World of Hyatt currently has a 30% discount sale on purchasing points and for a specific booking, it made sense to buy 36,000 points to book a Guest of Honor reservation.
Unfortunately, Hyatt’s vendor points.com seems to have problems verifying the payment made with an international credit card and the purchase has been rejected.
The way Hyatt facilitates this purchase process is that you fill in an online form which then gets submitted to the vendor which is points.com but for some reason, this doesn’t seem to be a live verification.
I previously wrote about the points sale here:
World Of Hyatt Buy Points Promotion Offering A Rare 30% Discount Through December 30, 2021
As I mentioned in my article buying points makes limited sense but there can be instances when rates are very high and purchased points are actually cheaper than paying a regular rate.
In this particular case, a longtime friend living in Beijing just got married and is going to stay for three nights at the Grand Hyatt Sanya. Since she and her husband don’t have any Hyatt status I offered to make a Guest of Honor booking for 36,000 miles so they can enjoy a couple of days of honeymooning at this resort.
We completed the purchase process using an American Express credit card issued in China. The transaction was sent off and went to pending. The bank even contacted my friend asking if this transaction is legitimate and they confirmed it.
Now 24 hours later I received an error email from Hyatt (pictured above):
PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL
Your recent World of Hyatt Bonus Points transaction could not be completed. Please try your transaction again or contact Customer Service .
Cancellation Summary
| Transaction Number: | 8846-0804-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx |
| Transaction Date: | 12/24/2021 |
| Bonus Points Amount: | 36000 |
If you have any questions regarding your transaction, please contact Customer Service .
I had enough points in my account and transferred some more from Chase so I was able to complete the booking for them but this isn’t a great situation.
Worst case she’ll just transfer me the $600 in cash which is a pretty good haul for 36k. It’s obviously against Hyatt’s rules to sell the points but that wasn’t my intention here and so far hasn’t happened yet.
We’ll try the purchase again maybe with a different credit card. Having a card issued in China seems to create issues for points.com even if it’s made with an American Express. Why even offer it as an option then?
Conclusion
Hyatt’s or in this case probably the points.com fraud prevention had an issue with a buy points transaction under the current promotion where World of Hyatt is offering a 30% discount.
The first transaction got canceled despite being properly authorized on the cardholder’s account. I wonder if there were too many fraud attempts with points purchases using a Chinese issued card but a global company such as Hyatt should be able to handle that.
