The IHG Priceless Surprise promotion was one of the more lucrative and frustrating offers I’ve incurred in awhile. It was great in the fact that I was theoretically able to earn a minimum of 47,000 points from the comfort of my couch and all it cost was about $50. I actually got so ahead of the game in sending out my entry postcards that I took advantage of the promotion for my husband, my mom, and my dad. That meant I wrote a total of 376 postcard entries!
I sent mine in quite early and received 93 email prizes during the promotional timeframe. I never received one prize, but that 500 points is hardly worth my time since my other family members were not nearly as lucky. My three other family members ultimately ended up missing a ton of points. And of course it is yours truly who was tasked with fixing the issue!
After a few emails to HelloWorld I realized contacting them was pointless. For all emails they received past March 15th, an auto-generated email was sent back stating:
“Thank you for your email regarding the IHG Rewards Club and MasterCard® Priceless Surprises® Promotion. The promotion ended on March 15, 2016, at 11:59 pm ET, therefore we are no longer awarding game plays. We sincerely thank you for your interest in the promotion and for your continued loyalty to IHG. Have a great day!”
Process to Get Your Points
I found that calling IHG was the most effective method. Emailing got me no where, although you might have better luck. You can reach the IHG Rewards team at 1-888-211-9874. Explain to them that you did not receive all prizes/points from the IHG Priceless Surprise promotion and that you’d like IHG to post them for you. They will ask you when you sent in the entries, how many prizes you received, and the amount of entries you sent in. They will send your information to another department handing these requests and will contact you within 48 business hours.
Do not assume that your points will actually be posted or that you will be contacted! After going through the process, my Dad’s points were automatically post and a follow up was required for my Mom’s account. When I called to inquire about my Mom’s points never posted, the customer service rep told me that they would look into it again and contact me within 48 business hours. Instead of just continuously waiting for this ridiculous lack of customer service, I asked to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor was able to manually post the points to my Mom’s account immediately. I even checked her account while I was on the phone with her and the points were there. I also asked why only 500 points were being posted per missing prize and her response was that is what the promotion awarded. I explained to her that was the minimum amount you could receive and that there were opportunities to earn more points or even bigger prizes. She explained that you had the highest chances of earning 500 points and that was what they were doing. It wasn’t worth my time to argue and since I went into the promotion assuming I’d earn 500 points per entry, I took what she gave me and that was that. Ultimately, I was happy I was able to get the points posted!
I know there are many unhappy people out there that still haven’t even seen 1 point post! I highly suggest you call IHG sooner than later to get your points manually posted. I even suggest asking for a supervisor right away as it might minimize future phone calls you’ll have to make.
Feel free to comment below with your success!
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I have been in contact with IHG and Helloworld many many times and I still do not have any points posted. I first received the Priceless Promotion email on Feb 6!
I sent a twitter message to IHGService about missing points from gameplay that occurred on March 11 and got a response fairly quickly with my missing 4,000 points.
Took a few emails to HW and a couple to IHGrewards. In the end, 4500 points for my 9 missing entries were posted. Now turning attention to DW 34 missing entries…
They tried to tell my mom that she never registered for the promotion when I know she did because I did it. Anyone else have that problem? I will be calling to see if I have better luck that way.
@nicole – do you still have the email confirmation by chance?
I agree all around, but would go the route of not waiting another 48 hours. Keep escalating until you get get to someone who fixes it immediately (and finally). I won a free night TWICE in early January and nothing was happening so I finally spent another 45 minutes on the phone a few days ago and got them posted.
They are now insisting on calling the promo “MasterCard Priceless Surprises” and the frontline person I spoke to told me IHG had nothing to do with the promo, they were just the prizes MasterCard was giving out. I pointed out that in the Official Rules there’s only one sponsor and it is Six Continents Hotels, the formal name for IHG. For some reason it seemed important to them that I acknowledge it was MasterCard Priceless Surprises but I would not.
Good luck to all.
Yep – same here. Very poor responses from HelloWorld. First conflicting responses, then they told me to speak to IHG, the I got the auto-reply that the promo was over.
Contacted IHG by mail, and after a quick back and forth, i was directly awarded 47000 points.
I am guessing that they wont be to happy with HelloWorld after this promo.
I also sent in 94 cards and initially received 58 prizes back. I wrote to them, following all their suggested “channels”. They tried to tell me that maybe I was late getting my cards in (they were all mailed together before the deadline) and also that they were not responsible for illegible cards (yet only hand-written cards were eligible). Anyways, I stuck with in and followed up I think til they got sick of hearing from me. I do have all my points now–and even had some entries that won 5,000 (1), and 2,000 (3) points. But, all of the points past my original 58 that they initially awarded me, were only awarded 500 points each.
Hmmm, I had no problems getting my points.
THanks for this post.
I, too, am missing both points as well as a “one free night at any IHG hotel”.
I tried communicating with HelloWorld but that proved to be a dead-end and I figured I was just SOL.
This morning I sent a message direct to IHG in hopes of getting my points and free-night certificate. Fingers crossed!
Called IHG, but I still have to wait until the Coordinator verified my names and whether I am on the “list” or not. I only received 8 out of 94 entries. The supervisor on the phone told me she didn’t have a list and therefore can only forward e-mails to the coordinator. I have to wait 3-5 days for them to contact me. This is frustrating as this is my 8th time contacting them (either by emails, live chat and on the phone).
After about 25 minutes of 1) talking to a rep; 2) being told that I should be credited within 2 business days; and 3) talking to a supervisor, I was told that there was no record of me having registered for the promotion. I asked how that could be, since I definitely did register for the promotion. She just kept repeating that there was no record of me having registered. The supervisor offered me 5000 points in consolation. I took them. I am very unhappy with the unprofessionalism of this “sweepstakes.”
I’m hacked off at IHG over this and I did not enter. What a blivet. My presumption is this was supposed to generate good will.
I want to give an update. After reading this post, I called and spoke to an IHG supervisor and she posted the points immediately. Thank you for the advice!
Thanks for your advice. I called IGH and spoke to a customer service rep she gave me credit for 21,000 missing points at once. I also asked about missing points for my wife and they gave her 17,000 additional missing points. We wouldn’t have known about this without your help, so thanks again
@john – great!