Contents
The Offer
No direct link; log in to your HHonors account and head to the buy points screen.
- Buy 5,000+ HHonors points thru February 17, 2017 and get an 80% bonus.
- A maximum of 80,000 HHonors points can be purchased per year, so the maximum bonus is +64,000 HHonors points (144,000 total points, $800).
note: if you got an e-mail about this offer, you may have noticed the fine print states this promotion runs from January 12 to February 10, instead of January 19 to February 17. The latter dates are the correct ones.
Our Verdict
You’re buying points for 0.555 cpp, although if this worked with a cashback portal, you might be able to reduce your costs further. I can’t say what would happen since you have to buy points on the Hilton.com purchase page, but it is through Points.com. If you have DPs, please comment below!
If you don’t have the American Express Hilton cards, it would be much more efficient to nab the signup bonus on those two cards. We have a referral thread that will nab you 100k HHonors points for the Hilton HHonors Surpass and 75k HHonors points for the Hilton HHonors.
If you have a card that earns HHonors points, you can more efficiently generate the points through MS. The Citi Hilton HHonors earns 3x points on drugstores, gas, and grocery (and the Hilton HHonors Reserve earns 3x on all purchases), which would require $48,000 of spend to get to 144,000 points. The American Express Hilton HHonors earns 5x at on gas, groceries, and restaurants while the HHonors Surpass earns 6x, requiring $28,800 and $24,000 in spend, respectively. Less spend is required for lower point values.
For everyone else with a firm redemption in mind that will beat 0.555 cpp, this is actually a pretty good deal—especially if you have status and the boost lets you reserve 5 nights, so that you get the 5th night free.
The math works out as follows: if you get 0.6 cpp, you’ve saved $64, and every +0.1 cpp thereafter saves you $144. it’s difficult to get that good of a value out of Hilton redemptions, which is why you need a plan before it makes sense to buy them.
Questions? Drop them below.
0.55cpp is a terrible value. Most of the time, HH are worth in the 0.4cpp range. You can MS using Surpass and get points around 0.2cpp at grocery.
Yes, those are the things that I mentioned in my post.
i dont get it. thought HH launched a new buy points promotion last year and raised the yearly limit on purchased points to 160,000. also, why do 80% when you can wait for a very common 100%?
obviously YMMV based on your needs i guess…
oh yea. btw. thank u for ur posts and reddit activity sirtheta.
If you were going to go somewhere, this is useful. Hilton points are almost never good purchased speculatively.
The terms & conditions of the promo definitely say you can only buy 80,000 in a year, so I don’t know what’s up with the 160,000 limit.
I think that’s the key. If you have an upcoming redemption where this would save you money, it makes a lot of sense to hop on it—you never know when they’re going to do the next points promo. If you don’t have an upcoming redemption where this would save you money, definitely don’t buy speculatively, because beating 0.55 cpp is generally difficult with Hilton.
Above it says both through Hilton and points.com which is it ?
Clarified the language a little. The purchase is through Points.com, but you have to make the purchase on the Hilton.com purchase page.
I wonder if this would code as travel for CSR…
Alas, it would not since you buy them via points.com.
Does that mean you can also go through a portal to get cash back? I know it has worked with some previous deals, just can’t remember if it does with Hilton.
That’s a good question, I will mention it as an unknown quantity in the post. I’ve never bought points, so I don’t know how that would work.
The problem as I would see it is that you are buying the points via points.com but you have to buy them via the hilton.com purchase page. So I’m not sure whether you would get cashback for Hilton, Points.com, or whether the purchase would even be tracked properly.
Thank you, sir.