I am going to hazard a guess that
BFG stayed at the Sheraton Gateway LAX.
I stayed there a few weeks ago with a girlfriend who is a flight attendant. She booked the room in my name and with my SPG number. It was booked on a Starwood booking site. She showed her ID at check-in with me and there was no apparent problem. I paid for the room at check-out and the invoice is in my name.
We were upgraded to one of the mini-suite/large rooms and the 500-point Platinum Amenity posted to my account. What didn't post was my stay credit or the points for the stay.
The hotel is taking the position that it is not an Eligible Rate, which is defined as:
4B.4. An “Eligible Rate” is the rate you pay for your room, but excludes:
(a) for hotels located in Asia Pacific*, rooms where the booking is not made directly with Starwood or a Starwood branded web-site;
(b) for hotels located outside of Asia Pacific*, pre-paid rooms where the booking is made by an agent or third party and you pay for that booking directly to such third party, such as tour operators, and pre-paid channels, including, but not limited to priceline.com, expedia.com, hotels.com, hrn.com, hotwire.com, lastminute.com, site59.com, orbitz.com, travelocity.com, cheaptickets.com, quickbook.com, travelweb.com, lodging.com, yahootravel.com, and travel.msn.com;
(c) room rates for group commercial or group leisure bookings where rooms are booked as part of a conference or organized tour that is either master billed or paid at tour operator rates or where the bookings for six or more rooms are linked;
(d) room rates that are master billed or paid at tour operator rates, wholesaler rates, including WFNR, TAED rates, and crew room rates;
(e) employee rates;
(f) complimentary rooms (including, but not limited to, any Free Night Awards earned through the Program or otherwise) and other rooms reserved using Starpoints, including, rooms through the Program’s Cash and Points Award room rate.
The rate code was Id90.com. It was all of $15.00 a night cheaper than my normal corporate rate.
[With some additional research, I found that
www.id90.com is a paid membership interline site that provides discounted rates to its members, including at certain Starwood hotels. My girlfriend, however, is not and never has been a member of id90.com, and the rate came up on the starwoodhotels.com website under available "AIRL" rates--not through the id90.com website and not through a link on that interline website.]
I'm already far past qualifying for Platinum again for next year, so I didn't care about the stay credits, but I don't like losing out on the points.
So it all boils down to, "What is a
crew room rate?" I would assume it is the negotiated [heavily discounted] rate paid by the airline for crew layover rooms. I would not assume it is an employee paid rate for a rate made available individually to airline staff.
I faxed in the invoice to have the points posted to my account as requested by the Platinum Concierge and now get to to enjoy the pleasure of waiting a week between e-mail responses from Starwood to my follow-up requests "because of a high volume of inquiries." All I seem to get are canned responses that
the hotel says it was not an eligible rate. After three responses, I have yet to hear the "offical" reason why the rate is ineligible. From what Starwood is telling me thus far, it simply sounds like the hotel says it's not an eligible rate and that is good enough for Starwood.
Odd that I would receive the 500-point amenity if it wasn't an eligible rate.
The responses thus far have ignored my pointing out that the rate was not-prepaid, not paid by the airline, was booked through Starwood on-line at
www.starwoodhotels.com, and did not state it was not an eligible rate.
Frustrated by the hotel and frustrated by how Starwood is handling it.