Yesterday I wrote about an offer of 16,000 Wyndham Rewards bonus points per stay for up to 3 stays at new hotel properties.

The beauty of the deal is that Wyndham Rewards allows points to be earned if you pay for your room, even if you don’t keep the reservation. Many of these hotels are quite cheap, around $50 a night plus tax. And the bonus also coincides with a fall promotion of 5500 points after your second stay.

Wyndham has plenty of airline mileage partners to transfer points to for folks who don’t want to keep the Wyndham Rewards points. For them, it’s an opportunity to buy miles very inexpensively.

There was a similar promotion offered via email earlier on, most folks signed for marketing emails got one, the last time one was supposed to have receive the email in order to be eligible to participate. Lots of people did participate, and most got their points without difficulty.

This time the terms and conditions of the offer are quite clear that it is not targeted.

To qualify for the “16,000 bonus Points” promotion (the “Promotion”) and earn 16,000 Wyndham Rewards® points, the member must (i) be an active member (ii) book a stay at any of the 20 participating properties at a qualifying rate between 9/12/12 and 12/31/12 and complete their hotel stays by 1/3/13 (the “Promotion Period”).

Instead of being targeted, the offer specifically says that if your Wyndham Rewards account is active and you book a stay at one of the 20 properties specified during the promotion period then you are qualified for the 16,000 bonus points. There’s no ambiguity at all is that statement.

Much of this offer going viral stems from the blog post I made yesterday, and nobody from Wyndham has contacted me about it.

Now Wyndham’s representative on Flyertalk has posted that they intended for this to be a targeted offer.

Sorry for the confusion everyone. To clarify there were 2 parts to this promotion.

First part were for members who were targeted through email and the dates for that part were August 6, 2012 to October 6, 2012 and completed by October 9, 2012.

Second part is for member’s who were targeted through direct mail. Dates for this part are 9/12/12 to 12/31/12 and completed by 1/3/13.

To qualify you need to have been sent the direct mailer and book through the link provided. If you were not sent the direct mailer and you book through the link you will not receive the points for the promotion.

The second part of this promotion is not an extension of the first so if you had received the email and had not completed your stay you are not able to take part in the second part of the promotion unless you had also received the direct mail offer.

Hope this clears up any confusion.

So they’re making clear that:

• This is a different offer than the one they sent out by email earlier, which was targeted. This is not an extension of that offer, but a different promotion.
  
• This went out via direct mail and was intended for recipients of that mailing.

But of course that’s not what the published rules say. I’ve taken my screen shot of those rules, others who have participated in the promotion but did not receive a direct mail piece may want to take a screen shot as well — the terms and conditions have not (yet?) been revised so it’s still possible to do that.

Many will not want to make additional bookings based on the offer, given Wyndham’s apparent either confusion or intention not to offer the points consistent with the rules they’ve published online.

Although I imagine that they will ultimately honor points for anyone making bookings prior to any future revision of the terms and conditions published online.

It’s almost inconceivable that they won’t, considering people are making real financial investments in reliance on their advertised offer, which they would never have made without being induced by that offer.

But there’s a chance that this will not be as simple as Wyndham paying out the points as-promised.