Hilton added a section on points reinstatement to its terms and conditions. While Hilton Honors points currently expire after 12 months of inactivity, they’ll let you restore a million points within 18 months of expiration. And under the terms as published there should be no cost to do so.
Hilton Honors Points Reinstate
Hilton Honors members can reinstate up to 1,000,000 expired Hilton Honors Points. Only Points balances that have expired in the previous 18 months are eligible for reinstatement. Only one reinstatement transaction is permitted per Hilton Honors account. Email address is required and will only be used for transaction and marketing communications related to this purchase. Points reinstated do not count towards elite tier qualification. Points.com and Hilton Honors reserve the right to terminate this reinstatement program at any time.
Hilton has gone to great lengths to make small points balances useful — letting members pool points for free, allowing use of small balances to pay for things at Amazon.com. That’s crucial to the campaign of making the program relevant for irregular travelers, so that there’s a benefit booking hotel stays direct with Hilton in order to earn these points.
Twelve month expiration without reinstatement is punitive to the irregular less engaged traveler.
Nonetheless this tweak to their terms and conditions bothers me. The change just happened.
Yet they still claim these terms are effective March 1, 2017.
When a program changes its terms and conditions they need to notify members. They need to say that the terms and conditions have changed, and they need to tell members what has changed. Tweaking language in an adhesion contract without any notice to members ought not be enforceable.
Funny you mention this now Gary. I haven’t stayed at Hilton in awhile and went to check my balance Monday online. When my password didn’t work, I called for help and the agent mentioned my points had expired (about 30,000). Without asking, she said she would reinstate them. Very nice gesture and should create goodwill for the company.
I’m not seeing the difference in the Terms.. what’s actually changed?
(I’ve read the article about 3-4 times now…)
So for those loyal Hilton people who had their accounts closed due to perfectly legal points sharing (due to another new “benefit”) – can they then use this one time exception to get them reinstated? 🙂
I was told my hiltonnpoints never expired. I went online to check point status and I had 0 points. Reprensative that I spoke with due to inactivity in 15 months my points were forfeit. I had over 27k points and it’s not fare to lose them, just because you didn’t stay at their hotel in the last 15 months. What about the days we stayed to earn those points? It’s not right! There shouldn’t be a time frame when the points you’ve already earned should be taken. Hilton you need to re-evaluate this. Thank in advance. #notahappycustomer#