Your Mileage May Vary

Expiring Choice Privileges Points? Here’s An Easy Way To Keep Your Account Active

joeheg

While many hotel loyalty programs extended the expiration policies for reward points several times during the pandemic, those times are over. Most hotel programs have reinstated their requirements of having activity in the program to keep points active.  For example, the Choice Privileges policy is that you need to have some account activity within 18 months to keep your account active. Otherwise you’ll lose the points in your account.

I received an email from Choice informing me that I would lose my points if I didn’t have any account activity before 9/1/23

a white background with black textWe originally earned Choice points from a stay at Comfort Inn in Sonora, TX. While I usually wouldn’t worry about losing points in a program I’m not interested in, I wanted to see if I could keep my points active.

The quick answer was to earn points or redeem points.

Digging a little deeper into the Choice website, I found this list of qualifying activities:

However, this list didn’t show earning points with partners as a qualifying activity. I knew that Choice Privileges is a transfer partner of AMEX, Citi and Capital One.

Of the three partners, the most valuable transfer partner is Citi where 1 ThankYou point will get you 2 Choice points. I decided to find out if transferring points to Choice from Citi would extend your account expiration date.

I logged into my ThankYou account and transferred 1,000 points to my Choice Privileges account. Transfers are in 1,000-point increments.

After hitting the transfer button, I received several emails from Citi confirming my transfer. I refreshed my Choice account and had 2,000 more points in my account. In addition to that, my account expiration date is now 18 months from now.

Let’s be honest. It’s not usually worth it to transfer 1,000 points to a loyalty account you’re not sure you’ll ever use. However, I wanted to see if transferring points would still count as a qualifying activity, which apparently still works.

Since Choice Privileges is a transfer partner of AMEX, Citi and Capital One, there’s no reason to let your points expire if you have enough of them to worry about.

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