Bits: last chance for 40,000 points IHG credit card bonus, best travel bonus for Bicester Village

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• Adam says:

  4 Jun4 June 07:41

  Got the email, applied for the £99 premium card straight away. The 40,000 points didn’t come through in one go. 20,000 appeared after one month, and then the other 20,000 another month later. Be warned, Creation phone lines are not like Barclaycard’s – they are terrible at answering and I have made compensation claims over the lack of their response to my queries.

  • Alan says:

    4 Jun4 June 08:38

    I’m still waiting for my 2nd 10k for White card, giving it 90 days from spend before chasing further.

    • Genghis says:

      4 Jun4 June 08:43

      +1. I spent £200 in the first month and then nothing in second month so statement wasn’t generated. I then spent £1 so a statement will be generated so hopefully points will then post. No idea if this makes a difference but it seemed to make sense to me at the time.

      • Alan says:

        4 Jun4 June 08:50

        Hmm, I was starting to wonder something similar – have held off for now but will do so if it works for you!

        • Genghis says:

          4 Jun4 June 09:14

          Will keep you posted Alan

      • Gareth says:

        4 Jun4 June 12:41

        Ghent is. Did you have a screen shot of the £200 20k points offer by any chance. I applied via the app offer on ihg now creation are saying that they don’t see the offer, I have complained and they said they will ring me Monday/Tuesday.

        • Gareth says:

          4 Jun4 June 12:41

          Sorry, Ghengis..

        • Genghis says:

          4 Jun4 June 13:27

          Stupidly I didn’t take a screen shot. @Alan probably did

        • Alan says:

          4 Jun4 June 13:29

          Yep, I’ve got screenshots of the in-app offer & the website 😉

        • Genghis says:

          4 Jun4 June 13:37

          @Alan I might be asking you for them too come month end 🙂

        • Alan says:

          4 Jun4 June 13:41

          LOL don’t worry – will be keeping on file. I’m past the 8/52 mark so waiting to see if they appear at the time of this month’s statement (think I’ll spend a quid on the card too to ensure statement generated).

  • Brighton Belle says:

    4 Jun4 June 08:41

    . . . And their online statements are prehistoric. Impossible to download a transactions file for expense processing. Why on Earth financial companies find it so hard to output data to help their users. PDF of statements to satisfy HMRC and CSV Transactions file that most financial analysis tools can import. Amex have it sorted.

    • Cate says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:59

      It does seem they need to come up to customer’s expected standards. At the moment you have to call them to set up a DD plus direct transfers from my current account take 24 hours to appear on IHG. Some may not see this as a problem but we pay off our credit cards each week on Friday and have to wait till Monday to see it hit the accounts. To be fair to Amex they have funds credit almost immediately.

  • RussellH says:

    4 Jun4 June 12:35

    My recent experience of Creation’s call centre is definitely better than Barclaycard’s – though B’card do have an 0800 number while with Creation it is 0371. Quicker to answer and friendlier, much less bored sounding staff.

    Both are/were equally incompetent at issuing the extra points for IHG hotel stays. Creation seems OK with payments made through the IHG website, but not with payments made at the hotel for the incidentals. I almost always have to raise an issue for these and have an ongoing complaint which has still not been resloved within the FOS’s official timescale

    Strangely never had a problem with Creation’s Marriott card giving the additional points, though it is 18 months since I was in a Marriott.

    Of course, the old IHG and Hilton Cards, operated by Barclays, but separately from Barclaycard also worked fine as far as the extra points were concerned, though there was for a time a positive bug in the Hilton card that gave me three points per £ for spend in any establishment with ‘Hotel’ or ‘Inn’ in its name.
    🙂

  • Evan says:

    4 Jun4 June 15:23

    In a week of (unusual) disappointments from Amex I’ve been okay with Creation so far. Got the first 20K immediately and the second 20K the month after the £200 spend statement etc. Only had to phone them once over some security issue and they were fine.

    • Graeme says:

      4 Jun4 June 19:06

      I must admit, touch wood, I have been pleasantly surprised so far too. Bonus should post this month. Payments do take a day longer in my experience, as mentioned above, that is of no consequence to me though appreciate this may inconvenience others, and I have no need for anything other than the PDF statement. I’ve seen worse web user interfaces though in fairness it is a fair way short of the best.

• Geoggy says:

  4 Jun4 June 08:46

  Just checked my wife’s email history. She did get an email in Feb but it didn’t say how many bonus points came with each card.

  If I click on the “find out more” link it’s 10k and 20k.

  So is this “the” email or should it land on a different page?

• Sam says:

  4 Jun4 June 08:48

  Do they bonus points count to status?

  • Alan says:

    4 Jun4 June 08:50

    Nope

  • Rob says:

    4 Jun4 June 09:52

    No

• AVM says:

  4 Jun4 June 08:52

  OT (related to the yesterday’s ink bonanza): now I have (or will have soon) 10 000 clubcard points I want to keep them as is and wait for a conversion bonus to BAEC. How do I switch automatic conversion off – switch to vouchers? Then I will receive £0.5 for 50 points and I obviously don’t want that. Thx!

  • Genghis says:

    4 Jun4 June 09:18

    You just switch off in your account. When you receive the vouchers they are valid for two years and can be converted to other stuff, and even to avios. If you have no plans currently my advice is to hold off before converting so as to keep your options open.

    • AVM says:

      4 Jun4 June 09:53

      Thanks Genghis! It was not entirely clear to me as I thought if I get a voucher then that’s it – I get 50 p per 50 points and can’t convert that to adios.

      • Alex W says:

        4 Jun4 June 10:47

        Yes you can convert the vouchers to Avios or use them for any of the other Tesco redemptions.

        • RussellH says:

          4 Jun4 June 12:18

          That is the only way I have ever converted CC points to Avios!

          Always steer clear of automated things…

      • pr99 says:

        4 Jun4 June 11:56

        You get physical vouchers unless you ask for electronic only. Even if you get physical vouchers they are still there on line and can be used on line. Your online list of unused vouchers give a clear expiration date. Often people who look at their vouchers online for the first time find that they have lost vouchers without even realising it, but they are still there on the website available to use online.

        Obviously you need physical vouchers to use in store but you can print off copies of unused vouchers from the website.

    • sedgie says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:09

      I am lucky (old) enough to get 800 Avios per 250 cc points. Should I be worried that by switching off auto-convert I might lose this better rate? Logic tells me I wouldn’t, but…

      • RussellH says:

        4 Jun4 June 12:20

        My experience suggests strongly that you will keep the better rate.

        Earlier this year I tried transferring a few CC points to BAEC (peviously they had gone to Avios.com) for the very first time. Still got my 800 Avios

        • sedgie says:

          4 Jun4 June 15:41

          Thanks RussellH.

      • RIcatti says:

        4 Jun4 June 12:46

        They why switching, keep autoconvert on?

        Create the new account for you/someone in household to accumulate vouchers if you intend to convert them into other than BAEC.

  • Rob says:

    4 Jun4 June 09:52

    It is in your profile.

• Sam wardill says:

  4 Jun4 June 08:55

  I think I may have got the bonus despite not getting the email nor using the link. I did have the barclaycard which is probably why.

  • Genghis says:

    4 Jun4 June 09:19

    Don’t think Barclaycard has anything to do with it. I was targeted but never held the Barclaycard.

    • Kathy says:

      4 Jun4 June 10:37

      Me too. I had an Accelerate target to apply for a card though.

      I applied last week, have been accepted and status updated (plus Accelerate bonus points received) but the card itself hasn’t turned up yet.

  • Sam Wardill says:

    4 Jun4 June 09:53

    I also got double Accelerate bonus

• xcalx says:

  4 Jun4 June 09:09

  OT
  This is a first for me.
  Booked flights (Thompson), hotel (RCI) and car hire (Autoreisen- offer free child seats) for Tenerife. Non of the suppliers took Amex.
  How do I stand regarding the Amex Plat insurance when nothing has been paid using Amex.

  Thanks.

  • Alan says:

    4 Jun4 June 09:11

    You’re fine if the suppliers don’t take Amex, they cover this as an allowable exception in the T&Cs…

    • CV3V says:

      4 Jun4 June 09:16

      Good to know, Air Asia don’t take Amex either. Which meant waiting for a new 241 earning period on the BAPP was a total waste of time!

      • the_real_a says:

        4 Jun4 June 21:42

        You can book Air Asia via AMEX travel since they are on GDS`s now. There is a bag and non bag fare.

    • xcalx says:

      4 Jun4 June 09:27

      Thanks, that’s just what I wanted to hear.
      Very impressed with Autoreisen car hire getting 2 free child seats and a very good price. Hertz wanted euro 70 per seat . Got the whole deal for £73 5 door 7 days full to full fuel.

  • Anna says:

    4 Jun4 June 13:17

    RCI are painful! They don’t accept Amex, demand payment in full at time of booking (up to 2 years in advance!) for “extra” weeks which can cost over £1000 and have no cancellation policy. They need to get into the 21st century. I don’t book anything with them now apart from using the exchange system and the odd extra week which is massively cheaper than booking elsewhere and therefore just about worth paying up front.

    • xcalx says:

      5 Jun5 June 14:39

      Just booked 2 x studios at Hollywood mirage Tenerife in a couple of weeks time only £195 each for the week . Also booked the Sea palace one bed St Martin for a week in November for a great price of £419. Sold the timeshare a number of years ago but have managed to keep the RCI membership.

• Lev441 says:

  4 Jun4 June 09:40

  I’ve not actually made it into the hotel points game yet… currently sitting on around 250,000 virgin miles and 700,000ish avios… is the IHG a good/best hotel card to get? All my points come from business credit card spend..
  Thanks!

  • Neil says:

    4 Jun4 June 09:55

    Definetly Lev441. The IHG accelarate promos are generous and its easy to accumulate large balances. I saved $600 on high Key west room rates by using points and the pointsbreak promo is also good if your felcible with destinations. I visited Nepal for the first time in January using it.

    • Lev441 says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:11

      Loved Nepal when I travelled as a a poor student… a wonderful country which I’m sure is even better when you can stay at decent hotels!

  • Rob says:

    4 Jun4 June 10:12

    The Premium card with 40k is a no brainer for Year 1 – bonus outweighs fee – especially if you can get £10k through. Points on Premium are worth 0.8p per £1 which is a very good MCard return in current market.

    • Lev441 says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:10

      Yeah I’m sure I could comfortably put £10k through. Should I view this as a long term card or a card to churn?

      • Genghis says:

        4 Jun4 June 11:37

        I plan on keeping it. I don’t think there’s any benefit to churning? It’s my go to non-Amex card

  • Genghis says:

    4 Jun4 June 10:19

    Definitely get into the hotel points game. Concentrating on avios and virgin can get a bit boring I guess. To diversify somewhat would make this hobby a bit more interesting and is likely to save you more money in the future (provided you use such hotels of course)

    • Alex W says:

      4 Jun4 June 10:50

      One of my biggest regrets in the points hobby is not going for hotel points sooner.

      • Genghis says:

        4 Jun4 June 10:56

        We all wish we’d got into this hobby sooner! 🙂

    • Rob says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:11

      For long haul travellers, focussing on getting CW flights over Economy usually has more value than staying at an InterCon vs a HI Express.

      For short haul travellers, a weekend at the IC Amsterdam vs a HI Express is a better use of points, arguably, than flying to Amsterdam in Club Europe instead of Economy.

      • Genghis says:

        4 Jun4 June 11:39

        True. But if you put in a bit of effort into this hobby you can easily fly in J and stay in quality hotels a few times a year.

        • Anna says:

          4 Jun4 June 13:22

          I’ve been toying into extending into the hotel side of the “hobby” for a while. I keep being put off applying for the Hilton Honours visa by the 6 month expiry date on the free night voucher as I usually have my travel plans made a good 10-18 months in advance. I think I need to work out when I want to stay in a Hilton Hotel, then apply for the card to facilitate this. Only problem with that would be if there was no availability on the date I needed!

      • RIcatti says:

        4 Jun4 June 13:01

        Also correct for USA destinations, where ICs are not that much different from HI when you get to the room.

        The difference is usually about lobby/reception area.

    • Lev441 says:

      4 Jun4 June 11:13

      Thanks for the help everyone, I’m going to apply when I get back in this evening!

• Neil says:

  4 Jun4 June 09:52

  I didn’t recieve an email from
  barclaycard in February due to the fact that ive never held an IHG credit card before. However IHG emailed me with the offer direct so i applied and got the 40k points

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.