Hilton HHonors - Need advice on dealing with reward stay problem

Hi all - hope you can offer some advice.

I originally booked a Holmwood Suites in Ft. Myers for March 8-18 back in April - no reward points involved since I didn't have any at that time. Length of stay rate was $269/night plus tax.

In August, I had enough points for a free night (30,000 pts) and called HH to see if I could use them for one of the nights on the existing reservation. Was told this was no problem, cert. issued and reservation updated to reflect it.

Today, I called to see if I could use another reward night during that stay and was informed the first one should have voided the length of rate stay and using it and/or another reward stay night would bump the rate of my room for the other 8 nights to $324 plus tax.

So, I can pay a total of $2985.90 for 10 nights including tax or $2877.12 for 8 nights including tax using 2 reward nights. Obviously, this is a no brainer. I'll pay for the 10 nights and save the 60k points for next year.

What I need to know from you folks is should I ask for some form of compensation to make up for the screw up of not informing me of all this when I called in August about the first reward night? Had I know this then, I wouldn't have bothered with the reward night.

For almost 5 months now I've been budgeting based on paying $300 less than what it's now going to cost me (not to mention spending an hour on the phone today to try to fix this).

If compensation is warranted, should I call or email? What should I ask for? Points? Upgrade HH status? (I'm currently blue with a promise to upgrade to gold after the first night made by the same rep who issued the first certificate - not sure I should count on that one):confused:

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Gail

Gail:

Compensation tends to be a hot word in this forum. As soon as some people see it they come out of their closets screaming about something for nothing.
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From what I hear, you are asking for an error to be corrected and not a whole lot more.

It sounds to me like after you used a few earned (free)(I am going to quit using the term, free. You earned these) nights, the rate changed and that was not disclosed.

I would call the HHonors desk and ask for their assistance with this.

From what I am reading, all you want is the original quoted rate and now the ability to use the two earned nights.

You do not need compensation, you need them to restore your resevation as it was before.

Obviously, when speaking to the agent in August you had a 10 day reservation that was then changed to a single day stay. That agents should have said something.

Be aware that when changing the length of stay (10 days to 9 days, that is what has to be done in your case) you can change the rate also. BTW, that can go both ways. I just changed a reservation from 4 nights to 3 nigths and the rate changed from $319 to $209.

Gail, you can avoid many of these hassles with a sligthly different strategy. Keep the following points in mind:

1) You can book reward reservations prior to having the points required for your stay. But you can't do it online.

2) You can make reward reservations direct with the hotel. Even if they person you are talking to doesn't think they can book a reward reservation.

3) You don't even need an "official" reward reservation to use a certificate, as long as someone at the hotel will accept the certificate, which is entirely at their discretion.

So, in your case, I'd book the lowest paid rate I can, any way I can. Then I'd call the manager at the hotel, explaining I have a regular reservation but will want to redeem some certificates based upon my balance at check in.

Explain that you will print the certificates yourself (which you do online), so they don't think they have to do anything special on their end. Most managers will simply put a note in the account, and you can then present any certificates at check-in.

Now, that said, here's the kicker: you are probably better off saving points for point stretcher or a GLON redemption (for six nights or more) which comes to 25,000 points per night or less. But you'll get the hang of that eventually.

Gail,

You may also want to price out the reward stay on both the front end and back end of the reservation. Depending on what days you are staying (weekends for example), you may find that the rate is cheaper for the last 8 days or the first 8 days.

Somewhere on this forum, someone advised that and when booking my award stay for Hawaii saved a bundle because I used the award stay over the weekend and paid for 2 weekdays. It was a money saving tip for me!

Good luck!

$269 a night for a Homewood Suites?

If one isnt going over to Europe or heading into Manhattan then being able to save $269 isnt bad at all. That said I generally would only cash out for a Glon/GlonP/Axon or Point Stretcher.

As for compensation Id say all that might be owed is for HH to remove the free night and put the res back to a 10 night stay at $269 a night, but then the OP should should 1st check to see what the rate would be for the same nights if they made it today for those same 10 nights as then all the OP has to do is ask that the free night be dropped w/o saying another word as it would be $269 anyway. If it comes out more than $269 the HH should take care of it however they need to in order to make the OP whole

$269 a night for a Homewood Suites?

thats NOT bad there are some Hamptons around Fort Lauderdale/Miami that are asking almost that much

Thanks for the replies everyone.

The hotel has agreed to keep my rate at the originally quoted $269 but not if I use any free nights with it. Since the rate is based on "length of stay" any changes will result in the current rate which is now $324/night.

$269 isn't a bad rate for Ft Myers in March (regular rate was $299 at the time I booked). The Holiday Inn Express across the street is at $299 a night for just the one room and the Best Westerns are about $170 a night for room only. It's their busiest time of the year.

As far as saving the points for a cheaper stay somewhere else, my situation's a bit different than most of you in that we (son and I) only go on one trip a year - to Red Sox Spring Training. So we're limited to the month of March and pretty much to Ft. Myers. Everything goes into this one trip and it's his big Christmas present.

Reward stays were showing as none available on their website for this time period, which is why I called to add the second free night and the original free night had to be on the second night of the stay since the first night wasn't available either. I did speak to the manager of the hotel directly and she's the one who told me the original rate would disappear using any rewards. If I had booked the rewards at the same time the reservation was made, I'd still be able to have the cheaper rate and the rewards but I didn't realize you could book a reward without having the points available. Now I know for next year.

Thanks again for all you're help. I'm kind of learning as I go along.

Gail