I was caught up in the middle of the Diamond elite status debacle with the sale of elite qualifying points in which the Diamond elite status for which I paid was suddenly revoked from me.
I Was Caught Up in the Middle of the Diamond Elite Status Debacle.
Messages via e-mail were sent to me promoting the promise of earning Diamond elite status if I purchased a certain amount of IHG One Rewards points as happened last year. I thought about it and determined that Diamond elite status would be worth purchasing those points — especially if I can book rates in 2026 whose redemption value per point exceeded that of the purchase, which would save me from using cash for booking reservations at hotel and resort properties. This strategy worked in my favor in 2025 after I decided to participate in the this promotion; and so I thought I would do it again.
The promotion was executed flawlessly last year — but this year was a different story: I received the first of three messages via e-mail pertaining to the promotion on Tuesday, December 16, 2025 with the words “Purchase 115,000 Elite Qualifying Points by December 31, 2025, and you’ll secure your Diamond Elite status through the end of 2026.”
Because I am a holder of the IHG One Rewards Premier credit card, I also qualified for a discount of 20 percent off of my purchase of elite qualifying IHG One Rewards points.
I received a second e-mail message that was titled Brian, keep your Diamond Elite status for 2026 on Friday, December 19, 2025. I was still thinking about participating in this promotion again. After I received the third e-mail message with the title Last chance to lock in Diamond Elite, Brian, I decided to participate in the promotion again and purchased the required number of points to keep Diamond elite status for 2026. I received my receipt which confirmed the purchase…
Diamond Elite Status: Revoked.
…but then on Thursday, January 15, 2026, I received an e-mail message with the title “Brian, your membership status has changed.” It extolled the virtues of having Platinum elite status with the IHG One Rewards membership program.
Huh?!?
I logged into my membership account; and there it was: I was knocked down to Platinum elite status. My Diamond elite status had been revoked with no explanation whatsoever.
I contacted IHG via text through its official channel. I was advised to contact Chase — the bank which issued the IHG One Rewards Premier credit card — about this issue. A representative at Chase advised me to contact IHG about this issue, which I did again. The representative from IHG via text said that I needed to call the Diamond line, which I did. I was told that membership accounts were being reviewed by IHG and that the review process should be completed sometime around Saturday, January 24, 2026.
The status of my membership account still had not changed on Monday, January 26, 2026; so I contacted IHG again. I was given a case number and was told that someone would contact me within 48 hours.
I checked to see the status of my IHG One Rewards membership account again yesterday, Tuesday, January 27, 2026 — and there it was: my Diamond elite status was restored. No one ever called me or notified me about my elite status reverting to Diamond.
What Might Have Happened…
Apparently, IHG One Rewards membership accounts were under review because a technical glitch awarded some members with Diamond elite status through Friday, December 31, 2027, which was not supposed to happen.
I then found one other person who experienced a similar situation to mine: Sad IHG member — who is a reader of Frequent Miler — posted this comment:
Does anybody have a good phone number/email to escalate things with IHG. I bought points under this promo but made a mistake that left me just short of the 120,000 needed to qualify. I immediately contacted IHG and explained things. A few days later, on 26 December 2025, I received an email saying I had “locked in” Diamond through 2026. The language and meaning in the email are absolutely clear. On 10 January 2026 I received another email saying my status had changed: back down to Platinum. I called an explained that this was unfair: I was led to believe that I had the status and, if I didn’t, perhaps I could have done something in the last week of the year to get it. I got a fair hearing on the phone and was told to write an email. The response I received was terse and to the point: pound sand, you’re a Platinum and that’s it. The rep even went so far as to interpret the original email for me: Oh no, she wrote, that email just said that you had purchased points that qualified for status, it didn’t say that you have it. Bull$%!t.
If anyone has a good contact, I would love to have it. I’ve been fairly loyal with IHG for a long time and they are treating me quite unfairly.
A number of readers of Frequent Miler were blaming a fellow reader called Pam — as well as a number of weblogs which posted about the technical glitch — for bringing the prospect of having Diamond elite status for two years instead of one to the forefront and in the spotlight…
…as well as to the attention of the IHG One Rewards membership program.
What happened here is one of three reasons why I rarely report on mistake fares and errors.
Final Boarding Call
I currently hold the IHG One Rewards Premier credit card and the Sapphire Reserve credit card — both of which are issued by Chase — and both offer Platinum elite status with the IHG One Rewards membership program. Despite that, I keep the IHG One Rewards Premier credit card for two reasons:
- One free anniversary night every year at hotel properties with a point redemption value of 40,000 points or less
- The opportunity to purchase points at a discount to secure Diamond elite status with the IHG One Rewards membership program
Those two reasons are worth the annual fee of $99.00, in my opinion — plus, I obtained the IHG One Rewards Premier credit card before I applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which at that time did not yet offer the benefit of Platinum elite status with the IHG One Rewards membership program.
As long as I believe that I receive greater value than I am paying in terms of the annual fee for any credit card, I will continue to keep it. If for some reason Diamond elite status was not returned to my membership account, one of the actions that I was considering was canceling the IHG One Rewards Premier credit card; and continuing my Platinum elite status with the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card.
Thanks to inclement weather, I was forced to cancel a trip because a flight was canceled with no plan by the airline on how to move forward with the trip, which resulted in a trip in vain scenario during which I spent 22 hours traveling to Europe and back to North America. During that period of time, I had reservations at several hotel properties that are part of the brand portfolio of IHG Hotels & Resorts — which meant that I would not have been able to take advantage of Diamond elite status, as I was without it for twelve days.
I would have been upset to have paid for something outright and legitimately — only not to have enjoyed it and experienced it.
What the IHG One Rewards membership program should have done is simply conducted its reviews without changing the elite status of its members, which wound up unnecessarily penalizing some of us — especially as I spent at least two hours unsuccessfully searching for a resolution to this issue. The IHG One Rewards membership program had almost one year to review any membership accounts that were mistakenly granted an extra year of Diamond elite status before correcting the date that the elite status ends from 2027 to 2026. If some members were found to have Diamond elite status without earning it legitimately, then revoke their elite status accordingly…
…plus, the quality of portions of its customer service needs to improve in order to resolve issues with customers sooner…
All photographs ©2025 by Brian Cohen.
