Over the past 6 months, I have been traveling more and more. I just qualified for Silver status on NWA and I’m well on my way to Gold.
So today, I went to online to book some hotel rooms. I entered my Hilton Honors Silver VIP number and password. I received on a screening message: “invalid member number” I looked at my card to confirm my Hilton Honors number. Right number. I looked at my Silver VIP expiration date. March 2010.
I was perplexed. I’ve been a Hilton Honors member since May 2002 and all of a sudden I was invalid. After several more tries entering my information and getting the same response, it seems I had no longer existed in the Hilton world.
I decided to pick up the phone and call Hilton. After navigating the Hilton Honor phone system, I finally reached a customer service person. I explained my problem and verified my identity. The customer service agent keyed all this in and said:
“Mr. Diamond, we voided your Silver VIP Hilton Honors because of your lack of hotel stays over the past 12 months.”
I explained that I have been a loyal customer for 7 years. I explained that my Silver VIP card did not expire until 2010. The agent repeated:
“Mr. Diamond, we voided your Silver VIP Hilton Honors because of your lack of hotel stays over the past 12 months.”
After several more back and forth exchanges the picture was getting clearer. Hilton had unilaterally cancelled loyalty membership and expunged my 70,000 loyalty points. I was a Hilton PNG (persona non grata).
I am extremely persistent so the conversation went on for several more minutes. I suggested several times that they reinstate my card and my points. Each time they denied my request. She even tried to place the blame on me since I didn’t have the foresight to purchase the minimum $.50 worth of loyalty points to keep my account active. I guess Hilton dropped me because not only did I not have enough stays, they also thought I didn’t meet their intelligence standards.
So after years and years of Hilton hotel stays, they had cast me aside. Hilton was done with me and taken away my 70,000 loyalty points. 
And this finally brings me to my RPOlosophy topic:
Online Brand Management – The Art and Science of Internet Brand Building and Brand Protection
Every day, for good or bad, someone somewhere is talking about your company. While constructive criticism is always welcome, malicious attacks on your company can spread like crazy and without you even knowing it. Therefore, as a Recruitment Process Outsourcing professional, I consistently follow online information, discussions, and comments about Pinstripe (and my competition). It is clearly an investment; however, it is also an essential part of my sales and service process. Good postings can be a boost and negative comments can sink you (even though I am not so full of myself to think that my comments above will have any impact on Hilton’s long-term viability).
Here is an overview of my simple strategy. Our online reputation is important to me, so I monitor all of the following on a daily basis
- Blogs
- Message Boards, Forums & Threads
- News Searches
In reality, I probably spend less than an hour a day on these activities (there are so many tools available to help be efficient); however, it is well worth it. There are some days it yields nothing, while there are other days that I am amazed by the plethora of information.
If you are not familiar with such tools as Twingly, BackType, TweetGrid, and Ice Rocket, today would be a great day to start. And don’t be surprised by what you find.
P.S. I just booked 3 nights at the Marriott.
Entries (RSS)
Hi Barry! Great post and thanks for mentioning the tools you included at the end. Will share this with a friend too. Silly Hilton — they don’t deserve you! Good post on the ERE Panel and the humidity analogy too; I watched the live panel and thought it was great and also think Pinstripe should feel proud of their partnership with us. There’s a video of the panel here, at least there was yesterday, in case someone missed it http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2143823.
Hope all’s well!
Barry good advice, thanks for the tools. Sorry to hear about Hilton
[...] that he was not intelligent, Barry did what any good, social media savvy consumer should do: he blogged about it. And tweeted about it. And posted to Facebook about it. He even debated singing a [...]
Matt Jacobson from Pinstripe’s marketing team shared this with me today….he titled his email “Sound Familar?”
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/traveltips/09/22/losing.frequent.flier.miles/index.html
[...] follow up to last week’s blog post. After blog posts by several people, Tweets (including one that included the @hiltonhhonors name), Facebook posting, [...]
I read it but to be honest I can’t understand all this tweeting, blogging and facing. If it is the wave of the future then I want to scuba dive. I have mostly viewed this nonsense as a mechanism to publish what is banal and trivial in one’s life in a mistaken attempt to elevate those things to newsworthy status. Not.
Ethan
We are Facebook friends and you read the RPOlosophy blog at least once so welcome to being part of the “problem”
Also,I know you have been writing a book over the past few years and I would think that sharing some of the content through social media might be a great way to validate your insights, observations, and skills.
Hi,
I’m in a similar situation of win the fight, lose the customer
. Today while trying to reserve a vacation stay with those hard earned points during my days as a road warrior I had a shocking surprise waiting for me at the other end of the line (enough to give someone feeble a heart attack)! I was told that ALL my 162000+ points at Hilton Honors were forfieted due to inactivity on my account in the past 12 months! Hello! Someone should have send a letter informing me of such – but NO, the points are gone – poof! I have read the similar stories at places like flyertalk so this is not new as I came across your blog searching on Google for Hilton forfeited points.
This treatment to me suggests that they just don’t care or their Customer retention and loyalty program has taken a back seat due to the sour economy. I was a diamond ViP member in the early 2000’s but have not been on the road since the 2005 after taking a local job – a customer’s past loyalty should equate to some future lifetime value – I guess not.
This behavior from Hilton is unacceptable and I don’t want to go sulk over this $2000 loss – that’s right! If you were to buy these many points from Hilton it would cost you over $2k!! This is a call for action as I’m sure there are hundreds out there with similar plight.
Sorry about your situation. It sounds a lot like mine. Here is the email of the customer service manager who reinstated me -Jey.Washington@hilton.com – hope it helps.
This very same thing happened to me! I am online now booking with Hilton and ‘Boom’ I don’t exist either. I typed my number in, then again and nothing. I was void in the Hilton world also. But you did get one step further then I. I never even received a Hilton Silver card! I have stayed numerous times (which one stay was just a few months ago) and never got a card. They assured me it would arrive, but it never did.
But you know Murphy’s Law…It will come in the mail tomorrow. Waiting 3 1/2 years and finding out I am void now.
This is the thanks we get, after putting up with the hookers that were coming and going at the Homewood Suite in Jax. And all the “white trash” that was hopping the fence to swim at the hotel. Bringing this to hotel attention and nothing was done. But they find the time to void guests that have been loyal for years with their hotel chain…What a fine hotel chain this is!