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IHG is targeting some IHG One Rewards members with an offer giving the opportunity to buy enough points to qualify for Diamond elite status. It’s poor value points-wise due to how much they’re charging for them, but if you have a lot of IHG stays planned for 2024 where you can get good value from the Diamond status, it might be worthwhile.
The Deal
- Buy elite qualifying points with IHG to earn Diamond status.
- Direct link to offer.
Key Terms
- This Offer is available to IHG One Rewards members for qualifying purchases of IHG One Rewards Elite Qualifying Points made during the period from 12:00 AM ET November 16, 2023 and 11:59 PM ET December 31, 2023 inclusive.
- A member may only purchase Elite Qualifying Points once under this promotion.
- Purchased Elite Qualifying Points will count toward a Member’s Year-To-Date status qualifying points balance (for example, towards Diamond Elite tier status for 2024).
- The Member must purchase enough to either meet or exceed the Diamond Elite Qualifying Points threshold to maintain Diamond Elite status through all of the 2024 calendar year.
- This offer does not apply to the yearly points purchase cap that is set at 150,000 points during a calendar year.
- Elite Qualifying Points will be awarded upon completion of the transaction, and new Elite status will be reflected within 5-10 business days.
- Renewed Diamond Elite status gained from the purchase of Elite Qualifying Points will be valid for the remainder of 2023 and all of the 2024 calendar year.
- Elite Qualifying Points and resulting status will be awarded to the recipient of the Elite Qualifying Points purchase only.
- Price includes all applicable fees.
- Elite Qualifying Points are non-refundable and are applicable toward all IHG One Rewards awards.
- Elite Qualifying Nights are not part of this offer and cannot be purchased.
- This is an exclusive, non-transferable offer for intended recipients only and may not be forwarded.
Quick Thoughts
IHG One Rewards has two ways to earn status with them (excluding status earned via credit cards) – staying enough nights or earning enough elite qualifying points.
For Diamond status, you have to either stay 70 nights or earn 120,000 elite qualifying points. Points earned from IHG credit card spend doesn’t count; instead, these are the ways to earn elite qualifying points:
- Qualifying rates paid for hotel stays
- Spend on select partner activity
- Hertz car rentals
- OpenTable reservations
- Grubhub orders
- Viator experiences
- IHG One Rewards Bonus Points Packages
- Qualified Spend through IHG Business Rewards
Unless you have a lot of paid stays with IHG throughout the year and add the bonus points packages, you’d be hard-pressed to earn 120,000 points as that would require $12,000+ spend at most IHG brands.
Staying 70 elite nights as the alternative is a tall order too, so if Diamond status is valuable for you this new promotion could be worth it. It’s a targeted offer, so there’s no guarantee it’ll be available to you and it seems like the points pricing might be targeted too. Tim got this offer and IHG is charging him 1cpp (cent per point) when buying at least 70,000 points, or a more expensive rate at thresholds lower than that. IHG frequently sells their points for 0.5cpp (such as right now), so paying twice that for elite qualifying points in order to earn status with them could be costly depending on how many points you have to buy.
Let’s say you’re starting from scratch. You’d need to spend $1,200 to get 120,000 points. Thanks to those 0.5cpp sales, you can often buy those points for $600. That means you’re effectively paying $600 for Diamond status. If you’ll have a lot of IHG stays at brands that don’t ordinarily offer free breakfast, that $600 could be a worthwhile investment if you value highly the free cooked breakfast for two people that you’ll be eligible for with Diamond status. That’s a lot of free breakfasts you’d need to eat to recoup that $600 though.
Diamond status comes with a few other benefits, but the value of those could be negligible. You’re eligible for room upgrades, but IHG doesn’t make any guarantees with those. You also earn 100% bonus points on paid stays, so if you’ll have a lot of paid stays in 2024 that’ll change the value proposition even further in favor of buying the points.
If you’re only going to have one or two longer award stays or a handful of shorter stays where Diamond status will provide something of value though, paying an effective $600 (if starting from zero qualifying points) is unlikely to be worth it.
Something else to bear in mind is that buying points means that you won’t qualify for any of the Milestone Rewards earned along the way when qualifying via elite nights. That means no confirmable suite upgrades, no lounge access, no food & beverage rewards, etc.
If you do decide to take advantage of this offer, click through to points.com from a shopping portal – here are the current rates – and then copy and paste the promotion link above. That should ensure you earn some cashback from the shopping portal.
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Just got the similar offer as last year for keeping 2025 status. The full 120K cost seems much lower than last year, comes to $640 (with the 20% MC discount). Unless I’m missing something, it seems like a decent deal, since the 120K points are worth ~$600, so net of $40. (Last year the net was about $600-800, can’t recall exactly.)
I think last year’s points were Elite and redeemable points, this years T&C seem to suggest Elite-qualifying points only, so the cost above would be $640, not $40.
I thought that at first too skdelta. But OMAAT readers are reporting that the points are redeemable too.
The current issue is that the 20% cardholder discount is no longer showing.
Assuming that they are redeemable and that the discount issue is fixed, this is a great deal that FM should post about. Surprised it isn’t getting attention elsewhere yet.
I read on the FM Facebook group as well about folks getting redeemable points as well. So I bought them asap in case it was a ‘mistake-fare’-like situation. Looks like the actual cost and the 20% discount fluctuates across users. And depending on the situation, even without the discount, it’s not a bad deal if you get the $800 offer (less $600 points-value ~= $200, which might be worth it over 5-6 stays for 2 people at ICs, CrownPlazas etc. for restaurant breakfast)…
Is $800 the lowest pre-discount data point you’re seeing? (I wish FM didn’t relegate its current discussion to FB.)
That’s what I got even after buying max points in 2024.
Agreed well worth it at $800, but of course much better at $640.
I had $800 and that’s what I’ve seen discussed elsewhere as lowest including FB — range seems to be $800-$1200. If the discount isn’t showing and $800 is showing, could probably wait till 12/30/24 before buying (unless you need the status for upcoming stays), hoping no further changes to the offer… also some folks said that the 20% did show up on the actual payment page, even though it disappeared from the dropdown/main-page pricing. YMMV!
Per your last point. Unlike other buy points promos, the landing page of this one asks for all your CC info and has a “buy now” button.
That’s a strong suggestion that there aren’t additional pages: your card is actually charged then and there.
Yup, looks like the page that I used has changed, even though it mentions the 20% still in the banner. I still can purchase 5000 points @ $200 (since I got 115K earlier), but don’t remember the original 5K pricing… it does like a non-discounted priced. Probably worth monitoring the FB group or other places to see how folks resolved the 20% discount banner with non-discounted pricing??? Seems misleading for sure. [The T&C in the original email did mention “A member may only make a singular points purchase under this promotion”, so in my case, it might be legitimate to not offer 20% for another purchase… Messed-up for sure]
Stephen sent out a new post, I guess folks can now comment there. He had an interesting point that the original discounted price was being offered via any credit-card (somebody did confirm that elsewhere), so now maybe they fixed it — pay $800 and if it’s an IHG MC, it will end-up charging $640… That would make sense, though would be better to have a 2nd page with confirmation before ‘buy now’…
“We’re sorry, but you are not currently eligible for this promotion”I do have platinum elite status do the chase IHG card.
My P2 has platinum, is NOT a cardholder, and got the same “no dice” message.
They offered this to me, but as of now I am not willing to pay the $1250+ for retaining Diamond status with IHG when I really don’t value the breakfasts and room upgrades enough to make it worth my paying that much to keep Diamond instead of settling for Platinum+Ambassador.
IHG credit card holders get 20% discount on the rate, so $1200 becomes $960 (at full 120,000 pts). It’s still expensive, but much more palatable.
Martin, have you (or anyone with the offer) confirmed that this 20% savings applies to this particular promotion? TIA.
Yup, it applies when I click through.
Good intel, thank you!
That means Stephen’s “effective payment” for IHG cardholders drops from $600 to $360. (Sorry for the double reply; couldn’t edit my other post.)
Yeah Dave, that’s the situation I’m in. I’m still debating… I hate to pay for something that we were getting for free (albeit it was a “mistake”). And as many have stated, Diamond isn’t really worth much on the surface. I don’t have a lot of IHG stays planned at the moment. I do have a couple IC stays where the breakfast would be nice but I’m going to need more stays for this to make sense. I do need to book another Amb weekend free night next year but I could just book a club room on that…
FWIW Martin, given what you’ve described so far of your situation, if it were me I’d likely probably pay up and do it.
Between a couple of IC stays already planned (breakfast, and potentially better upgrades), and the paid Amb night getting a 100% point bonus vs 60%, I bet you’ve already earned half that $360 back. And with Diamond, more IHG stays may make sense as the year progresses.
And it isn’t really $360, since you only need to buy the points to get you to 120k, assuming you earned some points in 2023 thus far.
(I also don’t think IHG will open another free match loophole like this past year.)
For me, it shows $1440 for those 120k points, after the 20% discount. So IHG wants to sell me those points are more than 1cpp. I giant m#%^}e f%#>er to that offer.
Stephen, you’re forgetting that $40k of spend on the Chase IHG Premier or Business card in a calendar year gets Diamond for that year and the following year.
At the standardly used opportunity cost of 2% , this spend would forgo $800 in cash rewards. But in addition to the diamond status, you’d get at least 120,000 IHG points worth $600 at .5 cpp; the bonus 10k points for spending $20k; and a $100 statement credit. So, 130k points for $700 in opportunity cost. At .538 cpp, that’s barely more than buying IHG at the best .5 cpp sale, without the purchase cap. A no-brainer alternative, IMO. And that’s a worst case, since we’re assuming all unbonused spend.
Suppose someone needs to make $40k in quarterly tax payments and property tax payments by the Jan 31 deadline. Just wait till after Jan 1, and pay those bills. Bam: Diamond until 2026, and a whole mess of points to use that Diamond status with 🙂
David, I met the spend on my credit card in October & Chase said they notified IHG on 11/8/23. But my status at IHG never changed to Diamond. I chatted with a rep at IHG & they never heard of the program with the IHG Premier credit card. What is the most efficient way to get my account to reflect the Diamond status that I earned? Thanks for your help.
Hi Darlene, I’m sorry you had to deal with this!
In my experience, the most efficient way to handle matters like these has been to call them at the elite line, 888 two one one 7996 from the US. If the front line rep can’t help, politely ask for a supervisor manager, and offer to email (or conference call) confirmation that Chase notifed back on 11/8. Good luck!
Thanks Dave for your quick reply. I will follow your suggestion.
If you mostly stay in better IHG properties (Regent, Six Senses and IC), $600 of breakfast is not that hard to cover for two, where breakfast easily runs $30-$50 per person, per night, including tax and services. Also besides the benefits on paper, I’ve definitely gotten much better upgrades as Diamond as compared to Platinum previously. Assuming you have some points already this year, the cost will be less than $600 which is the ceiling as you mentioned.