The Frequent Miler team has been loving our Wyndham points lately, mostly thanks to the ability to use points to book Vacasa Vacation Rentals. While Nick has booked these often, I first took advantage of this opportunity for a trip to Hawaii where four of us stayed in amazing lodgings (see details here).
Wyndham points expire after 18 months of inactivity. Fortunately, like most other hotel programs, any activity (earning or spending points) will extend the 18 months. The problem is that Wyndham has another, much worse, doomsday clock: Wyndham points expire 4 years after earning them, and points activity does not reset this clock. In this post I’ll show you a couple of ways to avoid this doom…
How to find your earliest point expiry date
To find when your oldest points expire, log into your Wyndham Rewards account, go to “My Account”, then scroll down to find a section titled “Notifications” which lists your earliest point expirations. Click “learn more” for slightly more information. Alternatively, you can go to the following URL and log in to see the same information:
- View your Wyndham points expiration details here
(you must log in to see personalized information)
For example, as I write this, my account shows the following:
Points expire 4 years after they are earned. You have 59,601 that will expire on 09/30/2026.
In addition, after 18 consecutive months without any account activity, all of your points will be forfeited. Be sure to stay or redeem with us by 01/22/2025.
I have 59,601 that will expire on 09/30/2026. This does not tell me how many points I have that will expire after that date. It only shows the soonest expiring points.
Fortunately, when spending Wyndham points, Wyndham automatically applies the oldest points first, so as long as I spend 59,601 points or more by 9/30/2026, no points will expire by that date. Unfortunately, I might have points expiring the next day and I won’t know about it until I’ve first spent the 59,601 points.
Transfer back and forth to Caesars Rewards
The easiest way to keep your points alive past the four year clock is to transfer points back and forth between Wyndham and Caesars rewards.
Wyndham and Caesars have a partnership which makes it possible to transfer Wyndham Rewards points to Caesars and Caesars Rewards to Wyndham. By doing this loop (transferring from Wyndham to Caesars and back to Wyndham), the four year clock resets for those points.
Here are the URLs:
- Transfer Wyndham Rewards to Caesars here
(your oldest points will automatically be used for this transfer) - Transfer Caesars Rewards to Wyndham here
(make sure to transfer to Wyndham within 6 months since Caesars Rewards points expire after 6 months of inactivity)
Transfer limitations
- Transfers may take 6-8 weeks to process.
(note: I haven’t time these transfers but they do take a looooong time) - Transfer up to 60,000 Reward Credits / Wyndham Reward points per year
- Transfer requests must be in increments of 5,000. Requests outside of this requirement will be rounded down to the nearest 5,000. Example: A transfer request for 7,000 will be rounded down to 5,000.
Strategy for preserving more than 60,000 points
If you have more than 60,000 points to preserve and you’re not likely to use those points in time, you could adopt a multi-year strategy. Every year, transfer 60,000 points back and forth. This way, you can keep many more points alive, as long as you start more than a year before expiry. For example, if your points are two years from expiry, you can preserve 60K points this year and 60K points next year. If you have many points to preserve, it may make sense to simply do the 60K back and forth transfer every single year.
Restore points after expiration?
In the past, multiple people have reported success with simply asking Wyndham to restore their points after they’ve expired. Unfortunately, these reports happened during the pandemic and so we don’t know if Wyndham was being more lenient during that time or if they can be relied upon to do the same in the future. So, don’t count on this working, but if you do have points expire, it’s definitely worth a phone call to Wyndham Rewards.
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I’m not sure how to interpret what my account shows. It has a similar message to what Greg posted above:
“Points expire 4 years after they are earned. You have ***** that will expire on 07/14/2025.”
However, the amount shown is my entire balance, down to the last single point. I have a Wyndham card and earn points every month, so the 4-year clock shouldn’t be the same for all of them. It also seems unlikely to be a coincidence that the date it shows is 18 months from now.
Any further suggestions for how to determine the true 4-year expiration date?
Yes, it appears they have changed that. I assume one could call and find out, but Wyndham customer service is not very helpful these days (what hotel chain is at this point?)
I called c/s & they told me how many points expire in which month. Although Wyndham says you have X points not expiring, say, til next year, the fact is there are points expiring (potentially) every month THIS year you have to deal with that make up the final total for next year! I made speculative bookings to prevent expiration this year (even though their app says next yr).
Book and cancel extended the 18-month expiration for me, but not the 4-year expiration.
if I cancel my Wyndham business card, will I lose all my points?
Nope
Just logged in to do this and I got this message. So it looks like it’s up to 100,000 now?
Now through December 31, 2023, you can transfer up to 100,000 Wyndham Rewards points to Rewards Credits with Caesars Rewards.
This is really good info. I didn’t know they had the 4-year hard stop!
Can the page you sent be trusted? My account shows I have 42k points but your linked page shows 61k will expire in 2025. Seems like the linked page isn’t close to accurate.
I see the same: more points expiring than I have. Wyndham’s math can never be trusted. https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-shopping-portal-math-strikes-again/
The last experience I had with Caesars XFer was awful. My points almost expired while in Caesars currency. It was nerve racking trying to expedite the process that would have made the post office in a third world country seem more efficient organization. Every bit of 6-8 weeks, probably more. I have just learned to burn them. I spent a small amount taking my son to a minor league baseball game for just 4,500 points, not a spectacular redemption, but better than throwing them away!
Could you share what worked to expedite the transfer process?
It’s been a while but I tried to find someone who could expedite the transfer back to Wyndham at Caesars it was impossible. So I went through the corporate office and finally found someone. It was like a big secret that no one knew about or wanted to help with. In the age of Chase and AMEX instant transfers 6 to 8 weeks is untenable, and for me it was more than 8 weeks and I almost lost 30k points or around $700 worth of Vacasa stays. Never again.
Here are a couple observations:
Same here on the Caesars to Wyndham transfers. I requested a transfer on June 2. The transfer page confirmed saying “Thank you. Transfers may take 6-8 weeks to process.” I kept a screenshot and it is the only confirmation received for this request. There was no confirmation email from Caesars, unlike Wyndham who does send an email for transfer requests from Wyndham to Caesars. After about a month, I called Caesars to try to confirm the transfer was being processed, but they don’t seem to have anyone available by phone to handle rewards issues. I was told to just wait the 6-8 weeks. I’m now at over 9 weeks and of course the transfer still hasn’t been processed.
In between using up various hotel FNCs, trying to reach Milestones with Hyatt, and generally disliking the available Wyndham properties in the locations I’m traveling to, etc. I have not been able to use the 30K Wyndham Rewards points I got for attending a timeshare owner’s update during a stay four years ago. Navigating around the website, there are gift cards and airline transfer partners (bad ratio though) also available. In our case, I plan to redeem the point toward our timeshare maintenance fees. Haven’t been to Vegas in over 15 years and don’t really see any future visits on the horizon so a transfer to Caesar’s is not appealing. The cash value of the 30K points is $150 when used for maintenance fees, $110 if redeemed for Amazon gift cards, and around $90 if transferred to AA or UA. Since money is fungible, I’ll use it for the maintenance fees.
Wyndham bought out the timeshare that we originally bought into, and while I have wanted to dump it for years, my spouse wanted to keep it. Room availability is poor and customer service is mediocre, but for the time being I’m looking at it as a way to have a nearby mountain getaway without the large(r) financial cost and liability of owning a mountain home. That’s our POV for now anyway.
For planning purposes, I have asked Wyndham on multiple occasions to provide me a schedule of when each lot of points expire – they can see on their end what we are unable to on ours.
I have also sometimes had luck with simply booking a fake res with Wyndham on my app then canceling – this has extended the points (doesn’t happen every time but enough to keep me out of trouble!)
Much more useful tip and more reliable than Greg’s post. Thanks.
Thanks for reminding
If you have a Venture x card you could also just transfer in a small amount to extend the points expiration couldn’t you?
The 4-year window does not extend with new activity. Your approach works to reset the 18-month clock, but not the 4-year.
Greg, maybe you want to put a little more emphasis on the 6-month expiration of Caesar’s. I let some points go too long a year or two ago and lost them when I was not paying attention.
To reset the 6-month expiration, I joined the Caesar’s dining rewards program. So now and again, I’ll eat somewhere that by chance is in the program and the expiration will be extended.