A LoyaltyLobby reader sent me a case that he was having with Hilton Honors and closed account(s). He gave me a permission to post his rather unfortunate case.
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Here’s what happened with the reader:
Hilton Honors has canceled his account and was referring to excess number of complaints. The reader tried to communicate with them but received no reply.
He approached me and I forwarded the case to our contact at Hilton Honors for review. Often we can help readers in instances when company is stonewalling the issue. This of course assuming that the reader is right.
Well. Turns out that the reader had two accounts and there were quite a few complaints on both.
Here’s what the reader wrote me:
Recently You asked me for email about my case with Hilton Honors, which I mentioned in comment on your fanpage.
I decided to hang on for some days, if there will be answer from Hilton side, but there wasn’t.
So here I am. But what is going on? Let me explain.
I had an account with Diamond status challenge which was valid until 22th may.
I had to do 8 nights to keep the status until march 2019 as you probably know. I was almost at the finish, and there was 1 night to goal. I slept mainly in Hampton by Hilton Hotel Krakow, because this property is closest to my home and it’s relatively cheap (especially in points – 5.000).
In brief – I have done 7 nights, and almost after the 7th night Hilton decided to close my account.
It looked so that I was coming back to home from the hotel, and I wanted to log in into account and check account balance and progress. But I was unable. I thought that Hilton had problems with their website, or were in maintenance. After few tries I called my trusted hotel (DoubleTree by Hilton Warsaw) if they see my account. They told me yes, and informed that could be the temporary problem with hilton website. I said ok, and standby. But after few hours they called me back, and told that my account has disappeared from their records, and something bad happened.
So I began upset and wrote to Hilton Honors fanpage if they can check what is going on, and after an hour I recieved a response. Here it is:
“Hi REMOVED – Upon review of your account, we see that it was closed due to suspicious activity involving compensation abuse. This account has been closed permanently and can not be re-opened. For more information, please email us at Honors_Account_Closure@hilton.com. -Chantel”
I thought it cannot be true and it’s some kind of misunderstanding…
To clarify that – I did complain twice according to Hampton Krakow, because of real inconveniences I discovered during my stays. That was a long list, and if there will be need to tell – I will write it to You also. But be advised that the complaints were referred only to bad stays (for example – unprepared room for guest arrival, and also unpleasant staff and many more…)
There was 6 stays there, and complaints were for two of six, because the rest of the stays were
relatively alright.
When I came back home I wrote to this email mentioned in message with questions and my explanation.
That was almost 2 weeks ago. I also sent this same email to Hiltonhonors@hilton.com, and recieved automatically generated message that I should to wait up to 48 hours for response.
And I really think that 48 hours left a long time ago… In the meantime (2 days ago) I called to the Hilton hotline with question why they are ignoring me. A nice lady told me (after short speak with supervisor), that I need to write email again and wait, because she cannot reopen it, because it was closed by head office and she has no permissions to reopen. I thanked her, and wrote another email.
It was written 3 days ago, and still no response.
It’s a joke! I had there some points, but I had a reservations on this account, and they disappeared (after verifications with the hotels – they don’t see any reservation).
I have also wrote to hampton hotel, because I had suspicion that they got upset with me, and decided to eliminate their guest, because of being inconvenient for their property, and got angry with me and they complained to hilton headquarters and lied about me that I’m doing fake complaints to get points for free. (obviously that never happened)
Hampton answered me after few minutes. My email was so long, and addressed directly to hotel director. She answered me in English language (while I was writing to her in Polish), and she didn’t related to anything I mentioned in my email. She simply told me:
Here’s what the Hilton Honors wrote back:
Conclusion
I wanted to post this one here to warn readers:
1. Not to have more than one account (it is ok for each family members to have one)
and
2. Not to complaint excessively
The Hilton affiliated property get charged $200 fee for every file that the Guest Assistance opens for service issues affecting Diamond member. I would assume that one of the properties didn’t like what was going here and asked Hilton Honors to have a look.
It is already mid-May in 2017 and I have probably only had one hotel compensation issue this year despite staying more than 120 nights so far and one in the works. It is bit inconceivable that one would have issues with almost each and every stay.
And I feel little bid bad at forwarding this case to Hilton Honors. At least the reader got comprehensive reply, although this ended up canceling his second account.
Judging by the amount of compensation and complaints this might be Sebastian’s HH account?
Sebastian is German, not Polish, but it should be a warning for him.
As John said: ” It is bit inconceivable that one would have issues with almost each and every stay.” Did you read that, Sebastian?
Because of his kind of low-life people abusing the system businesses no longer take all complaints seriously. Shame on you! HHonors just got better in my view!
When a loyalty programme was created hoping to create revenue and increase guest satisfaction, this case obviously supports Hilton’s move to stop serving someone who ended up never happy with the service, but keep staying (even the same hotel again and again) plus asking for compensations which brings no real revenue to the company.
Well done, Hilton. One bloody Polish cheat down, plenty more to go…………
I am NOT Polish and NOT defending the above case at all, however your comment is racist.
I’ve stayed at Hamptons Cracow 5 times, and never had any problems. Also i’ve stayed at Hilton Conference Warsaw twice, and it was one of the best stays i ever had.
Please accept my deepest apologies for my countryman, some Poles think they are clever 😉 like that, but seriously they are only a small group.
Yes, it looks like he is a typical ‘wise guy’ or cwaniak. The kind of guy who would wipe his a$$ on the towel the moment he enters the room and then take it down to reception, shove it in the FD clerk’s face and then demand compensation.
Such people think that the more they can scam the system and everyone around them the smarter they are. Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of such ‘clever’ people in Poland.
This is fair warning for little Sebastian indeed.
Sebastian is a lot smarter than that low-life Polish con artist. Seb never hunts where he sleeps again:)
This guy is a typical Pole in my opinion and represents everything that is wrong with that nation: first dishonest and cheating, then (when caught) they instantly start the victim game citing terrible history, Germans/Russians, poor economy, you name it! I’m shocked that despite complaining incessantly about some properties and staying in them repetitevely afterwards he even was unscrupulous enough to complain again! This time about Hilton itself that he tried to swindle! Well done! Glad they banned that Polish scum!
John, don’t you think this disgusting and pure racist comment offending an entire nation should be removed as quickly as possible? I would think that is also necessary to ban VM.
He is not British , he is Russian. I agree 100% that he should be banned . This shouldn’t be a place to express someone’s hatred towards another nation.
We usually leave comments stands as long as they don’t contain foul language. I believe that VM’s generalization is unfair.
I am sure there are plenty of Germans etc.. who abuse the system – not sure why you seem to hate the Poles.. are you British by any chance? (glad the brits are out – good riddance from the EU)
I am glad to see Great Britain leave the EU. There are more good reasons for it to do so than bad; that;s for certain. It’s hard to be an independent nation when it always has to bow and scrape to an organization that tells you how much of this and that you can import and what and how much you can export. Big daddy watching over you like one does a child and spanking you every time you do not do exactly as it wants. Hope more leave the EU.
This is brilliant! Working in this sector I’d love to do this to many guests! So many complain about literally nothing. “It was cold when I arrived, but and I had to put the heating on” “There is too many towels”
OP is pulling a double con
1)new second HH account in 2017 to get Diamond Match-Challenge, and further by having 1x cheap paid stay, to get pnts compo to then use at this cat1 5k/night to fulfil HHD challenge at ZERO SPEND. To avoid any cash spend OP even had to hit hotel a 2nd time for points compo
2)By escalating via LL/John, HH Manager revewed and also found OPs initial account showing same compo form for milking HH hotels , and furthermore using both accts concurrently and also milking compo concurrently
OP is definitely freeloading on HH, thus is not a guest that contibutes financally and HH is right to show OP the door.
Well done HH for spotting and stopping this OPs abuse of both hotels and compo, and the diamond challenge
So basically, apart from the stays at Zagreb and Bangkok early on in Account #1, he was using Hilton as a piggy bank and a free ride to Diamond status via Account #2.
“Ooh, how dare they close my account when all I did was hit the same Cat 1 property multiple times for comp on award stays then get double-comped at other properties while generating no revenue whatsoever. How dare they treat a (non-)paying customer like this!!!”
What people have to realise is that guys like this have a built-in system protecting them against any cognitive dissonance (i.e. having no morality or conscience) but are simultaneously able to be genuinely outraged whenever their ‘tricks’ (sztuki) are unmasked. It’s a special type of person who can pull this off and I’m afraid that if there was an Olympic category for such behaviour then Poland would probably claim #1,#2 and #3 on the podium.
This whiny t*at with terrible terrible English should just STFU rather than waste John’s time. So pathetic. And he really thinks he did nothing wrong, doesn’t he?
LoyaltyLobby has very diverse readership including many non-English speaking countries.
“The Hilton affiliated property get charged $200 fee for every file that the Guest Assistance opens for service issues affecting Diamond member.”
John, I have in the past reached out to GA with general issues surrounding reservations, rates, etc. AFTER the general customer service reps proved unhelpful or unresponsive. This was not a reflection of a response from a property per se (I generally try to make outreach to the hotel’s GM 1st before escalating to the Hilton GA channel). Does GA automatically open a file and charge a fee when contacting them re. an issue/question for a hotel, even though it’s not a complain letter or summary of a stay?
I know that they get hit with this fee for complaints. Not sure if this applies to regular questions too handled by Guest Assistance.
I shook my head at the number of points in compensation he was repeatedly given on very expensive stays. I stayed at a HGI outside of Boston and it was close to $200/night. On my 3rd morning, there was no hot water. I called down and was told that it wouldn’t be fixed until later in the day or the next day, so I showered in ice cold water in January. I found out later that Diamond members (I think I was still mere silver at that point in time) and some others were given new rooms with hot water to shower in. When I complained, I was given 5,000 points. Since that hotel was at a level of 35k or more for a night stay, I was fairly insulted at the offer, but took it since I don’t like contention. If no hot water is only worth 5k, I wonder what is worth 20k at a hotel where a stay is only 5k a night. Hmmm????
I truly do not like people emphasizing his ethnicity in their comments (perhaps his own co-nationals;)) but it looks like the guy was clearly abusing the compensation system. Sorry. You get what you deserve…
“We ask that you seek accommodations at another hotel chain as it is clear that we are unable to meet your expectations.”
I just love that line. Clear, succinct, and right to the point. 🙂
LOL! Basically “screw you” (pardonnez-moi mon vocabulaire) but with class and dignity. The guy was so cheap.
“I slept mainly in Hampton by Hilton Hotel Krakow, because this property is closest to my home and it’s relatively cheap”
I think this says it all.
I hope I will have more luck this time!
The same thing was done to me a couple of years ago.shame on hilton.
As a hotel employee, I have found that because a lot of people are strapped for cash they will complain about every little thing so that they can either so that they can either get their money back or get points added to their Hilton Honors account. As hotel employees, we make sure that each and every guest is satisfied. No matter the industry, there is ALWAYS that one person that will complain just because they can and know how ti either stay for free, eat for free, etc. We work VERY hard during this pandemic. Personally, I haven’t physically seen my parents because I come in contact with people from all over that have germs that I don’t want to know about. I put myself at risk because I LOVE WHAT I DO AND I LOVE OUR GUESTS.