Updates on the 47,000 IHG Points for $56 Game

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Through February 15, IHG is running a promotion that offers a prize for every stay beyond your first. Since the prize is randomly drawn, though, IHG had to offer a free way to enter to avoid violating lottery laws.

All you have to do is send a hand-written note to IHG’s prize fulfillment company, and you get an entry. You can get 94 entries this way. See “GET 47,000+ IHG POINTS FOR $56 FROM HOME” for more information.

The promotion has been running since November 15 of last year, so MileValue readers have provided a lot of data on how the contest is going for them. You can check out all their comments here.

The interesting data points to me are that points are now posting, almost everyone reports that all prize entries have gotten at least 500 points, and envelopes do not need to be hand-written.

1. The first Priceless Surprise game plays were received on December 4th. The first points posted on December 29th.
2. Almost everyone has reported that all their entries won 500+ points. One commenter reported that only 46 of his 50 entries won a prize. Let’s conservatively say that 92% of your entries get 500+ points. That means you can expect 41,000+ points. I am sure the true expected value is over 50,000 points with all the other prizes available.
3. The index cards cards clearly need to be handwritten with (1) your full name, (2) complete mailing address, (3) day and (4) evening phone numbers, (5) valid email address, (6) IHG member number, (7) the first six digits of your MasterCard, and (8) date of birth. But many people wondered whether the envelope needed to be hand written. The answer is no. You can use pre-printed address labels.

I haven’t filled in my index cards yet. Have you? With what results?