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IHG cuts its bonus for ex-credit card holders from 4x points to 0.4x points!

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The two IHG One Rewards / Creation credit cards were finally closed on Tuesday. If you still have one in your purse or wallet, it is no longer earning you points.

This means that (with IHG also withdrawing from HSBC’s credit card programme) the only way of earning IHG One Rewards points from a credit card is by getting a Virgin Atlantic card and transferring the points to IHG at a 1:1 ratio.

Ex cardholders were offered compensation for the enforced closure.

IHG cut its bonus for ex-credit cardholders

IHG sent out an email in April offering two carrots for holders of the Creation cards:

  • you would receive Platinum status in IHG One Rewards in 2024
  • you would receive 2x points (if you had the free card) or 4x points (if you had the paid card, as most of our readers did) on your stays from 28th June to 31st December 2023

There was absolutely no ambiguity about the second part of this deal. This is what IHG sent out to holders of the paid card like my wife:

IHG cut its bonus for ex-credit cardholders

It turns out that this was untrue. Untrue by 90%.

Here is what the same people received yesterday:

IHG cut its bonus for ex-credit cardholders

Spot the difference?

The standard earning rate at most IHG One Rewards brands is 10 points per $1.

If my wife was going to receive 4x bonus points for the rest of the year, she would be receiving 40 points per $1.

Instead, she is receiving just 4 bonus points per $1, on top of the usual 10 points.

The bonus for ex-Premium cardholders is not 4x, it is 0.4x.

The small print makes it clear that it really is 0.4x. What’s even weirder is that the T&C still call it ‘2x and 4x’:

What is the UK IHG One Rewards Credit Card – 2X & 4X Bonus Points Promotion?

Once a previous UK IHG One Rewards Credit Cardholder or a previous UK IHG One Rewards Premium Credit Cardholder has registered for the Offer, the member will earn 2 or 4 points per $1 spent on Qualifying Spend for all stays completed during the period from 28 June 2023 through 31 December 2023 when paying a Qualified Rate. These points are in addition to the base points and other points the member will receive from their qualifying stay.

…. which makes no sense! I mean …. what are you getting 2x or 4x of?

The problem is that people will have made bookings for this summer on the basis that they were going to receive a bonus of 4x base points and not 0.4x.

After all, 40 base points per $1 would – on our valuation of 0.4p per point – be worth a 20% rebate on your pre-tax spending. This is before you factor in base points, any elite status bonus (and you would have elite status if you had the credit card, as it was a benefit) and the standard summer bonus promotion.

I admit that 4x sounded like a very generous offer. However, IHG chose to make it and sent out this offer TWO MONTHS AGO. At no point in the intervening weeks has it emailed people to say ‘erm, sorry, about that email, we weren’t really planning to give you 4x points’.

I suspect that a lot of people won’t even realise what has happened. Only a handful of people picked up on it yesterday when the emails landed.

You also need to opt in to receive your 0.4x points bonus. This seems like another attempt to keep down costs – why make a fixed group of people opt in to an offer you have already promised them?

And, when you register, you receive an email saying “Thank you for registering for UK IHG One Rewards Credit Card 4X Bonus Points Offer” ….

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IHG One Rewards news

IHG One Rewards update – April 2025:

Get bonus points: IHG is not currently running a global promotion.

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.

Category

IHG One Rewards

Comments (115)

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

  • John says:
    29 Jun29 June 05:31

    Hmm. Why would anyone think it was going to be 40 points per $ let alone make bookings on that assumption??

    The use of the word “still” implied to me that the offer was to award the same number of points that you would have earned, if the card still existed – i.e. 4 points per £.

    Thinking about it a bit more now, the IHG system probably can’t handle that, so it has to be 4 points per $ on pre-tax spending which is roughly similar though a bit less.

    I guess using 4X is a bit misleading, but it’s IHG. And Nectar says 10X when they mean 9X…

    • Ben says:
      29 Jun29 June 05:38

      Yeah I agree with you – I always assumed it was 4x the £ spent on the room spend like it would have been via the card – £200 room x4 = 800 points not 8,000

      Creation nor IHG has never been “that” generous.

      The bit I couldn’t 100% confirm/see is whether these points go towards your elite total?

      • Peter K says:
        29 Jun29 June 08:18

        I beg to disagree that “IHG has never been that generous”. They’re accelerate promos from a few years ago literally were that generous, or more so!

      • GeoffreyB says:
        29 Jun29 June 10:20

        I read it that way too but the fact that people interpreted it in different ways means it wasn’t clear enough.

    • CamFlyer says:
      29 Jun29 June 08:12

      Exactly my thinking as well. I don’t bother reading the Ts&Cs on these things closely enough to try to find potentially correct but unintended interpretations.

      • CamFlyer says:
        29 Jun29 June 08:20

        I also note that this is actually MORE generous than the card, in that it’s based on $ rather than £ spend and one can still earn points on another card for the stay. For £10 of IHG spend, paying by BA PP, one earns ~150 points plus status bonus (on 100 points) plus 150 Avios, versus 140 points plus status bonus (on 100 points) with the old IHG MC. I think that’s a good offer!
        Black card.

        • TGLoyalty says:
          29 Jun29 June 11:44

          yup was going to say that its about 25-30% better than the card itself.

          thinking you’d et 4x bonus of the base earnings is wishful thinking to the extreme.

          • Rob says:
            29 Jun29 June 11:48

            Why? IHG ran an open to all 4x promo a couple of years ago!

          • TGLoyalty says:
            29 Jun29 June 15:28

            But it wasn’t really was it because it included your normal points and your 100% bonus points 😂

  • Andrew J says:
    29 Jun29 June 05:39

    I didn’t even receive the registration email – but I did receive the original email a couple of months ago and I’m a current card member.

    What’s the registration link?

    • Retron says:
      29 Jun29 June 06:08

      It’s the same for me – I received the email earlier in the year (which mentioned the 2 points per dollar rate, even though it called it “2x” rather than “0.2x”. Hopefully the registration link will be posted and will turn out to be generic – after all, IHG knows if you had the credit card, as it used to say “IHG Credit Card Holder” next to your ambassador status (if any) when you logged in.

    • Nicola Walton says:
      29 Jun29 June 06:18

      I didn’t receive the email either for my card but my husband did for his and we have our own accounts.

  • Apollo says:
    29 Jun29 June 06:27

    So… the usual drill HfP?

    Email CEO, MCOL, involve the ministry?

  • BJ says:
    29 Jun29 June 06:34

    I agree 40 points per dollar was never realistic and that some might have swallowed it. My greater concern with this is the status element and that it may cause IHG IT to mess up our status next year, and especially if we are maintaining Diamond via Ambassador purchase.

    • yorkieflyer says:
      29 Jun29 June 08:14

      Well the term as on LL say you will keep this years “earned” status

  • Graeme says:
    29 Jun29 June 06:37

    I stopped booking paid stays at IHG the minute Creation starting mucking us around. Good riddance to both.

  • Nick says:
    29 Jun29 June 06:40

    Like others, I hold the IHG Premium card, and haven’t received any ‘new’ email, only the one sent out earlier this year.

    Do they say anything about the pro-rata refund offered, of the annual fee between the individual holders anniversary date and the ‘termination date’ of the 27th June (due to be credited by the end of July)? Does that still apply?

    • Colin Thames says:
      29 Jun29 June 10:11

      I suspect you won’t get anything and will have to go to financial ombudsman. I’d be more worried as to whether you get your free night. It took the ombudsman over a year to get IHG to offer me a settlement, along with all the others who got their accounts closed in October 2021. No compensation offered or pursued by the ombudsman, but I got a pro-rata refund of fee and my free night I’d already earned.
      On the upside, IHG still thinks I had the card and have continued to offer cardholder discounts. I also got the email about bonus points but the link didn’t work.

      • Colin Thames says:
        29 Jun29 June 10:14

        Correction, just tried the link again today and it worked. “You have successfully completed registration for UK IHG One Rewards 4X Bonus Points Offer.

  • James says:
    29 Jun29 June 06:46

    I had the email too and I am not even a card member anymore (for a few years now). Was still addressed as one

    • yorkieflyer says:
      29 Jun29 June 08:15

      For data security I doubt IHG know that you no longer hold a Creation card

      • Rob says:
        29 Jun29 June 08:56

        It doesn’t. My wife cancelled four years ago.

        • Retron says:
          29 Jun29 June 11:01

          It should have known, as when you signed into their website it added “IHG Credit Card Holder” (or similar) next to your Ambassador status.

          I note that text has vanished today, it just says “Ambassador” rather than “Ambassador | IHG Credit Card Holder” when I log in.

      • TGLoyalty says:
        29 Jun29 June 11:46

        might do because I didn’t get any emails and held both cards until they were closed

  • patrick says:
    29 Jun29 June 06:53

    The IT is dodgy – if you are told you are not eligible, keep trying.

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