Late last year Marriott’s CEO Arne Sorenson came out and and said that the Marriott & SPG integration was going well and while it was ‘a little more bumpy than we had anticipated’ it was mostly ‘noise around the edges’. Despite that Marriott and SPG loyalty customers are still running into a host of issues.
Issues are to be expected when it comes to an integration as big as this, what isn’t acceptable is top executives complete lack of empathy and respect for real issues that are still occurring with this program. Given that Marriott’s CEO recently stated that they were keeping unencrypted passport details for the benefit of consumers, I think it’s time for Sorenson to stop commenting publicly and put some more effort and resources into fixing these issues. To make things easier for Sorenson, here are some issues that still haven’t been resolved.
Contents
Customers Not Being Informed Of Cancelled Bookings
Read our full post on this issue
A lot of hotels have left the Marriott program as of late and loyalty members are reporting that award bookings are being cancelled in some case. One example is the Le Meridien Tahiti, customers that previously had award bookings have:
- Not been told by Marriott that these bookings have now been cancelled
- Have not had their reports refunded
What makes matters worse is that after this property left the Marriott program, Marriott specifically told these customers that their bookings would be honored. According to AccorHotels representatives (who now manage this property) they had originally come to an agreement with Marriott to honor these reservations but then Marriott tried to change the reimbursement rate agreed upon.
Unable To Select Choice Benefit
In mid January Marriott claimed that users could now select their annual choice benefit for completing 50 or 75 nights. Despite that errors persist and readers have still been unable to make a selection. Marriott’s solution is to use a different browser, the problem is that people have tried multiple browsers, computers, cleared caches and tried all of the usual solutions and they are still unable to select their benefit. Marriott these are some of your most loyal customers, what are you doing?
Points Expiring Message
Loyalty members seeing the following message when logged in:
We’re sorry, but your points expired on 12/30/2020. Our records show no account activity for at least 24 months. If you believe we missed something, please contact customer support.
Stays Not Posting Correctly
Lots of readers are reporting that after completing a stay it’s not reporting correctly to Marriott and they are having to manual intervene to get the stay to post.
Other Issues
- Room revenue line item. Has anybody seen this before? It’s almost like they have given up calling it a resort or destination fee.
- Suite night awards can’t be applied to bookings.
Final Thoughts
I don’t make a post like this to be an a******, but I’m sick of Marriott acting like there aren’t still significant issues with this integration. Stop treating your elites like dirt beneath your feet and actually fix issues rather than claiming everything is working perfectly.
“We’re sorry, but your points expired on 12/30/2020. Our records show no account activity for at least 24 months. If you believe we missed something, please contact customer support.”
Yes, they missed something. They appear to have missed almost every day in the years 2019 and 2020. After having missed approximately 720 days, they now suddenly find themselves celebrating New Year, 2021.
On the plus side, perhaps time travel is now available at their hotels. (For a “nominal fee,” of course.)
Enrolled in the Marriott platinum challenge early Oct. 2018, confirmed with the customer service over the phone when enrolling that Points stay and cash stay both counts. Now fished the 16 stays, and some of them were paid by cash on purpose for the challenge, then was told: “NO! No points stay counts! “I argued when I enrolled, the term was not like this. “NO! Nothing I can do!”
They finally resolved the choice benefit selection (at least for me).
One issue I’m seeing at the moment is they apparently not updating lifetime nights counter. I just made Lifetime Gold but my nights still show 397. This is the number that’s impossible to count so I have to rely on Marriott and they’re not doing a good job on this.
I have a stay with Marriott from January 5 that still hasn’t posted. It’s sad that I have to do their job to fight for a stay credit.
Reading the travel package thread alone leaves you with people who have Marriott irrevocably modify their package or lose it entirely and being completely lacking empathy on a resolution. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1928972 It is really a shame.
A recent issue I experienced is that I had 2 expired Marriott / Ritz CC in my account. I couldn’t delete or update the card info online, so I had to call Marriott to make the change.
I also called Marriott to get my points back from the Le Meridien Tahiti booking fiasco. Rep couldn’t understand the problem until I told her to look into the details of the 140k point redemption on the specific date.
The only way they’ll listen is if frequent travelers abandon them and pick other chains. I know that’s hard since so many people really built up status and points in either program which frankly were probably the two best prior to this debacle, but the place it hurts the most is lost revenue. They honestly won’t care that much until the numbers start coming up short and they don’t meet wall street expectations. Suddenly the CEO will acknowledge they have some major problems to fix. Until their leadership owns it, I’d avoid these guys like the plague.
I agree! Many people threaten switching but very few actually follow through, which emboldens Marriott.
Nothing too new compared to the other post, but issues have included:
1. Stays not posting correct number of points. Had to intervene and contact multiple times.
2. Marriott has basically given up on responding to Twitter DMs in a reasonable amount of time. I think I had one that received a reply a week later!
3. Lying or misleading about the data breach being a “Starwood” issue even though it occurred after merger.
4. The points math simply not working. With over a million points remaining it’s extremely difficult to do the math, but I’m pretty sure some transactions were added with no change to my point totals.
5. Strange “year end report” email that did not include any of my 2018 activity, and showed my 2019 activity of 0 nights (because I have ditched Marriott in favor of other brands despite being lifetime platinum).
The issue I’m currently facing isn’t related to the merger, but is instead related to the declining quality of Marriott hotels, which are run by other companies on behalf of Marriott. I bought a gift card from a Residence Inn on January 21. Its GM refused to refund it today, despite Marriott’s stated policy, and pretty much euphemistically told me to go f*ck myself. I emailed a lot of Marriott folks & have been on phone for 1.5 hours, but they’ve put me on hold.
If you paid by CC (not Debit Card), that should be an easy one to solve. If you’ve tried in good faith to return an item that is eligible for refund and the merchant refuses to honor the refund policy, dispute the charge w/ your CC issuer. You may end up w/ a CC refund, along w/ a GC whose funds remain populated. Then you and euphemistically (or literally) tell that Residence Inn to go f*ck themselves. 😉
Thanks! I had paid with an Amex & have already disputed the transaction. I’ll probably not get to keep the GC, as GCs are ineligible when it comes to return protection, but then I’ve never disputed a transaction before, so you might be right. 🙂
Did anyone have trouble extend the expiration date on 7 night package?