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This is just a quick reminder that Marriott’s points sale in which it’s offering a 30% discount on the regular cost of points is ending tonight at 23:59 ET. If you need to top up an account or if you need to buy some points to transfer across to one of the airline loyalty programs you have just hours left to do so.
I’m not going to go into great detail about how this sale may or may not be useful (you can read about all of that in this post) but here are a few things you need to know:
Headline Terms & Conditions
- Transactions must be completed by 11:59 PM ET October 18, 2019 to be eligible for the discount of 30% with a minimum purchase of 2,000 points.
- Purchased points do not count towards Marriott Bonvoy Elite status.
- A member may purchase or receive as a gift from another member a combined maximum of 100,000 points during the promotional period only. Points that have been already purchased or received as a gift in 2019 are included in the 100,000 points limit.
- Points may be purchased in increments of 1,000.
- A new member may purchase points thirty (30) days after enrollment if their Marriott Bonvoy account reflects qualifying activity as described in the Marriott Bonvoy Program Rules. After ninety (90) days from enrollment, a new member is eligible to purchase points regardless of their account activity.
Full terms and conditions can be found on the promotion page
The Essentials
- Whether you’re buying 2,000 points or the full 100,000 points permitted you’ll be buying points at 0.875 cents each.
- At 0.875 cents/point this is how much a night at each category would cost if you were to buy points in this promotion:
- You can stack this promotion with the current promotion on transfers to United Airlines to generate United miles at a cost of ~1.47 cents each (link)
- You can stack this promotion with the current promotion on transfers to Etihad to generate Etihad miles at a cost of ~1.75 cents each (link)
Bottom Line
Don’t buy Marriott Bonvoy points if you don’t have a plan for how you’re going to use them – there can be some genuinely good uses for points purchased at 0.875 but a little thought and planning will be required.
As usual, following my frequently given advice is probably the best way forward:
- Find out the cost of a night at the properties you would like to visit (at the time of year you would like to travel)
- Compare that cost to the cost of an award night paid for with points purchased in this sale.
Only if the math clearly makes sense is it ok to buy points. If the results are inconclusive you should probably pass.
Follow this link to the Marriott Bonvoy Points Sale.
I bought 100k points over a week ago and haven’t gotten them yet, lost out on the award I was buying them for in the meantime. Plenty of people reporting similar results on FlyerTalk. Marriott is now “reviewing” and the latest is within another 5 days I am supposed to get them. What a joke, charged my card in seconds of course.
Was it a Marriott award that you missed out on or were you planning to convert to miles and book an airline award?
If it’s the first, you could call Marriott when the points finally post, explain the situation and see if they can help
Looking to convert to AA with the 25% bonus for a flight award. Had a 5 day hold set when I hit purchase, should have had time to spare, but instead no points, the hold expired, and the seats weren’t released again, or someone snagged them as soon as they were. So I am just out the money now and the best I can hope is to end up with a bunch of AA points I no longer have particular use for. Worst case they won’t even post in time for the transfer bonus on Oct 31st and I will try to get a refund, but I don’t hold out any hope for that being allowed either.
Followup this morning I finally got the purchased points. Now to figure out what to do with them! Worse problems to have.