Using Priority Club Cash and Points Option for Discounted Points Purchase

by Gary Leff

Priority Club’s new cash and points option allows you to, in effect, purchase points when making an award booking at a discounted three-fifths of a cent per point.

Normally point purchases cost 1.15 to 1.35 cents apiece.

Cash and points award nights are cancellable, and when you do cancel you get your full points refunded to your account (provide you cancel by the cancellation deadline). You don’t get your points and cash refunded. As a result, the cash and points award option is a backdoor way to discounted points purchase even when you aren’t looking to book an award night.

Why might you want to do this? Well, one reason would be Priority Club offers “PointBreaks” awards, room nights at select hotels for only 5000 points. Using the cash and points backdoor for points purchases, you can acquire 5000 points for $30.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Pingbacks

  8. […] Priority Club Pointbreaks updated – 5,000 points or $35 for hotel nights by Brad on August 1, 2012 at 9:16 am Posted In: Miles & Points, PointBreaks, Priority Club, Visa On Monday, Priority Club Rewards (Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, etc.)  release their nearly-quarterly list of PointBreak hotels.  This list of properties have reward nights available starting at 5,000 points for stays through October 15th, 2012.  Considering you can sign up for the Chase Priority Club Visa Signature card and get an 80,000 point sign-on bonus plus free Platinum status and an annual free night at ANY Priority Club proeprty (including the high-end Intercontinental), you can receive a potential 16 Free Nights using this list if your travel plans happen to take you to one of these locations (or are lucky enough to live in one of these areas)! (If you choose to apply for the card above, make sure you confirm the bonuses with the Customer Service Rep when activating the card over the phone!) The list isn’t awesome this time around as it is summer travel season and hotels typically aren’t discounted very much, but there are some mid-tier domestic goodies: several Crowne Plazas and the Intercontinental Suites Hotel Cleveland.  Even Holiday Inns for 5,000 points are pretty good, considering you can purchase Priority Club Points for as little as .7 cents each; View from the Wing has a good discussion of how to do it here. […]

  9. […] IHG has just released the latest Point Breaks — hotels that can be booked for a limited time for only 5,000 points a night. Priority Club redemptions normally range from 10,000-50,000 points, so you can really rack up some savings if you are traveling by October 31, 2015. If you don’t currently have IHG points, you can transfer from Ultimate Rewards or buy them cheaply using this “cash and points trick.” […]

Comments

  1. Hmmm… wonder if this “return” of points would increase your earning towards Platinum Status for the year 😉

  2. Sorry, I must be dense but I cant understand the trick here. Can you lay it out for me in steps?

  3. Yep, the return of points counts towards Platinum Status – so you can go from zero to Platinum for US$360 a year now 😉

  4. I was recently short 4900 miles to platinum so I decided to do a remards booking for 20,000 + $30. The 5000 points are showing as an other transaction but did not increase my total points earned (and it didn’t update when I cancelled and the 25,000 points went back to my account). So, I guess IC has closed the loop-hole on this one!

Comments are closed.