Wyndham refreshed its existing card lineup today, plus they launched a new premium card.
The existing cards had increases in their annual fees (although not the no annual fee Earner card), had their earning categories changed, new benefits were added, and some existing benefits enhanced.
We mentioned it in the post about the card changes, but we also wanted to highlight in this separate post an important key detail. These changes are in force for new card applicants as of today, but existing cardholders will retain their existing annual fee, earning rates, and card benefits.
For many existing cardholders that’ll be welcome news. Your annual fee won’t be increasing and earning rates for gas stations won’t be dropping (new Business cardholders will only earn 5X on gas rather than 8X, new Earner Plus cardholders will only earn 1X on gas rather than 6X, while new Earner cardholders will only earn 1X on gas rather than 5X.)
The thing is, the refreshed cards—primarily the Earner Plus and Earner Business—are arguably better in a number of other ways thanks to new and enhanced benefits. That might leave some existing cardholders ruing the fact that they’re grandfathered in on the old card structure.
Well, there’s good news for those cardholders too. We reached out to Barclays and they advised that they’re working on the ability for existing cardholders to convert to the new card structure if they want to. That would be an optional change chosen by the cardholder; it wouldn’t be a forced conversion.
That’s the best of both worlds. If you like your card as it is, no problem—you can keep that. Jealous of the new card benefits? No problem with that either—you’ll (eventually) be able to product change.
It should be noted that the functionality to allow a product change isn’t there right now. We also don’t have a timeline for when this will be enabled, but it’s good to know that Barclays is actively working on providing existing cardholders with this opportunity.
When logging in to my Wyndham Rewards Earner Business account on the Barclays website earlier today, I noticed that they listed a 20% award night discount. That was surprising seeing as I’m an existing cardholder who shouldn’t have any of the new benefits. I checked the Wyndham website to see what actual discount I was being given and it was still 10% like always. We reached out to both Wyndham and Barclays to check if the 20% rate being displayed by Barclays was correct or an error. They both confirmed that it’s a known error that’ll be getting corrected; the 10% award night discount is the correct rate for existing Business cardholders.
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IMO a grandfathered business card would pair incredibly well with the new premier card.
8x gas and 5x util will go 15% further with the redemption rebate – and the credits tremendously offset the annual fee.
fresh! Yeah, I think it’s a no brainer for most to change the business to new version, if you have Costco for example that negates the annual fee bump. and +10% more off award stays vs 3x less in gas, I’ll take that. You’d otherwise have to buying a lot of gas, or when gas prices go stratospheric! In that case there are bigger issues at play.
I was thinking the same thing. Also if you have a wells fargo autograph, you can transfer to wyndham at 2 to 1 ratio. This coupled with the 20% discounted point stays plus the several times a year you can buy points for $0.0065 cents a point gives massive value for wyndham point stays.
Yes, I’ve got an Autograph. You got the right frame of mind. Thanks for the reminders!
Of course, a bigger question is — do I want to stay at a Wyndham? hahaha.
My last stay was at a Travelodge. Adequate, but not my first choice!
3N @ 15k / night = 4500 pts MORE saved with this xtra 10% discount
That’s equivalent to a loss of $1500 3x gas points. In my head I’ve always budgeted $100/mo for gas. So say $1200/year. Maybe its actually more I don’t actually track that closely. And for awhile I stopped using the Wyndham Business – because I didn’t see a real need for Wyndham points post-Vacasa besides what I already earn from 2 cards / yr (30k).
I’ve used pts before for Cottages, but no plans to ever return to UK like that.
Let’s say it’s $1,500 in gas / year.
So break even point on whether to upgrade is if I expect to use up ~3N of 15k pts / year worth of points.
If someone drives a gas guzzling RV or constantly on the road a lot – I can see the incentive to keep the 8x gas…but I think for me the 20% is potentially more valuable over time….as I’ve realized some new uses for Wyndham pts vs my future travel plans.
I still don’t understand the appeal of transferring from wells to wyndham points. If you have old Wells visa signature card, you get 50% boost on redeeming your wells points for airfare. So i’m getting 1.5 cent value for each wells point. Converting the point to 2 wyndham points gives me 2x.067 = 1.34 cent. I suppose 10% discount on redeeming wyndham points boosts the value to almost 1.5 but i can’t redeem it for airfare. Am I getting something wrong here?
it is a brainer. don’t have costco, rarely stay at wyndham, like transfer points such as the united deal. do use the card for gas, and prices are stratopheric. haven’t you noticed?