I Bought Points!
A few days ago, for the first time ever, I bought points in one of my frequent traveler programs. 😦
"Why is that 😦?" you might ask. It's because buying points with airline and hotel frequent flyer/frequent guest programs is usually a bad deal. Airlines and hotels generally sell their points for 2x - 3x the value you can typically redeem them for. Thus even when they offer a "Get up to 100% more free!" sale they're still making a profit on the transaction.
While I've said before, "Don't buy points," you can imagine that the "Don't" comes with a little † after it pointing to a disclaimer in the fine print. Like a lot of don'ts in life such as "Don't jump off a bridge", it's actually okay if you know what you're doing and the conditions are right.
"Know what you're doing" means understanding the cost of the points and the value you can redeem them for. "Conditions are right" means having a specific, near-term plan for redemption. Specific, because otherwise you really don't know what your redemption value will be; and near-term because if you buy points speculatively because they seem like a great deal, you might find after months of sitting on them their value has deteriorated.
I purchased 20,000 points with IHG hotels. I did it to augment my points balance to book a specific award stay I was otherwise short about 20k points on. On that stay I was getting a redemption value a bit above 0.7 cents per point (cpp), and I bought the points at 0.6cpp.
Note that paying a rate of 0.6cpp required knowing what I was doing. "Professional driver on closed course," as all the car ads on TV say. If you go to IHG's website and look to buy 20k points, you'll see they're selling at 1.15cpp normally, currently on sale for 0.92. The rates are even higher for smaller quantities, a bit lower if you're buying more... but not as low as 0.6.
I paid 0.6cpp not by buying points directly but by using a loophole in the reservations system for points-and-cash reservations. That "loophole" has been there for several years and it's even documented in their policies, so I don't feel like I cheated them or exploited a software bug. And this is the first time in several years I've actually used that trick. I've never needed to top off my IHG points balance before.
"Why is that 😦?" you might ask. It's because buying points with airline and hotel frequent flyer/frequent guest programs is usually a bad deal. Airlines and hotels generally sell their points for 2x - 3x the value you can typically redeem them for. Thus even when they offer a "Get up to 100% more free!" sale they're still making a profit on the transaction.
While I've said before, "Don't buy points," you can imagine that the "Don't" comes with a little † after it pointing to a disclaimer in the fine print. Like a lot of don'ts in life such as "Don't jump off a bridge", it's actually okay if you know what you're doing and the conditions are right.
"Know what you're doing" means understanding the cost of the points and the value you can redeem them for. "Conditions are right" means having a specific, near-term plan for redemption. Specific, because otherwise you really don't know what your redemption value will be; and near-term because if you buy points speculatively because they seem like a great deal, you might find after months of sitting on them their value has deteriorated.
I purchased 20,000 points with IHG hotels. I did it to augment my points balance to book a specific award stay I was otherwise short about 20k points on. On that stay I was getting a redemption value a bit above 0.7 cents per point (cpp), and I bought the points at 0.6cpp.
Note that paying a rate of 0.6cpp required knowing what I was doing. "Professional driver on closed course," as all the car ads on TV say. If you go to IHG's website and look to buy 20k points, you'll see they're selling at 1.15cpp normally, currently on sale for 0.92. The rates are even higher for smaller quantities, a bit lower if you're buying more... but not as low as 0.6.
I paid 0.6cpp not by buying points directly but by using a loophole in the reservations system for points-and-cash reservations. That "loophole" has been there for several years and it's even documented in their policies, so I don't feel like I cheated them or exploited a software bug. And this is the first time in several years I've actually used that trick. I've never needed to top off my IHG points balance before.