Update: This promotion was cancelled.
The Offer
- SPG Members have the opportunity to donate all of their points to charity, in exchange Wyndham will give them 4x points per SPG point donated. They’ll also match status. Some things to note:
- On Tuesday, October 11 from 12p.m. – 11:59p.m. EST, SPG members have the historic opportunity to donate their points to charity in exchange for 4x the points with Wyndham Rewards – plus a status match.
- To participate, members simply need to donate their entire SPG point balance to their preferred charity, and then send proof of their donation to Wyndham Rewards by sending screen shots to [email protected]
- Two screen shots are required – one showing confirmation of the point donation and a second showing the member’s account activity page with a zero balance.
- There is no cap on how many points members may donate or earn. Members may expect to receive the points and match within 10 days.
- Status matches are as follows:
- Preferred = Blue
- Gold = Platinum
- Platinum = Diamond
Charities
SPG lets you to donate to three charities
- Clean the world
- American Red Cross
- Unicef
These donations are not tax deductible.
The Fine Print
Please read the full fine print here.
Our Verdict
You’re not allowed to transfer points in/out from Marriott (unless they were done before the 11th). This is an interesting offer as all Wyndham properties can be booked with 15,000 Wyndham points, meaning you’re paying only 3,750 SPG points per night for any Wyndham property. The downside is that you need to donate all of your SPG points and because of that you’ll likely end up with an odd amount of points with possibly no ability to earn more Wyndham points. Â One option would be the Barclaycard Wyndham cards, although they have recently had their earnings rates cut, had a higher annual fee added and added elite status (although arguably not that useful if you’re matching from SPG). You can also only donate points in increments of 500+
[Read:Â Best Wyndham Properties To Use 15,000 Points For A Free Night]
I’m not a big fan of offering deals that only last a short time, I feel like the intent is to pressure consumers into making an irrational choice based on the limited time nature of the deal. In my personal opinion, I don’t see this promotion ending well at all (although the similar JetBlue/Virgin America promotion was fine in the end). There is undoubtedly some great value to be had with Wyndham, but I wouldn’t recommend dumping all your SPG points without thinking it through first.
Hat tip to Well Travelled Mile
Thanks @JD @richard, updated
I’d blame Wyndham for their lame marketing strategy. And it’d even worse if they did this on purpose. I believe thousands of people have donated their points and now they are left with nothing. Enough to sue Wyndham for their fraud promotion. F U WYNDHAM !!!
People who have donated their points should take every way to contact Wyndham and force them to honor this promotion. I’d image it’s both hard and inappropriate to ask points back from charities. SPG should take some actions too, since Wyndham is cheating their loyalty members.
Uh, you realize the promotion was canceled before it ever even started right? You got ZERO credit until the promo started, at noon. Screenshots had to show the time. So anyone transferring points before the time stated were wasting the points regardless! If anyone lost points it was their own fault.
Reading, it’s fundamental!
I believe they said the promotion starts at noon, not the donation. In theory, people can donate ahead of time and send in the confirmation after noon time. There’s no such word that says you MUST donate after 12pm in order to receive the points. You can interpret it both ways.
Anyways, what has happened at least shows that Wyndham tried a dirty move and backfired itself.
What dirty move? They only dirty move here was human greed by the photoshop fraudsters. It is certain that fraudsters were sending fake proof with god knows how many fake points transferred. It raised immediately red flags and the promotion was rightly shutdown.
When I click on the link listed above the promo graphic, ( https://a.pgtb.me/dBfc49), it states that the promo has been cancelled do to fraud.
Sigh. It was too good to be true.
The offer has been cancelled. Don’t do this.
Let’s say that you have 520 spg points; the options for donations are either 500 or 1000. How is one supposed to “zero out” their spg points?
The fine print says you can have up to 499 points remaining.
Thanks for your reply!
I only have 1,200 SPG points, this actually sounds quite good, for 1k SPG I get Platinum with Wyndham plus 7k points (3k from Platinum anniversary bonus?)
For those of us with only a modest number of SPG points and the ability to redeem in major cities, this can be a phenomenal deal. When redeemed in NYC, my 39k SPG points (156k Wyndham points) will get me 10 nights in a $400+ hotel room (10+ cents/SPG point). Another way to think about it is this: The Wyndham credit card has a 45k points signup bonus, which I took advantage of. Would I ever get a card that offered only an 11.25k SPG or 33.75k Marriott signup bonus? Not a chance. Plus, my SPG points won’t evaporate, they’ll go to charity. I totally understand why most will stay away from this, but I’m all over it.
I think I will do this. I only have 1400 points in SPG left, so I can transfer out to Wyndham for 4,000 points. I have over 100,000 Wyndham points now so that will be more useful than my measly remaining SPG balance.
No status change though as I’m nothing with SPG. Whish they would match status at other chains, I would really like that. That should be the next promo!
Wait you can not transfer between the two programs anymore?
only spg can get status match