Club Carlson has allowed conversion of Gold Points to miles at a fixed scale of 2,000 points to 250 miles, 50,000 points to 8,000 miles and 100,000 points to 18,000 airlines miles. I wrote a piece about airline transfers in December (you can read it here), when I redeemed 300K Gold Points to 54K United miles + 15K bonus for hotel points conversion from United. So, I got 69K United miles for 300K Club Carlson points.
Now, Club Carlson has devalued the Gold Points to airline conversions by up to 44% and has not given any prior notice to program members. You can see the old rates on the left and the new conversion rates on the right. You can access Club Carlson’s web page for points to airline conversion here.
Club Carlson likely pays around one cent for an airline mile that they purchase. Conversion of 100,000 CC points to 18,0000 airline miles likely cost them around $180.
Hotel loyalty programs reimburse hotels for awards usually at a very low rate of $20 to $50 per night (unless the occupancy is really high). Club Carlson must have run the numbers and decided that buying these miles from airlines was too expensive for them.
There is absolutely no excuse for Club Carlson for not giving any prior notice about this change for their members and let them to redeem at the now old rates for set period of time. This would have been the right thing to do.
Club Carlson changed their award requirements earlier this year by only publishing well hidden page on their website couple of days before the new award levels were going to take effect and never emailed anything about this to their membership. They have also changed some hotel award categories mid year without any prior notice to program members.
Conclusion
I would say that anyone with any significant number of Club Carlson points on their account should be very careful and use the points rather sooner than later.
It usually doesn’t bode too well for the longevity of the program, when they make drastic changes like changing their award charts without giving any prior notice and revamping the points to airline conversion with no notice again. They can certainly do so and it is within the Terms and conditions of the program, but is it ethical?
This change was first posted on a thread on FlyerTalk that you can access here.
100K >> 18K wasn’t even good to begin with.
I think that it was fair. 18K UA is worth maybe $360 MAX. Difficult to get for me to get $360 value of 100K CC. Basically two to three nights.
Agree. It wasn’t amazing, but it was very fair. Regardless, the exchange now is just pathetic. They were way too aggressive in trying to make a splash in the hotel points world.
Why is that? A one night hotel in Europe will easily cost more that that (more like $500) and for 50K points only. So for 100,000 points you get 4 nights and if you have the cc, it is about $2,000.
You cannot value hotel night at Radisson property at $500 if you would never pay that amount for the night in question in cash..
This is especially upsetting since they just offered points for purchase via a flash deal and via Daily Getaways. They should be ashamed.
This is very bad ethically. No notice.
It’s funny you made a banner for them. They should borrow your banner and put on their homepage where the 5 rotating banners are.
Feel free to suggest that to Club Carlson!
Great, that seems to be the norm lately. Offer specials to your guests and boom hit your customers with devaluations without notice. Glad I did not buy into the hype.
I think that this was about as stealth devaluation as we have seen for some time. They were pushing points sales the past two weeks and suddenly now transferring to airlines makes very little sense.
No surprise here. They’ve handed out points like candy (cheap, cheap candy) for two years and now they’re devaluing those points. The only appeal to the chain has been those free points and generous credit card benefits. Expect to see new limits on the redeem one, get one free benefit on the Club Carlson Visa sometime soon.
Agreed. They will likely change it to fourth/fifth night free. Don’t think that they had expected people with the CC CC’s to suddenly have only two night award stays to max the benefit.
Have I been lucky…. I exchanged my points last week Thursday. These unannounced changes seem to become the standard these days… 🙁
With less than honest programs yes.
I don’t remember reading on this blog about any honest programs that make advance announcements.
I remember. Marriott Rewards gave plenty of notice in February (I think) about their planned devaluation of points which was implemented in mid-May. That was decent, although I didn’t like the new hotel categories. John wrote about this in his blog.
Most of the more mature programs do give proper prior notice of major changes including Marriott.
I don’t often consider myself exceptionally lucky, but this time around I managed to burn all my Club Carlson points before they got devalued.
Now the air miles have become pricier without further notice. Not sure if I’m going to stay loyal to CC in the future.
Change without ANY advance notice is bad and doesn’t bode well for the program’s future. What if they change the award structure overnight and without any notice? That must be coming at some point.
Loyalty programs have become just like gas stations. They can raise their prices (change their rules) without notice, on a daily basis. As long as they are allowed to do this, which is their right, we are all fair game. That is why informative blogs and websites like this are so valuable and I don’t feel guilty for one second when I take advantage of loopholes in the system.
We as consumers are not breaking any rules. I’m not sure of the saying but it’s something like “eat or be eaten.”
Lufthansa lost a case like this in court – rather surprising IMHO