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UPDATES:
- October 14, 2021: IHG is giving 10,000 bonus points to accounts that are affected by the widespread IT issue. Check your IHG Rewards account here.
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IHG appears to be doing some sort of extensive IT work over the past weekend and as a result, it affects several IHG Rewards account members unable to log in. My IHG Rewards account is one of the unlucky ones in this instance.
I could not sign into IHG to use my points and make reservations. So I decided to reach out to IHG via call for assistance but the wait is tediously long. So if you are as frustrated as me, I can totally relate to that! This is why I am writing this post up to help provide you another way to reach IHG customer care faster to solve the IHG Rewards account disabled fiasco.
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| Photo: Holiday Inn Aruba Beach Resort and Casino |
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UPDATE: IHG recognized the IT issue and has started issuing 10,000 bonus IHG Goodwill points to accounts that are affected. My account received the 10k goodwill points one day after I got my account unlocked when I wrote up this post.
If your IHG Rewards account is locked/disabled, and you successfully have it re-instated, check your IHG Rewards account here to see if the 10,000 goodwill points are there. You may want to wait until you resolve your login issue before you can see the points. Moreover, if your account is not affected by this or your account is resolved itself, you may not receive these points.
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| IHG Goodwill 10,000 Bonus Points |
IHG Account is Disabled
Last week, when I attempted to log into my IHG Rewards account:
- My points balance is zero.
- I attempted to sign in again and it said that my account is temporarily locked.
- A day later, I attempted to log in again, this time IHG system said that my IHG account is disabled and advised me to contact customer care for assistance.
This appears to be a widespread technical issue with IHG. So first of all, there’s no need to panic about losing your points and reservations if you are wondering if your account is locked due to suspicious activities, fraud, or violations that lead to your account termination.
What frustrates me the most though is that IHG knows about the issue but never mentions anything on their website.
If this happens to you, you can either wait it out until IHG sorts things out with their IT, or you can reach out to IHG to unlock your IHG Rewards account. The wait time for calling IHG customer care is super long during this time. I attempted to call IHG customer care first and was waiting for over an hour long. I finally decided to give up and found a quicker way to reach them to solve the problem. This is why I am writing this up to share my experience on getting to an IHG customer rep faster to unlock your IHG Rewards account. See below.
A Trick to Solve IHG Rewards Account Disabled Faster With IHG Customer Care
Follow the steps below using your computer’s desktop:
- Go to the official IHG website here.
- If the Recent conversation popup does not show, click on the NEED HELP? on the top. See the screenshot below.
- Click on SEND A MESSAGE, and type Live Chat
- Click on Reservations. Do not click on IHG Rewards even though the issue you are having is not reservations-related. If you click on the IHG Rewards, it’ll take forever for a customer rep to come up and chat with you.
- Click on the Click here to speak to a live chat agent.
- Fill out the form and click Start.
- The live chat system should let you know the queue numbers but trust me it’s much shorter than if you were to click on the IHG Rewards above for the live chat. In my case, it took less than 1 minute for someone to get online.
- Be courteous and let the agent know that your IHG Rewards account is disabled and can’t log in.
- The agent will proceed to verify you and ask you about when was your last stay in IHG hotels and the location, so be prepared for that!
- Once your information is verified, your account should be unlocked.
- Try to sign in to your account while the agent is still online.
- It’s worth noting that for whatever reason, my Chrome browser doesn’t seem to let me sign into my IHG Rewards account after the account is unlocked, but it does not show the account is disabled message anymore. If I use Chrome in Incognito mode though, I could get in just fine. Gotta love IT, right?
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| Photo Credit: IHG |
If you get an IHG agent that’s not willing to help you, my suggestion is to stop the chat and repeat the steps above again. I was on call for over an hour long and this sure beats that! Good luck!
