A few days ago I wrote about Wyndham changing the terms of their previous promotion with zero announcement to their members. Of course the terms were technically changed, but who realistically reads through the terms on a daily basis after they’ve already read them the first time? Ultimately, Wyndham had a promotion where you could earn a free night (really 15,000 points) after three stays at any Wyndham promotion. The terms stated that you must book your stay by January 31st (for stays through February 28, 2018), and were later changed to a January 18 book by date. I know many readers took advantage of this promotion and book stays between January 18 through January 31, 2018. As of right now, those days did not receive the bonus points.
But you can now claim those points!
I reached out to my contact at Wyndham to see how the situation was going to be handled. To my surprise, I received a response back pretty quickly letting me know that Wyndham will make things right for Deals We Like readers.
“Thanks again for reaching out. Per the offer landing page, this promo was only available while supplies last. We had an overwhelming response from members and as a result, it ended a couple weeks early from the original date that was shared.
As a make good for any of your readers who may feel they’ve missed out but met the original promotion terms, I would ask them to kindly reach out to us at eliot@wyndhamrewards.com and our team will be happy to work with them to make things right.”
So if you were impacted by this promotion ending early, email eliot@wyndhamrewards.com. Let them know that you completed/booked a stay after the promotion terms ended but you were never made aware. I guess you can reference this blog post to easily explain the situation.
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So I called Wyndham to ask for my 7,000 points for a stay I booked on 1/31 and got told I should have read the terms before booking where it said it can change at any time, then laughed at when I asked if they could award me the 7,000 points and finally offered 500 points as a “one-time courtesy” after being on hold forever and now I’m supposed to waste my time emailing this person and expecting a different result? No thanks, they messed this up and I’m not going to waste more of my time with this program.
If they really want to make good, then they should go back and automatically award the points to those who participated in the promotion and booked by 1/31.
I agree you shouldn’t have to waste time with them anymore. I stopped using them over a year ago because of stuff like this. A nightmare program. Thank goodness my favorite hotel left that chain and became a Marriott. They hated working with Wyndham.
All that being said I don’t think you should let them get away with this. Send the email and get the points you have earned. They are yours. Get your free night and then use them up. You earned it… then burn them and stop using the program.
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that they could not change the terms to someone who has already made at least 1 stay. Because this promotion requires 3 stays. If someone has made 1 or 2 stays in good faith, and the company ended the promotion before this person even has a chance to complete the promotion, that’s called unfair business practice.
In fact the terms of this promotion can be legally challenged. Almost all states have laws against unfair business practice. The terms inherently constitute unfair business practice because it states that it could end the promotion early without notice. But the promotion requires 3 stays and when the promotion ends early, it will leave those who have completed 1 or 2 stays high and dry.
Typical Wyndham promo is this surprising, really? Wyndham is not a good program to spend time on unless you are a business traveler captive to their hotels for some odd reason.