“Good to know about this” is how Wonderful Wanda — who is a reader of The Gate — responded in the Comments section to this article pertaining to the possibility of having a Hilton Honors membership account closed as a result of pooling points. “But we need more DP on exactly why Hilton is doing this. We need to hear from a Hilton spokesperson on this matter.”
Official Response From Hilton About Point Pooling Account Closures
I reached out to one of my contacts at Hilton with a link to the aforementioned article; and after thanking me for reaching out and giving Hilton the chance to confirm its commitment to safeguarding the data of its customers, the official response is as follows:
We continuously review and strengthen our security systems and processes to ensure we maintain our guests and Hilton Honors members’ personal information. We encourage Hilton Honors members to regularly review their accounts and update online passwords as a precaution, as they would their bank and email accounts. If a member feels their account has been closed in error, we recommend they contact our Hilton Fraud Protection Team at hhfraudprotection@hilton.com for assistance.
Summary
I reiterate that FlyerTalk member MaldivesFreak offers some good advice which is similar to alerting a credit card company prior to travel so as not to have any transactions flagged as fraudulent activity — similar to what has also been implied by Hilton: “Have every active account holder in the pool, i.e; everyone who is going to either send and/or receive points, email and call Hilton and state their intentions to pool points. When each member is on the phone to them they will have their voice recorded so the fraud department will have different voiceprints to examine if there is any investigation. Mention politely that this is a service which they have implemented and advertised and that all parties involved will be on the phone to their lawyers/small claims court/fair trade association or whatever is applicable for your location if things go wrong and points and accounts are arbitrarily deleted and closed. Furthermore, ask for a note to be put on each account saying that you (each member) has authorized the upcoming transfer of points and preferably set a date or timeframe in which you will complete the transfer(s) and adhere to that timeframe. Then, and only then, will you have something substantial to fall back on to back up your transfer and prove it is not fraudulent.”
However, I do agree with Christian — who is a reader of The Gate and posted that “I’m not sure that calling up to threaten legal action if things go badly would be the best opening gambit, but different strokes.” Legal action should be reserved for the last possible solution if no other choice is available.
Two schools of thought could apply here: one is that if some people are experiencing these extreme issues, then other people who have not openly reported them must be experiencing as well; and the other is that the closing of Hilton Honors accounts as a result of pooling points are merely isolated incidents.
I personally prefer to believe the latter than the former…
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
