My Hilton Gold status, via the credit card, arrived – this is how it worked ….

I wrote an article in February discussing the speedy arrival of my free night voucher from my Hilton HHonors Platinum Visa credit card.  It turned up just 13 days after I hit the £750 spending target. 

However, looking at the comments you left, it seems that I got lucky and just snuck in to the end of a batch.  I now tell people they should wait 6 weeks before chasing up.

Having got the free night, I turned my focus to getting my Hilton HHonors Gold status back.  This expired at the end of March.  I needed to spend £10,000 on the card to receive it.

You can see the benefits of Hilton HHonors Gold here.

All Hilton status cards expire in March.  The programme works on a calendar year and your old status continues until March whether or not you retain it.

The £10,000 of spending on the Hilton credit card to obtain Gold status must be done in a calendar year.  As I got my card in January, this was not a problem.  Some people are caught out by this – it is NOT a good card to get towards the end of the year.  If you don’t hit £10,000 by December 31st, your target is reset to zero and you need to start again.

This is the timeline I experienced:

I passed the £10,000 target on March 1st

The statement which included that transaction was issued on March 19th

The payment deadline for that statement was April 13th, although I had paid it earlier

On Tuesday April 20th I received an email:

Look at the dates.  I received Gold status for the rest of this year, all of 2016 and the first three months of 2017.  That is 24 months of Hilton HHonors Gold – or 24 months of free breakfast, as I prefer to see it.

The bad news for Barclaycard is that there is no need for me to keep the Hilton card now except for the fact that I receive 2,500 bonus Hilton points on my first four stays.

Once I have earned those, I will cancel it – and then reapply closer to April 2017 when my Hilton HHonors Gold will again expire.

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Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2023 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

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Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

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