That's me done - total result: nothing. I wonder if allowing people to win once per day rather than once per account might have made it worth someone's time to rig it? I know nothing about coding/programming, but presumably it would be easy enough to set up a script to 'autoplay' at a set time each day. You'd only need to set up 1,440 SPG accounts to have one of them playing every minute, 24 hours a day. Even if you had to set up the SPG accounts manually, that's about 3ish days work I reckon. On the other hand, perhaps I'm just a bad loser!
Very much how I felt after TCB's hummingbird promos. I got lucky with this one. There will be other competitions to plunder! By the way, I'm astonished that this wasn't covered much on other air miles websites. Head For Points didn't mention it.
Just enquired with @SPGassist on twitter about the prizes and when they're uploaded to accounts, because it's been 23 days since the win. Despite the message above saying 'in approximately three weeks', I've just been told it's three weeks from the date of the end of the competition. The competition ended March 18th, so hopefully we'll get the points by the end of the week. There's also the prize draw - hopefully the people here who didn't win will get lucky! I'll be transferring the points to avios as soon as I get them, It's enough for a stay at a category 1 Starwood hotel but I'd rather have the avios. Can I just say again how appreciative I am for this site bringing these things to my attention. I don't usually win competitions but in the last couple of months I have been luckier.
Hi Litefoot, Unless you need the Avios immediately for something specific, I'd recommend leaving the Points in your SPG account for the time being when you get them. The beauty of SPG points is how flexible they are because they have so many airline partners and can be used for hotels too. Also, if you can end up with 20,000 (which could happen surprisingly quickly if they carry on with these sort of promos!) you get a 5,000 bonus Avis/Miles when you transfer. Avios are great, but they are also relatively easy to get hold of in other ways. I value SPG Points at nearly double what I value Avios.
Points uploaded this morning, huzzah! Thanks for the advice. I'm just a little concerned about the Starwood merger, and how it might affect the airline partners/value of points. I'll wait a while and see what Starwood come up with.
Any time! I don't envisage anything happening to the SPG loyalty programme as a result of the sale for at least a year. If Marriott end up as the buyer then it'll likely take them forever to decide what they're doing with the loyalty programmes and then implement it - and there would almost definitely be plenty of notice of any changes, or they would infuriate all the old SPG members who are pretty concerned about a Marriott takeover anyway. If the buyer is Anbang i'd say the likelihood is that they would leave most parts of the business well alone, and even if they did take a more active approach they'd be pretty stupid to mess up one of Starwood's key differentiators - SPG. They are a bit of an unknown though so there's always a risk they might do things that are unexpected. I'd still hope that at least some notice would be given for any changes, and they have to clear the regulatory issues first too to even get the deal, so nothing will happen for a while regardless.
Aren't we due something like this again? I wonder if the Marriott merger has scuppered such generous promos.
"Generous", you must be kidding I wasted hours throwing balls for nothing. Still, it was a bit of fun and some people did win- just not me!
I would love another SPG free points promo! My fortunes have been mixed, but overall I've done very well out of them.
