Currency Conversion Conundrum: An Accor Live Limitless (ALL) Oversight that Resulted in 18% Fewer Points
I have not been an Accor Live Limitless (ALL) Platinum member for very long (even though I used to be a LCAH Platinum member a decade ago) but I enjoyed my stay at The Ambassador Seoul - A Pullman Hotel two weeks ago. However, the number of Rewards Points and Status Points that were posted after the stay was significantly lower than what I was expecting.
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The Ambassador Seoul
Deluxe Room
ALL is a pretty interesting loyalty program and even though it does not have "redemption sweet spots" like the World of Hyatt or Marriott Bonvoy program, it can be rather rewarding if you can double- or triple-dip on promotions. As a quick reminder, all ALL members will earn 2.5 Rewards Points and Status Points per Euro spent on stays at all participating Accor brands.
On my recent stay at The Ambassador Seoul - A Pullman Hotel, I redeemed 2,000 ALL Rewards Points (worth €40) to offset the total cost of my stay - the final amount that I paid after deducting the partial redemption is KRW 370,905 (excluding tax). Since KRW 370,905 converts into EUR 255.18 roughly, I was expecting the following number of points to post:
Status Points: 638
Rewards Points: 638
Platinum Accelerator: 485
When I looked at my ALL account however, I noticed that the total number of status points awarded for this stay was just 540 (which also meant that my total spend was converted to EUR 216 instead of EUR 255) - 18% lower than the 638 that I was expecting. As such, I have decided to reach out to ALL Customer Care to find out what was causing the discrepancy.
After reaching out to the ALL Customer Care team, I was informed that KRW 370,905 was indeed converted into EUR 215.97 (which is a lot less than the actual exchange rate) and it was the “daily rate of the euro in the stock”. A quick lookup of the Euro foreign exchange reference rates for that day reveals an actual rate of KRW 1 = EUR 0.000688. As such, I have decided to reply with the following email that points out the massive discrepancy in rates:
After persisting with this request, they finally admitted that the points were incorrectly posted and they made the adjustment to my account promptly. While the absolute difference in the number of Rewards Points and Status Points might not be drastic in this case, it is good practice to always check on the number of points posted after each stay (especially on higher value stays where the differences can be amplified).
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