What Could Be More Dishonest Than That? Wyndham Cuts The Value of Transfers to Miles in Half With No Notice

Wyndham devalued their points for hotel redemptions last year, but they gave about a month’s notice of it.

Sure, they were somewhat disingenuous at the time. They had already implemented a no-notice devaluation, and then rolled some of those back a couple of weeks later with their devaluation announcement, claiming to be reducing rather than raising the cost of award nights.

And they didn’t actually share the list of hotels whose points requirements would be changing until basically forced to do it by member outrage.

But it was notice.

What’s worse is that they’ve now reduced the value of points-to-miles transfers and they implemented it overnight, said sorry it’s already done.

Redemption rates have changed as of January 31, 2014. Redeem now starting at 6,000 points.

Points used to transfer to airline miles at 8000 to 3200, put a different way a Wyndham point was worth 0.4 airline miles.

The Wyndham Rewards Visa earns 2 points per dollar, and has been the only no-fee card whose points transfer to a variety of airline miles at a reasonable rate (effectively earning 4/5ths of a mile per dollar in your choice of program with no fee). That value proposition has now been gutted.

Points now transfer at 6000 to 1200 miles, so a Wyndham point is now worth 0.2 airline miles.

They’ve cut the value of Wyndham points transfers literally in half and with no advance warning.

Wyndham Rewards definitely falls into the categories of programs I do not trust, and will tend to avoid accumulating points with.

(HT: Mommy Points)


About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6FOwOtpNlY

    this is the person who started the decline of Starwood Preferred Guest years ago and led them down the road of no promotions/massive devaluations and all targeted marketing
    She has taken her management style to Wyndham and working her magic there
    Apparently she is still at Wyndham

  2. You (albeit indirectly) link to their credit card after this? Come on, Gary, you claim to better than that..

  3. @gene – I thought the analysis in that post was relevant, I don’t think there’s much risk of someone reading this post and then applying for a Wyndham credit card.

  4. But..but…but… they have such lovely properties.

    What card am I going to use now to pay for stays at Super 8? 😉

  5. If you think this is bad you should watch some of the videos of the people that bought Wyndham timeshares. They are really upset with the changes and devaluations!

  6. If they had given any notice everyone would have rushed to cash in their Wyndham points. They do have a few nice properties, but they are located in cities where you have just as good as or better choices. If you are in a small town their properties are usually terrible. Better off going with a Fairfield, Hampton Inn or La Quinta if you want a clean and decent hotel.

  7. I am taking all of my business (which is none)
    and moving it elsewhere 🙂
    What a sad clueless corporation
    Ok I’m rushing to sign up for their credit card
    I get a great thrill in waking up in the morning to find my program gutted
    Now that’s a travel provider we all need!!
    Seems like the Wyndham folks manage their program like the equally evil Carlson
    Two gutter reputations. Let the Frequent traveler be aware

  8. I earned some the easy way a couple of years ago and fortunately swapped them all for SW points just 2 weeks ago to get the Companion Pass! Lucky me. Never stayed at one of their hotels and probably never will.

  9. @Gary Thanks to your reporting last year, I dumped them into an irline account immediately, and I’m glad I did. Wyndham cannot be trusted. Crooks!

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