Your final answer to the IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard free night question

On Sunday I wrote about the confusion being caused over the issuance of the ‘end of year’ free hotel night voucher with the IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard.

I am very positive about the IHG Rewards Club Premum Mastercard and I think that most cardholders WILL want to continue with it after the first year.

All you are paying is £99, and this gets you:

on-going IHG Rewards Club Platinum status which comes with some decent benefits on your InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo etc stays

a free night voucher for spending £10,000 (worth £250+ if spend wisely)

an excellent earnings rate of 2 points (worth about 0.8p – 1p) per £1 

double points on overseas spending and spending at IHG hotels

and these points count towards status if you are going for top tier Spire Elite

As a legal reminder, this card has a representative APR of 41.5% variable including the £99 fee based on a notional £1200 credit limit.

Some people, however, will want to cancel.  The voucher is triggered on the anniversary of opening your account.  Your annual fee of £99 appears on your next statement, which could be a few days or a couple of weeks later.

Creation, which issues the card, has to date been all over the place when readers have contacted them to ask how they should deal with this situation.  To be fair, the first anniversary of the launch of the card does not come round until later this week so it has been a purely theoretical discussion so far.

I have been speaking with Creation about this and there is now a position on how the process will work if you choose to cancel your card.  The customer service centre has been fully briefed about the policy and you should not have any problems.

Cancelling mid-year:

If you have spent £10,000 on the Premium card but cancel during your card year, you will not receive the free night voucher.  You must hold the card for the full year.

Cancelling at the end of the year:

Once the 12-month anniversary date has passed, you will receive the free night voucher as long as you spent over £10,000 in the previous year

If you ring Creation to cancel your account after the 12-month anniversary date has passed, but before your next statement is issued, you will still receive the free night voucher.  There is not a problem with the fee as it will not have been added to your account yet.

If you have just received a statement which includes the £99 fee for the second year, you can close your account before the next statement date and fee will not be due.  The only exception is if you have spent on the card after the £99 fee has been applied – in this case, you will be deemed to wish to continue with the card for another year. You will still receive the free night voucher.

After 30 days from the date that the fee for Year 2 is added to your account, you are liable to pay it.  You can still cancel your card but you will not receive a fee refund.  You will still receive the free night voucher.

The free night voucher should be added to your IHG Rewards Club account within a month, give or take, of the £99 fee being charged.  It does not matter if you cancel your credit card before the voucher appears on your IHG account – you will still receive it.

I hope that is clear.  The bottom line is that, if the card is not use, you have at least four weeks from your card anniversary date to cancel without paying the fee.

That said, as I wrote above, you should think carefully before cancelling because the card does offer an EXCELLENT package and you will struggle to find a better Visa or Mastercard offer to replace it.

If you speak to anyone at Creation who gives you a different line to what I have written above, get in touch with me and I will give you the details of the person to contact.

If you don’t already have the IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard and want to find out more about it, my full review is here.

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IHG One Rewards update – April 2024:

Get bonus points: IHG One Rewards is offering 2,000 bonus points for every two cash nights you stay (not necessarily consecutive) between 1st April and 31st May 2024. You can read our full article here and you can register here.

New to IHG One Rewards?  Read our overview of IHG One Rewards here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on ‘What are IHG One Rewards points worth?’ is here.

Buy points: If you need additional IHG One Rewards points, you can buy them here.

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from IHG and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.