Choice Hotels

Choice Hotels are one of the world's largest hotel franchisors, representing over 7,000 hotels in 41 countries including the Radisson, Cambria and Quality Inn. Their rewards program allows you to transfer points to a number of airline rewards programs such as British Airways, United Mileage Plus, Qantas Frequent Flyer, and Velocity. You earn points for hotel stays plus you can buy them.

It was not long after I purchase 230,000 points when I received an email to say I had earned a ‘free night’. But when I tried to claim the free night, it was refused.

Despite the e-mail and promotional material I had received that clearly stated I had earned a ‘free night’ – in truth there was no free-night. Choice Hotels claimed I misunderstood the offer, and it was to redeem points to book a free night. But my points were paid for not a reward for a hotel stay, so if I used them to book a hotel room it would not be ‘free’. If I were to apply their explanation of using points for a hotel room then it should have said 29 nights not 1.

I don’t believe this was a deliberate attempt to deceive, but a case of a poorly designed marketing campaign implemented with little thought and without the necessary legal advice.

So, given the ‘you didn’t understand’ response I received, I filed a complaint against Choice Hotels with NSW Fair Trading. Rather than apologise and honour the offer, the initial reply by Choice Hotels to Fair Trading said this was a user error in the redemption process, compounded by incorrect advice being provided by the call centre operator.

In other words – it was my fault.

It’s fair to say, their response is not acceptable to me, nor has it been acceptable to Fair Trading and the case continues.