IHG offer not redeemed due to T&Cs

[Soso]

Hi,

I had an offer back in August for ihg stay. I paid online due to cheaper price but now am being told i will not get cashback because the offer was on checkout only. I’ve never had an issue before with online payment for hotel offers (including IHG).
Is this a push from Amex and should I now look thoroughly at the offer’s term ? Anyone have similar recent experience ?

[JDB]

Soso wrote:

Hi,

I had an offer back in August for ihg stay. I paid online due to cheaper price but now am being told i will not get cashback because the offer was on checkout only. I’ve never had an issue before with online payment for hotel offers (including IHG).
Is this a push from Amex and should I now look thoroughly at the offer’s term ? Anyone have similar recent experience ?

This is quite a common issue. The terms of these offers generally specify checkout spend although many people do report success in getting hotels to charge their cards in advance and it still works.

If you paid online, it may suggest the booking was paid centrally rather than directly at an eligible hotel. If an offer doesn’t track/trigger for this or any other reason Amex does tend to fall back on the specific offer terms to deny the cashback.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

You should always look at the T^Cs carefully and not just assume that what happened before will happen again!

Many of these cashback offers are not funded by Amex but by the company and they will set the T&Cs

You need to balance the online price rate against the pay on departure rate and then take the cash back into account bearing in mind that the pay now rate may be cheaper but be non refundable whewreas the pay on departure rate is refundable if you cancel.

[John]

Which hotel(s) did you spend at?

IHG doesn’t charge “centrally”.

[AndrewT]

Agreed, even when you book an advance purchase rate it is billed by the hotel. However there is a clear difference between an in person hotel checkout transaction (chip & pin or contactless) and a customer not present advance payment.

[Soso]

Hi – thanks for feedback. Now that I think about it – I actually managed to trigger the offer by choosing normal rate and then asking to get sent a link to pay the room ahead of time. Is that considered as a checkout payment ?
I am now realising it is different than going for a prepaid room !! I got confused cause the name of the hotel clearly shows the eligible hotel (an intercontinental). I guess I will need to be careful with the terms and conditions !!

[NorthernLass]

It’s not a checkout payment as per the Ts and Cs but it often works anyway.

So have you got the cash back or not?!

[John]

Please name the hotel so people know not to attempt the same thing.

Paying online at a third-party website is unlikely to work for these offers, but customer-not-present transactions should work.

At the majority of hotels, including Hilton and IHG, they just charge the card on file and I never get the physical card out or even see the card reader. Amex can’t tell the difference when they do that 3 months before the stay, or when I’m physically standing there, or only after I’ve walked out of the hotel.

The only times I have used the physical card machine in recent years is because I wanted to split payments. Or in Australia where I’ve found that some hotels do not apply their card surcharge when you use the card machine (plus there can be offers for physically tapping or swiping cards).

[JDB]

@John – the OP said he “paid online” which is indicative of something not paid at a hotel eg via a payment link sent by an individual hotel or speaking with a hotel after booking directly (or at least via central reservations) online.

There’s quite a variety of ways that a hotel (including an IHG branded one) can take advance payments that bypass the front desk systems which are the ones most likely to be programmed to trigger an Amex offer. Customer not present transactions applied by a reservations team may be on a different merchant number vs the front desk. Many proprietors have also adopted different practices for advance payments post covid.

The problem comes when an advance payment doesn’t activate the offer and the cardholder chases it with Amex, it immediately becomes apparent that the payment didn’t comply with the terms which is an end to the matter.

[Soso]

Hi,

So it was the intercontinental Barcelona. I paid through the app with a non refundable rate which I guess does not work.

[Maples]

Same experience with Hilton (The Gantry Stratford), in that I got told it had to be checkout. It was paid through the app as well, so I wonder if the app makes it less likely to get credited. All hokus pokus stuff right now.