For the past year, I’ve had almost 600,000 Hilton points that I didn’t deserve. It all started more than a year ago when my Hilton account was hacked and points were stolen. Twice. The situation was later over-remedied. I ended up with far more points than I deserved. But now, more than a year after that over-remedy, Hilton has fixed the situation and has clawed back those unearned points.
This story would be little more than a footnote except for the interesting timing. In a recent post about Virgin Atlantic’s financial ruin (April 27th 2020), I stupidly poked the bear:
…I’m also sitting on 890,000 Hilton points. Do you remember when my Hilton account was hacked? I had less than 400,000 points before getting hacked. When my points were finally restored, I magically had over 900,000. Yes Hilton, if you’re reading this, feel free to take back the extra points. Unless that happens, though, I have more Hilton points than I know what to do with. So, transferring from Virgin Atlantic make no sense at all for me.
Did Hilton read that post?
I’m inclined to believe that the timing is a coincidence, but I’ll leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions.
Six days after my Virgin Atlantic post, I received the following email from the department that was handling my case:
Thank you for your email. Our systems have completely upgraded online.
584,649 were removed due to a merge error which resulted in an overage of points added to your account.
For the record, when they wrote “thank you for your email,” they were referring to an email I sent them more than a year ago where I wrote: “FYI: the new account has more points than I was expecting. If you’re OK with that then I am too (obviously!), but I thought you should know.
Here is the history of each relevant event:
| Date | What happened? |
| Mar 2019 | My account was hacked twice. I published an article about it here: My Hilton account was hacked… Twice. |
| Apr 2019 | Late in the month my points were restored… and then some. Since I’m (sometimes) an honorable guy, I wrote to the department that was handling my case to let them know: “Thank you! I finally have a new account with points restored! FYI: the new account has more points than I was expecting. If you’re OK with that then I am too (obviously!), but I thought you should know.” |
| May 1 2019 | I published details about my account being restored and that I had far more points than expected: My hacked Hilton account has finally been restored |
| Jun 2019 | Nothing happened |
| July 2019 | Nothing happened |
| Aug 2019 | Nothing happened |
| Sep 2019 | Nothing happened |
| Oct 2019 | Nothing happened |
| Nov 2019 | Nothing happened |
| Dec 2019 | Nothing happened |
| Jan 2020 | Nothing happened |
| Feb 2020 | Nothing happened |
| Mar 2020 | Nothing happened |
| Apr 27 2020 | I posted the Virgin Atlantic article where I wrote “Hilton, if you’re reading this, feel free to take back the extra points.” |
| May 3 2020 | Only six days after my Virgin Atlantic post, Hilton emailed me to say that they finally corrected the merge error |
What do you think? Coincidence?
Comment below.
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My niece works at a major bank. They do alot of checking/savings account bonuses. She told me her desk was next to their bonus abuse team. (PreCovid19) Two people who check into acct bonuses. She talks to them once and awhile and noticed what was on one of their monitors. She asked me if I had ever heard of a website named Doctor of Credit.
Um, yes, they do read these websites.
JohnnieD
Ur 100% correct they watch everything my X was the head of personal for a major Bank. The second there’s any trouble that person gets switched to a different job or CANNED like a Tuna. Greg’s photo would be on a Crossbow Board right in front of my desk while having a $10 latte I would fire one-off . What we are doing is NUTTHING compared to what they are doing and free PR for them .
#stayincave..LOL
This happened to me also, though not quite the same way. I had double points from the breech also. It was about 6 months after the double points that they took the extra ones back and left me with what I had before they got stolen. I had originally thought that they gave them to me as a good will gesture for the breech, but I guess not.
[…] Miler mentioned in a post that he’s received some points in error over a year ago and within days, Hilton emailed him saying the mistake in his account had been corrected. It’s either a huge coincidence or someone at Hilton saw his post. The closest we’ve […]
LOL Greg, not only did they read your post — they probably did a company-wide conference call and had a good zoomlaugh about it. Ahh, easy come — easy go, at least we’ve gotten a few chuckles out of it at your expense. 🙂
We know that BoA and JetBlue have read this blog, so is it that much of a stretch to imagine that somebody told Hilton about the extra (~600k HH=around $3k?) points? I don’t think so.
Sounds like the Amex RAT is working with their cobrand partner. Or maybe they’ve gone freelance d/t the ‘rona?
Coulda said ‘Thank you for fixing my account and for the generous bonus for my trouble’? 🙂
I think bloggers get a whole lot more attention, good and bad, than they think they do. Does anyone really think the top guys don’t get (unannounced) freebies and upgrades all the time?
Restaurant critics (for example) go to ridiculous lengths to hide their identity for precisely this reason. Do travel/points/miles bloggers use pseudonyms? Come on.
Good chance your account wasn’t the only one involved, likely with your post they reviewed many accounts and took back a much larger over-compensation.
FWIW, I transferred VS to HH 4.28.2020 it was taking 7-8 per earlier DP. Took 17 days to post.
I orginally transferred MR to VS for a trip this summer to Shanghai on onward, DW PTO for 2020 is semi-inflexible close so it’s to late reschedule for 2020. 2021 other plans already, and VS doesn’t fit.
Apparently they manually call HH, as I got an email survey I.e. “How did we do today, did we solve your issue…”. same day the points posted.
I received replacements for some hacked hotel gift cards twice but I never considered offering the extras back because they were so bad about making good on them for most people. And Hilton, I’m not talking to you.
Moral of the story: Don’t poke the bear…..and don’t write posts with literary circles and arrows to tell the bear what to do….it’s like you were wearing a bowtie or something….lol
Shoot the Bear and be done with it ..He charges $1/2 a mill a year ..
#HelpthePoorcavedwellers
No coincidence, but there should be a time factor for this! After you wrote it, you should have just booked hotels with all your points. You could have always cancelled.
There is no such thing as a coincidence. ESPECIALLY, given how much time has passed since the error and then within a week of publishing the article this gets fixed? What makes more sense? Coincidence is not it. Tough break.
When you have your hand in the cookie jar don’t whistle.