Our Whine Wednesday topic this week is about co-branded hotel credit cards that should earn extra points when staying at the respective hotel chain but those don’t always come through.
Being recognized as a proper payment requires the merchant to be properly coded, allowing the bank that issued the credit card to properly identify it as a hotel purchase.
More often than not hotels actually are not coded properly and a bank such as Chase has no indicator to award additional points to the cardholder.
I had such a case just this month again after staying at the Intercontinental Singapore, a property that has been around forever yet it doesn’t seem to resonate with Chase which issues the various IHG card products to U.S. based customers.
The purchase was made at the front desk as usual:
Yet when receiving my monthly folio I noticed that the transaction wasn’t recorded properly:
The purchase fell into the general category “all other purchases” which is a big loss of points compared to the 10X I’m supposed to earn for IHG purchases.
I contacted Chase through the secure messages function on the website to notify them of the mistake.
Their answer:
I understand how important it is that you earned the correct points for your purchases. It is my pleasure to help you today.
I confirmed that the transaction from IC Singapore Front Off was not processed as an IHG Property. This is why you did not receive 10 points per $1 on this charge.
Since you already earned 4 points per $1 on this transaction, I went ahead and added the additional 6 points per $1 to make it a total of 10x points.
I added 1,294 points to your account, and you can use them immediately. You can see this adjustment at chase.com or on your next billing statement.
Furthermore, I submitted a feedback regarding how the transaction was submitted by this merchant to avoid this from happening in the future.
Obviously I can’t use the points immediately because they won’t post instantly to IHG. It will take at least until the next billing statement until they get reported to IHG. This was just a small transaction but it’s annoying having to follow up on these things.
Another pet peeve of mine is when the credit card transaction doesn’t display the name of the hotel but rather the owner/franchisee. Especially in a country where it’s not programmed in latin letters but instead in mandarin, kanji or another language. Then it shows up like JIJEHAAJHIT or a similar massacre on your credit card statement.
Conclusion
Not sure why hotels can’t make sure their POS systems aren’t properly coded and registered. I’m even more surprised that this is going on because I’m definitely not the only guest that had this problem at Intercontinental Singapore. It’s a very popular hotel and considering how many IHG customers have their credit card a bunch of people must get short changed throughout the year.
Let’s see if the points earnings will come out correctly the next time I’m there as they promised to forward the issue to their respective teams to fix it.
Same stupidity demonstrated by Chase when using Visa Marriott card at Marriott Mayfair Executive Apts in Bangkok with their stated reason of awarding only 2 points vrs 6 points per dollar that the Marriott Mayfair is not a Marriott.
I am wondering if you did not earn the 6 points per dollar because it is an Executive Apt and not a regular hotel? Does this fall under a different category regarding earnings or is it just ignorance on the part of Chase?
Marriott/Bonvoy points awards points less per $ spent but Chase is 6-points per $ for any/all Marriott purchases notwithstanding brands.
Chase refuses to address this issue
Ah so the problem is with Chase giving proper credit on spending.This is a different Marriott card than what I have. Mine is a old card Marriott Chase card that is no longer offered and has a different structure.
Same issue at IC Phoenicia Beirut. A phone call took care of it both times, but one would think that it would be an easy fix.
Had the same issue for a stay at the IC Abu Dhabi last month.
Well I experienced the same problem with Marriott Bonvoy Chase card when paying at overseas hotels. I complained about it and got similar prompt resolution. Frankly, I’m please with Chase customer service in comparison with Amex. Amex Bonvoy (US) recognizes only less than 10% of the overseas Bonvoy transactions and the customer service is so ridiculous as they take 6-8 weeks to investigate and remedy the issue. I have given up with Amex and will cancel the card by the end of this membership year.
This often happens for hotels in Europe and Asia where the system may not recognize that a hotel by a local name is actually part of an alliance OR that the POS machine used isn’t coded with the hotel.