Le Chic Geek
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One of the benefits of the Club Carlson Card I got is one free night when redeeming reward stay of two or more days.
I happen to have a trip coming up in Europe where I used my Club Carlson points to redeem a hotel going for over $400 that night. I spent 250,000 points to get $2,075 value out of points. Not bad for points I earned from cheap stays.
But now that I have my Club Carlson Card, I wanted to see if I could get more value out of my points.
I tried the trick I use when I’m trying to get a better fare with Club Carlson hotels. I went to change my reservation dates and searched the same exact dates. When I am rebooking during a hotel sale, this will bring up my new rate. But when I searched this way, it told me my net difference was 0 points. Hmm.
I searched around to see if this deal did not apply to pre-existing reservations, but I didn’t see anything.
Finally, I tried adding a night. The night showed up the same:
I went back through my reservation and removed this night. Bingo! I was told my reservation cost me -50,000 points.
I was relieved I could get free night at my original stay, and if I couldn’t, was starting to wonder if it was worth staying an extra day for the free night 😉
But I want to point out that I added a night, then subtracted one. I would not try REMOVING the final night and readding it. If the hotel is starting to get overbooked, there’s a real danger of losing your last night.
I just got $2,075 value out of 200,000 Club Carlson Points!
A simpler suggestion based on my experience. We had a preexisting reservation in Paris for 3 nights for 150,000 points from before my wife got the Club Carlson card. I called up the Club Carlson number last week and asked them if we needed to rebook to get the last night free. The phone agent said he could fix it without rebooking. In about 5 seconds I refreshed her account page and the reservation cost 100,000 instead of 150,000 points for the 3 nights and 50,000 points were redeposited. So it seems they are willing to take care of this and readily aware of how to do so over the phone.
Whoo! Way to work the system (in a completely legit way). =)