Originally Posted by
hungarianhc
I'm torn about this. There is no disputing that your situation REALLY sucks. And I think the right thing for Marriott to do would be to just pick up the bill for it.
That being said... 25,000 points + 20% off one of your meals - to me, that's really not the worst deal in the world.
No, it's not the worst deal, but that misses the point, IMO.
The OP has all the points he can use, and he shovels a lot of revenue Marriott's way. Any half-way decent CSR could find that information out in seconds, so they'd know what sort of customer they were dealing with.
What the OP justifiably wants is
satisfaction - being made to feel that someone is listening to his problem and is making a genuine effort to make it right.
A sincere apology and an offer to shower him with points and other comps (whose maginal cost to Marrioitt would be trivial compared with the revenue at stake) would have gone a long way to 'gruntling' him, it seems to me, since he doesn't strike me at all as some sort of high maintenance drama queen.
Stating that (in effect) the customer is always wrong, as quoted in the email, would very much harden my stance were I in the OP's shoes. Man! Talk about needing a refresher course in customer relations....