Starwood Preferred Guest - Rant about .... (how hard it is to cancel a BRG reservation)

Long story short, I have a BRG approved at Planet Hollywood a while back for 1 night stay in July. Since I'm a gold member, I called the gold line to cancel the reservation. Agent told me she cannot cancel it. I need to contact Planet Hollywood to cancel. So I did. Agent at PH told me since my reservation was booked via starwood, i need to call stardwood to cancel. Strange.. but okay. I called gold preferred line again, was told they are not able to due to BRG. I need to speak to in house reservation at PH to cancel. Stayed calm. I called PH back, spoke to the in house reservation agent, agent told me she doesn't know why they referred me to them. She transferred me to the supervisor at PH. Spoke to the supervisor, she reaffirmed me that I can only cancel through starwood and there is nothing she can do about it. I asked her to do a conference call since I'm getting really pxxx xxx. She said it is not professional to do a conference call with a guest on the phone. I asked for her direct line instead and she gave it to me to give it to starwood to call her.

All right, I called the gold line again. He assured me would take care of the problem. He called the PH, talked to the same supervisor came back to me and told me the reservation is cancelable but for some reason non of them can cancel it. He put me on hold to call his manager to get an answer. Turned out the problem to be BRG. His manager was not able to cancel it either. Only corporate can cancel it. The agent apologized to me for not knowing this. So were the previous 2 agents. At this time, i have spent 1 hour and 30 mins on the phone try to cancel my reservation. The agent gave me the corporate # to call.

I called corporate office. Explained to her my situation. She apologized and offered to help me to contact the hotel to cancel it. WHAT??? She has to call the hotel again to cancel it???? She told me not to worry because she will help me to cancel it no matter what. At the end, i asked for goodwill gesture, she talked to her manager and agreed to give me 500 pts. LOL Okay....500 is 500. I'm really on fire here. I need to a pillow fight....

By my calculation your life is worth 333.333 (repeater) Starpoints per hour, it can't be too interesting, I'm sure mine is worth more than that :D

Seriously, there is nothing that frustrates me more than needlessly hanging on the end of a phone so I would be going nuts too.

Long story short, I have a BRG approved at Planet Hollywood a while back for 1 night stay in July. Since I'm a gold member, I called the gold line to cancel the reservation. Agent told me she cannot cancel it. I need to contact Planet Hollywood to cancel. So I did. Agent at PH told me since my reservation was booked via starwood, i need to call stardwood to cancel. Strange.. but okay. I called gold preferred line again, was told they are not able to due to BRG. I need to speak to in house reservation at PH to cancel. Stayed calm. I called PH back, spoke to the in house reservation agent, agent told me she doesn't know why they referred me to them. She transferred me to the supervisor at PH. Spoke to the supervisor, she reaffirmed me that I can only cancel through starwood and there is nothing she can do about it. I asked her to do a conference call since I'm getting really pxxx xxx. She said it is not professional to do a conference call with a guest on the phone. I asked for her direct line instead and she gave it to me to give it to starwood to call her.

All right, I called the gold line again. He assured me would take care of the problem. He called the PH, talked to the same supervisor came back to me and told me the reservation is cancelable but for some reason non of them can cancel it. He put me on hold to call his manager to get an answer. Turned out the problem to be BRG. His manager was not able to cancel it either. Only corporate can cancel it. The agent apologized to me for not knowing this. So were the previous 2 agents. At this time, i have spent 1 hour and 30 mins on the phone try to cancel my reservation. The agent gave me the corporate # to call.

I called corporate office. Explained to her my situation. She apologized and offered to help me to contact the hotel to cancel it. WHAT??? She has to call the hotel again to cancel it???? She told me not to worry because she will help me to cancel it no matter what. At the end, i asked for goodwill gesture, she talked to her manager and agreed to give me 500 pts. LOL Okay....500 is 500. I'm really on fire here. I need to a pillow fight....

I am sorry to hear what happend to you and I can feel how frustrated you must be. I had very similar experiences in the last couple of weeks. When the BRG department is involved, things go usually wrong. The supervisor there, Ms Txxx Wxxx, has no idea about a good customer service, and unfortunatelly, the Starwood Lurkers do also not care about such problems.

The only thing might be to escalate your case to the management. Send me a PM if you need the contact details of the (rather useless) BRG department supervisor

There is an easy way of solving such problems: Some might call it "stone age" but send in a telefax to both, the hotel and starwood and tell the in writing that you cancel. I never ever cancel via the phone and I had only a problem with my fax solution one in a lifetime - and this was solved by an emal in half an hour.

OP is far more patient than I.

Good for you for not losing your cool!

The main thing here for me is this is a good learning for all of us who read this thread and might find ourselves in a similar situation. Now we can cut right to the chase.

Cheers,

By my calculation your life is worth 333.333 (repeater) Starpoints per hour, it can't be too interesting, I'm sure mine is worth more than that :D

Seriously, there is nothing that frustrates me more than needlessly hanging on the end of a phone so I would be going nuts too.

I'm sure If i were a PLATINUM, my life will worth more starpoints. :D

unfortunatelly, the Starwood Lurkers do also not care about such problems.



:rolleyes:

Mike

Originally Posted by nissan motor
unfortunatelly, the Starwood Lurkers do also not care about such problems.



Mike :rolleyes:

+1


I have had the BRG Department advise that I also have had to contact the hotel to cancel, or that they will do it for me and they will put me on hold to cancel and then advise when it is complete. I always ask them for an e-mail confirm when this occurs just to be safe.

Obviously, the run-around from the PH was an unusual but certainly frustrating situation.

I received an email last night informed me that my reservation is finally cancelled. I talked to the lady (from Singapore corporate office) who helped me about the cancellation about my refund. She said my reservation is a best available rate. No deposit require. Therefore, no refund is needed. I told her PH charged me the 1 night stay. She said its impossible. I said it is possible and please call PH and ask them why they charged me at the first place.

Got another email from the same lady told me that the refund is processed. I should get the refund with a few days.

Its sad to put a hotel guest in a frustrated situation due to hotel, starwood internal offices, departments, corporate office unknowlegable of procedures & policies.

PH always wants to charge for the room upfront and then refund if cancelled within the deadline later. I've even had them go so far as to pull my credit card information from a previous stay and apply it to a new reservation because "your credit card that was on the reservation declined" then had the audacity to ARGUE ME DOWN that it was legal to do such :mad:. It rather disturbs me that just anyone working at the front desk can pull your entire credit card information up from previous stays. I know that the Marriott system will only show the last four digits and only accounting has access to the full numbers.

I have had to cancel two BRG reservations in the past and was told immediately by the Platinum Concierge that only Starwood Corporate could cancel these reservations. Starwood Corporate knew what to do right away on the first call and promptly canceled my reservation in both cases. I guess it all depends who you get on the phone.

Kudos to you OP for hanging in there. What an annoying situation.

I've only dealt with the PLT line and the PLT agent can't cancel the BRG booking, so what they do is put me on hold and contact Starwood Corporate.

Then SC either accepts my call and cancels the booking on the spot, in which they advise of a cancellation number and to expect an email cancellation as well. If the SC lines are busy, I leave my number and SC do call back promptly and cancel the reservation for me.

I've had no issues cancelling 5-6 BRG reservations recently but what leaves a sour taste is that 1) why can't SPG show amended BRG bookings on our account 'stay' screen? Like seriously Marriott & Swissotel shows amended BRG bookings....and I'm sure many other chains do it. Why not SPG?!?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/starwood-preferred-guest/658902-trying-cancel-brg-reservation-phone-saga.html

Yup. It sucks.