Contents
The Offer
No direct link; log in to your Hilton Honors account and head to the buy points screen. I don’t believe e-mails have been sent out about the offer yet.
- Buy 5,000+ Hilton Honors points thru May 13, 2017 and get an 100% bonus.
- A maximum of 80,000 Hilton Honors points can be purchased per year, so the maximum bonus is +80,000 Hilton Honors points (160,000 total points, $800).
- Some Hilton Honors members may be able to purchase 160,000 points per year, doubling those numbers.
Our Verdict
Basically unchanged from the 80% bonus offer that ended in February. You’re buying points for 0.5 cpp, so if you have a firm redemption in mind that will beat 0.5 cpp, this is 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. If you don’t have a firm redemption in mind, I would advise against speculatively buying points. It’s often difficult to redeem Hilton points for more than 0.5 cpp and more so than ever with the changes to the Hilton Honors program.
We don’t know if this works with a cashback portal, but if it did you’d 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 (which also includes other American Express cards) that will net you 100k Hilton Honors points for the Hilton HHonors Surpass ($3,000 spend) and 75k Hilton Honors points for the Hilton HHonors ($1,000 spend).
It’s also far more efficient to MS the points, which you can read about in the 80% bonus offer post.
Questions? Drop them below.
Got an email promotion that offers 100% bonus on $400 and $800 worth of points.
I just clicked on the link because I need to 40,000 points to top off my balance for a 5-night stay (I only have enough for 3 nights, so $200 is better than spending $600 for those 2 other nights) and it seems to be working still through October 5.
Haven’t gone through the purchase yet, but does this earn bonus points for the Hilton credit cards since it seems to be directly from Hilton? Also, has anyone tried if this would trigger the Amex offers?
Does anyone see any issues with buying points like this to meet a minimum spend requirement? It’s probably not the best use of my money to get Hilton points, but it seems like a decent way to meet a min. spend that I might have trouble meeting otherwise, don’t you think?
It depends—you can think about it with respect to fees in the following way. If you get >=0.5 cpp, you have a negative/zero fee [i.e. you made money or lost nothing]. If you get <0.5 cpp, you have a positive fee [i.e. you lost money]. In the situation where you get <0.5 cpp, whether it is worth it depends on what other fees you might've paid. In general, the highest fee people will pay is 3%. That equates to a 0.485 cpp redemption w/ the points you bought. A 0.45 cpp redemption is a 10% fee, etc. It can become quite costly very quickly!
(There are also a multitude of other factors that I don't mention, including: (a) would you have taken the trip anyway if you didn't have the points; (b) would you have booked cheaper accommodations when paying with cash; etc.)
The only place I think Hilton points exceed 0.5 cents are a few places in Egypt/ME and I found one in Brazil – non popular city. Now that points/money as it was is gone….0.5 cpp is a baseline for me, or rather the best one can get realistically. I’ll pass….unless I’m going to one of those places…and my desire is really low.
hilton inflation is ridiculous…
these non-category systems…dynamic pricing….whatever….Hilton, Delta, and who else does this?
I checked a couple in my area and some exceed 0.5cpp but then almost none of the ones I checked in NYC had anything close. It’s just very, very situation dependent. So yeah, definitely only worth it if you’ve got a trip planned where you can use them.
i hope no one in their right mind proceeds with this idea…
I’m Hilton Diamond and only saw the 80,000 + 80,000 for $800 offer. Maybe you need to be the “double plus good” Diamond status for the 320k offer. 🙂
I’d rather “buy” 3035 points for $5.95 using the Surpass card at a grocery store.
I agree, since it’s so easy to MS Hilton points for under 0.21 cpp. But not everyone is in to MS 🙂 (and if buying points can save you some money on an upcoming trip, that’s well worth it since Hilton points from the Surpass take quite a while to post.)
How is it so easy to MS on the Surpasse?
Grocery stores get 6x on the Surpass and MSing at grocery stores is easy 🙂
Or you could buy $15.18 with a 3% card. Then use that money to buy the points, earn TopCashback, and also earn rebate from credit card spend.
Or, you know, not stand in a check out line to make $9…
This is the wrong way of looking at things. You need to compare to using another card for the same purchase 2% card would get you $10+ and 3% card would be $15+ (minus fees). If you had a grocery bonus you could be getting $25-$30.
How do you liquidate those cards ? The ones at my local Safeway are all Metabank. My PO doesn’t accept them for M.O., nor does Wal-Mart accept any gift card.
Vanilla Gift cards from CVS do work at my P.O. .
Find a different WalMart. Also try the WalMart Neighborhood Market stores.
Some locations are real sticklers, others don’t care.
You can also try your local grocery stores and see if they allow debit for money orders – some do and some don’t. It’s just trial and error until you find some that work.
I saw max 320K for $1600
wow, really!? nice! —are you perchance Hilton Diamond?
potential counter-dp: i’m diamond and only see max 80k+80k