HomeHotel LoyaltyWarning: Avoid The New IHG Points Sale - It's Terrible

Warning: Avoid The New IHG Points Sale – It’s Terrible


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This isn’t going to be a long post as the headline pretty much says it all. Anyone who needs to top up an IHG Rewards account should almost certainly avoid the new sale that has just launched (unless you happen to need the points right now) because, as IHG points sales go, this one is terrible.

The Sale

  • Buy 1,000 – 6,000 points – get no discount
  • Buy 7,000 – 250,000 points – get 40% off

The sale runs through 11:59 PM (ET) on 13 November 2020.

Link to sale 

The Math

Although the way the sale is presented doesn’t make this obvious, there are price bands built into this promotion which means that you don’t have to buy the maximum number of points on offer (250,000) to achieve the lowest cost per point.

Here, as long as you buy at least 26,000 points you’ll be buying at the cheapest rate available – 0.6 cents/point.

a close-up of a receipt
Whether you buy 26,000 or 250,000 points you’ll still pay 0.6 cents/point.

If you haven’t been keeping up with IHG sales this may appear to be a good deal…but it isn’t.

Why This Is A Bad Sale

IHG Rewards Club may claim that this sale offers a 40% discount but as it often sells its currency at 0.5 cents/point, this is a discount in name only. In reality, the points being sold here could be considered to be priced at a premium.

In addition, not only is this sale a bad deal because it’s expensive, but it’s also a bad deal because it limits the number of points that you can buy to just 250,000.

When IHG sells its points with a 100% bonus rather than at a discount (which it appears to be doing with increasing frequency), the points cost just 0.5 cents each and the bonus points do not count towards the yearly maximum (250,000). When a bonus sale is on it’s often possible to buy 400,000 points or more (at 0.5 cents each) while in this sale we’re limited to just 250,000 points at 0.6 cents each.

Bottom Line

This is an IHG points sale to avoid unless you’re desperate to top up an account right away. This sale is ending in time for IHG to launch a new sale for Black Friday/Cyber Monday and I cannot imagine IHG not offering a better deal than this one when the end of November comes around.

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