UPDATE: Reader Question: Buying Hilton HHonors Gold Status From eBay?

Back in June, I replied to one reader email about buying Hilton HHonors Gold status off of eBay (read more here).

Someone replied that they had purchased the status from eBay only to find their account downgraded all the way to the Blue (no) status two days later.

I purchased the status for a family member’s account and it was processed very promptly by the eBay seller.

And the status is still valid today, but many of the eBay status sellers seems to have gone, however. This implies that I was probably right when I assumed that these account upgrades were somehow coming from the instant Gold promo that Hilton HHonors was offering to many business school graduates.

Whoever the sellers were, they must have had access to many business school email addresses that they then in turn used for this Hilton instant Gold account promo.

Conclusion

As I said on my original piece, you never know how these might turn out. I would not be surprised had the account been downgraded few days later or even if it would downgraded more than two months down the road. It is apparent, however, that the system Hilton used for these Gold upgrades was flawed.