Hat tip to Gary Leff for posting this first.
An Ebay seller is offering a $30 upgrade to HHonors Gold status. A tremendous value if it pans out, but in my opinion is likely too good to be true. I am not personally aware of any mechanism to sell or gift HHonors status, and this does not appear to be coming from Hilton themselves.
For those still interested, the additional risk beyond Hilton revoking your status or the seller not being able to deliver is that the completion itself relies on sharing your HHonors username and password/pin.
HHonors Gold normally requires 20 stays, 40 nights or 75,000 earned base points in a calendar year.
Benefits include –
- 25% bonus points on stays
- 5th night free on award stays
- Late check out
- Complimentary gym access
- Complimentary upgrades
- Free breakfast
Not to shift focus to the merits of HHonors Gold status, but these benefits are the sweet spot in their elite program. Breakfast is a solid value and useful for families who want to eat on-property before heading out for the day. Similarly, Wi-Fi is one of those nickel and dime items that adds up over the course of a stay.
I would personally pass on this offer, but I am already a HHonors Gold member through the limited time American Express Platinum offer late last year. Still, HHonors Gold is not hard to come by, enough so that it’s worth acquiring the status even if you are a casual traveler. Two credit cards offer the status outright –
- American Express Hilton Honors Surpass, with a $75 annual fee
- Citi Hilton Honors Reserve, with a $95 annual fee
The sign up offers vary on these cards, but for now, the two free night certificate makes the Citi card the better signup. I’ll make hotel-branded credit cards the subject of a future post. Please note that the above credit card links are direct and do not pay me or anyone else a commission.
The bottom line is that this deal is probably too good to be true. The listing may even be gone by the time I hit the post button here. If you’re interested in HHonors Gold status, the above credit cards are safer options.
It has to be someone with an email that’s offered a gold upgrade, just like the MBA that has recently been talked about.
I would think so, but I can’t believe the Ebay listing is still active. I did find some removed/relisted prior, so I wonder if Hilton is policing this infrequently or what.
I still don’t recommend anyone try it, but I did see over on VFTW that there’s at least anecdotal evidence that someone got their status.
The fact that the seller asks for the HHonors number and PIN after purchasing makes me immediately suspicious that this could be a scam. Though reading through the feedback section of the seller’s eBay profile shows many happy customers. I’d be interested to hear direct feedback from someone who ends up buying this.
With so many different ways to get HHonors Gold (including the AMEX Platinum, bulletin board memberships, FoundersCard, etc.), I’m surprised that buying up HHonors from eBay is a viable option. But everyone makes their own decisions based on their scale of economy, I suppose…
No, I don’t think it is coming from Hilton. I did some research on the URL of the “person” offering this “too good to be true” opportunity. http://www.163.com is an over the top Chinese? shock news information site with headlines such as “too much octopus causes nausea” (Google translate) but also some normal headlines. This alone should be a red flag but NO, I was actually thinking about doing it anyway! I looked at the rating of satisfied customers on eBay and that was cool, very positive. I then went to my HHonors account to see what someone would see if I gave them my pin. I deleted my credit cards although they were expired anyway and there wasn’t much else they could get as I didn’t have that many points. Did the transaction on eBay. It took aproximately 24 minutes for me to have confirmation from Hilton of Gold status. Freaky!
I immediately changed my PIN. Your experience may vary.
I lately booked a Homewood Suites at a very busy time and could not get the room type I wanted. I thought to call Amex on my Hhonors card and see if any offers were available. Yes! Upgrade to Surpass and get 50,000 pts after $3000 spend in 3 months. Annual fee difference is prorated based on my usual renewal date. So it cost me $50 for gold status and 50,000 pts. Pts posted quite quickly. I think being a gold member got me the nice upgrade to a two bedroom two bath suite.
That’s not bad at all. I don’t think suite upgrades are a gold benefit, but its nice to see that they do happen. I had a similar experience at the Doubletree in Chattanooga as a gold.
I did it for a friend and it worked They had next to no points it their account you need to change your password after its done