, getting no where. At the end of the day, seems going public on Twitter always gets the job done.
We had a similar experience. I mailed in my 94 and so did my husband. I received email entries and he did not receive any. Same method, same post office same mailing dates… So odd. Took since March 14 but IHG made it right with his account and that is all he was asking for. It took some time to write out 94 notecards and mail them in! So frustrating to run around with Hello World but IHG did a good job correcting it.
I’m under the impression that like you, HelloWorld is the mess here. However, at least in my experience, IHG did their best to defer to HelloWorld again and again (3 time for me) when it should’ve been obvious they weren’t handling my case. Even if its just in regards to their promotional/marketing department, it’s left a not-so-great taste in my mouth with IHG. Seems some here didn’t have this issue once they skipped HelloWorld, so if there’s any silver lining it’s that IHG did get it right the first time around for some.
Curious what proof you offered to prove the entries were mailed?
I have proof of the stamps that were purchased along with photos of the cards, but they didn’t ask for any proof. We are long time members and Platinum elites because of the credit card, so I’m not sure if that made a difference.
It probably made no difference at all. I had not thought to create any photographic proof (though I did still have my stamps receipt), and they did not ask me for any proof, either. I created an IHG account specifically to enter the Priceless Surprises thing, so I am truly a very new customer. I did put one stay on my account since then, but so far, only one. I have registered for Accelerate and fulfilled some of the tasks (specifically, downloading the app and fulfilling the first stay and the first night). But I really am not a particularly valuable customer to them, at least not yet 🙂
At best, I can say that I look like a customer who might possibly be hookable for the long term.
I was missing 13 of the 94 entries and IHG responded by adding 500 points/entry to my account. Something tells me they’ll never do another promo like this one 🙂
I was back and forth with Helloworld and IHG for awhile till I finally recently spoke to a helpful supervisor at IHG and they credited my account with the 47,000 points.