IHG/Creation glitch? Interest and default added due to 'phantom' statement?

Cell

Hi.

I wanted to see if anyone else has had my experience with the downgrading of the IHG card to Creation only. I hope this isn't a duplicate - I did look and couldn't see anything which might indicate that mine is an isolated experience.

Timeline as follows:

Statement  6th June 2023. Paid off in full 3 days before due date.
Last date for IHG points 27th June
Statement 3rd July 2023. Due payment date 24th July 2023. Minimum payment £5.00

I went in to online services to check the final amount and to check refund of annual pro-rata fee had been credited and saw the following:

A) New Creation branding present. No trace of IHG (and neither should there be)
B ) Interest totalling £11.97 added to balance yesterday
C) New due date given as 7th August. Minimum payment of £19.99

Obviously this was alarming, so I rang them and it seems that with the changeover of account types a new, but invisible, statement had been issued and effectively I have defaulted on that payment even though I never knew it was there and there was a pre-existing date for payment in 6 days time. 

Even stranger is that their systems still show a payment due on 24th July AND 7th August.

Rep agreed that I should not have been charged interest and that she had no idea how the situation had occurred. She promised to scrub the interest but disturbingly also said that she would arrange for the default to be removed from my credit report!

Time will tell, and this may just be me, but if anyone hasn't checked recently it might be a good idea to see whether it is a more widespread glitch.

Cell

Not that this appears to have gained any traction I now know of one other person who has had the same problem.

I received an 'extra' July statement today, and although there was no matching statement from last month (because I had an IHG statement) the system has been set up to think that I did and hence defaulted me.

So I received statements on 3rd July and 19th July with payment dates of 24th July and 7th August respectively.

20vt-rs

I didn't have this, but my statement for June activity was generated very late, approx 10-days later than usual. I actually thought it wasn't going to happen as I emailed to ask them to close my account down after all monies had been cleared, but they marked it closed immediately! However today statement has generated and I have the usual email, it's just a lot later. No IHG branding, but also no mention of points going to IHG, but they appear to be in my account today which is good news!
I guess all these niggles is down to moving over / away from IHG.
What is everyone on the IHG card doing next? I don't think there is an IHG related card in the UK yet.

WillPS

20vt-rs said:

What is everyone on the IHG card doing next? I don't think there is an IHG related card in the UK yet.

Marriott Bonvoy Amex is the only credit card associated with a hotel reward scheme which is open to new applications currently. 'It's alright' is probably all that you can say about it, makes perfect sense if you do a lot of stays with that chain but not great value otherwise.

There are options to convert Virgin Points (which can be earned via a Virgin Atlantic or Tesco card) to IHG and Hilton Honors but the effective earning rates are not good.

Conversion of Amex MR points (from their Rewards, Gold or Platinum cards) is a little better but not great. Similar story with the HSBC Premier cards.

The beauty of hotel schemes over airline ones of course is that you can get a great reward with no hidden taxes or fees, and you can get great value vs what you'd actually pay in cash without too much faff (neither can be said of airmiles which have hard-to-determine fees, limited availability and a scale which means redemptions only make sense if you use them against fares you'd likely never buy in cash).

My go-to recommendation at the moment is to earn Nectar via the Nectar Amex (effective 1% cashback, £25 annual fee after year 1) and/or the free Barclaycard Avios Mastercard (effective 0.66% cashback when converted to Nectar). It's not sexy and there's not much potential to game it and get more (unless you drink a lot of Caffe Neros) but it's a decent rate and there is 0 friction when redeeming. Nectar Hotels is a redemption option but personally I'd convert to Sainsburys or Ebay at face value and use what I save to buy a great hotel room.

Cell

E-mail received from Creation on Saturday. At least they're aware of it. Putting it right will be another matter judging by experience!

Card ending: ****

 

Apologies, during the recent change from your IHG One Rewards Credit Card to a Creation Credit Card, your billing date changed in error. This has caused your statement to generate on a different date. 

 

We're aware that this change wasn't expected; we're working on a resolution and aim to fix the error as soon as we possibly can. We'll of course be correcting any negative impact to your account automatically and will be back in touch once we have fixed the error.

 

If you need to discuss your account please contact us using the dedicated email address; quoting your full name, date of birth and the last four digits of your card.

 

Again please be assured we're working towards a fix as quickly as we can and apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

 

The Creation Team