Current Benefit
U.S Bank offers three different Club Carlson credit cards: Club Carlson Premier Rewards Visa Signature Card, Club Carlson Rewards Visa Signature Card and Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa Card. All of these come with one of the best credit card benefits imaginable. This benefit is:
Bonus Award Night when you redeem Points for 2 or more consecutive Award Nights
This basically means I can pay for one reward night and get the second for free. This effectively doubles the value of your Club Carlson points as long as you’re staying more than one night and are staying an even number of nights.
Benefit Removed
Unfortunately this benefit is going away starting June 1st, 2015. To begin with Club Carlson were trying to sneak this change in by letting cardholders know about it on the last page of their credit card statement. After it was picked up by the blogs, Club Carlson e-mailed all cardholders to let them know about this change.
Benefit Added
Rather than just removing this benefit entirely, Club Carlson have also added a benefit. If you spend $10,000 or more in a card member year you’ll receive a free night award after the renewal of your card. This new benefit has two downfalls:
- The free night benefit can only be used for properties in the United States. The majority of the nicer Club Carlson properties are in Europe from my experience.
- You don’t get the free night until after you’ve paid your renewal. This means you have to pay the annual fee again and you have to wait up to a year to get the free night even if you meet the spending requirement much sooner.
30,000 Point Bonus
To try and soften the blow even further, Club Carlson are also offering a 30,000 point bonus. You need to complete at least one paid stay at any Carlson Rezidor hotel worldwide and pay using your Club Carlson Visa card. This promotion will run until August 31st, 2015.
My Thoughts
As I mentioned earlier, this is probably one of, if not the best credit card benefit that currently exists. It made keeping this card an absolute no brainer (the 40,000 anniversary points also helped). The annual free night benefit after $10,000 spend is OK, but I’m not sure I’d want to put $10,000 in spending on this card when it doesn’t have the last free night benefit. The fact it can only be used on properties in the US makes things even worse.
I’m currently unsure if I’ll keep these cards long term or not. If the free night certificate could be used at any property worldwide, I’d almost certainly keep it but I’m not sure I’d really use it for properties in the US. What are your thoughts on these changes? Will you be keeping on cancelling your cards? Also let us know if you try and get compensation for this change and if you were successful or not.
Time to go book a whole bunch of two night stays to use up my remaining points. Thanks to all the readers who sent me information regarding this change (Jonathan, Jason & Geof among others).
