My Strange World Of Hyatt Credit Card Statement Credit

Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission that helps contribute to the running of the site. Traveling For Miles has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Traveling For Miles and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. For more details please see the disclosures found at the bottom of every page.

As most of you with Chase credit cards will know, for the past few years Chase has been publishing offers that give cardholders a small credit for spending with select retailers and, occasionally, with one or two hoteliers. Recently, a credit from one of these offers hit my World of Hyatt credit card account but, a little amusingly, I have no idea what that credit is doing there.

The Mystery Credit

A little over a week ago an email dropped into my inbox that I wasn’t expecting. It was an email from Chase to let me know that I had “earned a statement credit” on my World of Hyatt credit card for spending made with Hyatt.

To most people reading this post the email probably doesn’t seem at all strange but for a variety of reasons that I’ll explain in a moment, I automatically thought that this was a very well-constructed phishing email.

It didn’t take long for me to work out that what I was looking at wasn’t a phishing scam and was, in fact, a genuine email from Chase, but because I haven’t used my World of Hyatt card since February (when I was busy locking in an easy 2,500 points for putting 25 transactions on my card) and because I haven’t spent any money with Hyatt since late January, the sudden appearance of this credit made no sense at all.

At this point I decided not to give this any more thought and I assumed that Chase had sent out the email in error (and that no credit would ever show up) but, just a few days later, a $25 credit appeared in my account together with a snippet of information.

Based on what my account shows it looks like the credit is for a stay at a Hyatt Place property and as the last stay I made with Hyatt was at a Hyatt Place (back in January), it would be easy to shrug this off as simply a very late posting of a credit that I’ve been due for over three months.

There is, however, one small problem with that explanation.

The Hyatt Place that I stayed at in January was the Hyatt Place West London Hayes and even assuming that I had registered for a Chase Hyatt offer before I made that stay (I don’t remember registering), the fact remains that these type of Chase Hyatt offers are always only valid for spending made at properties in the US (or the US and neighboring regions) and the Hyatt Place West London Hayes is very definitely nowhere near the United States.

Conclusion

One of two things appears to have happened: Either I have been the lucky beneficiary of a Chase error and that the mention of a Hyatt Place stay is a coincidence or, Chase has taken 3 months to credit me with a statement credit for a stay that should never have triggered the credit in the first place.

Either way I’ve lucked out but I have no idea which of the possible solutions is the correct one. An all-out error (giving me a credit for a non-existent stay) seems unlikely, but then Chase taking 3 months to post a credit that goes against the rules of an offer doesn’t seem very likely either.

Does anyone have any thoughts that I haven’t explored? Has anyone else come across anything like this…especially recently? Clearly this is far from being an important issue but it’s still a puzzle that I’d love to solve 🙂