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Chase has launched a new transfer bonus, this time giving a 50% bonus when transferring Ultimate Rewards to IHG One Rewards. While that might sound good to some, this deal isn’t worth doing in all but 0.00001% of cases.
The Deal
- Get a 50% bonus when transferring IHG One Rewards
- Direct link to offer.
Key Terms
- Expires August 15, 2022 at 11:59pm ET.
Quick Thoughts
Don’t get me wrong – I love IHG One Rewards points and can’t get enough of them, so much so that I’m planning on buying a ton more of them during the Daily Getaways promotion tomorrow after also buying 1 million of them last year.
It’s for precisely that reason though that this transfer bonus from Chase Ultimate Rewards is poor value. If you transfer 25,000 Ultimate Rewards to IHG with this transfer bonus, you’ll get 37,500 IHG One Rewards points. However, you could cash out those same 25,000 Ultimate Rewards for $250 and buy 50,000 IHG One Rewards points tomorrow, thereby receiving more 12,500 points than you’d get via this transfer bonus. That’s still not a great Ultimate Rewards redemption seeing as you’re only getting 1cpp of value from them, but it’s certainly better than transferring to IHG.
The Daily Getaways sale isn’t even all that special because IHG sells their points for 0.5cpp every other month or so anyway (n.b. Points.com always glitches out for me which is why I stock up on them during Daily Getaways). There’s therefore virtually no reason to ever transfer points from Chase to IHG even with a transfer bonus because you’ll still end up getting far less than 1cpp of value from your Ultimate Rewards. The only possible reason I can think of that you might want to take advantage of this transfer bonus is if you only need 1,000-2,000 points for a redemption because buying that small number of points would cost you more than 1cpp.
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Hey Stephen….How were you able to buy 1 million last year? I thought there was an annual cap on purchased points?
They have a cap on purchased points via Points.com, but that doesn’t seem to apply when bought from Daily Getaways. We therefore bought 5x 100k packages on my account and the same on my wife’s.
Thanks for clarifying Stephen. Do you remember how long after purchasing the points from Daily Getaways does it post to your IHG account? I bit the bullet and purchased some today so just wondering. Thanks again for your help and insight.
It looks like it took 3 days last time for the points to post. I don’t know if that’s always the case or if it can differ from year to year.
There is a cap on points purchased through Points.com and Daily Getaways, however the Daily Getaways purchases don’t count against the Points.com limit. Furthermore, Pepper is a 2 player guy. His wife can also max out in both places. Also, Daily Getaways tracks purchases based on your credit card number rather than your IHG account number. Therefore, if you use multiple cards, you could potentially purchase a virtually unlimited number of points until all the packages are gone.
Thanks for the heads up about them not tracking via IHG account number. I’d rather stock up with points on my account to take advantage of my Diamond status & hit as many Milestone Rewards as possible. We might spend $40k on my wife’s IHG card which would get her Diamond status, but I don’t know for sure if we’ll do that this year, so I’d rather not send even more points to her account if she’d only be Platinum.
You are very clever about figuring out all the angles on things, so I’m sure you’ve crunched the numbers, but it does make me cringe to think of putting $40K on an IHG card. However, if you go that route, you’ll want to maintain IHG Diamond status (formerly known as Spire Elite) as long and as cheaply as possible. To do this, you simply purchase Intercontinental Ambassador status each year after you’ve achieved Diamond status. This costs $200 or 40,000 IHG points. I’m sure you’re aware of the perks, including a free weekend night at Intercontinental, Kimpton or Regent properties. I’ve been able to keep my Diamond (Spire Elite) status for many years now using this trick while never qualifying though elite night stays.
I was initially a little apprehensive about putting so much spend on the card too, but it’s been possible to do much of it at 5x since the amended earning structure on the card, so that’s made it like a 2.5% card for me. $20k spend was definitely worthwhile seeing as it gives the $100 statement credit and 10k bonus points. I hit that a few weeks ago without realizing and overshot it by something like $5k, so I figured I might as well spend the extra $15k.
I’m holding off on doing all that spend right now though because I might hit Diamond status organically. I’ll be at 46 nights by the beginning of September, so I’ll only need 24 nights in the last few months of the year. I haven’t booked anything for the last three months of the year yet though other than for 3 Cards, 3 Continents, so I’m not convinced we’ll have enough IHG stays in that time to do it.
I’d been a little wary of going the Ambassador route because it’s not been a guaranteed benefit of the status and I thought I’d seen one or two DPs of it not working, although I might be mistaken about that. Having said that, it was a moot point for the last couple of years because I already had Spire Elite status at the start of the pandemic and so that was extended for a year. The reduced earning requirements last year meant I retained it organically.
I also don’t expect IHG to keep Ambassador membership around for much longer. I don’t have any inside info on that, but the Ambassador program isn’t in keeping with their revamped IHG One Rewards program, especially seeing as those benefits are now valid at InterContinental properties, so I’m expecting them to do away with the Ambassador program in the next year or two, although my predictions on FM haven’t always been great 😉
I had no problem with points.com on Friday.
It seems like some accounts are able to buy from Points.com without an issue, but I’ve never had any luck with my account nor my wife’s. I’ve tried different browsers, VPN on & off, etc. but no success. Daily Getaways should be sufficient for now though.