Not dramatic at all. I'm a busy guy. I have to fight constantly for work/life balance. Guess when my busy work, such as expense reports, gets done. It's likely a Sunday night, Tuesday night or Saturday morning. That is, on what would be my personal time.

Here's an example of me getting a receipt:

1. Call hotel
2. Hotel instantly transfers me to some central accounting department as, even though I pay extra to stay at SPG, they seem to farm this work all out to once central location that doesn't even work on Pacific time
3. I get generic response telling me to send a fax with my name, date of stay, credit card and signature to the accounting fax number and they will respond within 48 hours. That's what I pay extra for at Sheraton. That 48 hours.
4. Write up stupid fax document and efax it
5. Call the next morning and hope to speed things along. Still usually takes 24 hours

Here's another example of me getting a receipt:

1. Call hotel
2. Hotel instantly transfers me to some central accounting department as, even though I pay extra to stay at SPG, they seem to farm this work all out to once central location that doesn't even work on Pacific time
3. I get generic response telling me to send a fax with my name, date of stay, credit card and signature to the accounting fax number and they will respond within 48 hours. That's what I pay extra for at Sheraton. That 48 hours.
4. I lose my mind and call the hotel again. I ask to speak to the front desk. They ask what for. I give them a generic answer else they forward me to the same stupid recording
5. I talk to the front desk person. Explain my situation. They tell me I have to call the number. I ask to talk to front desk manager
6. Front desk manager apologizes then has someone email me the receipt. This of course begs the question of why they do so much to protect my privacy if I can get around this.

Now, ask me again why this would destroy my experience. Contrast this to doing an expense report for Hilton hotels. I login, go to my folios, right click each one and open them up in a new tab in Firefox. Done. Every single one at my fingertips in under a minute....and I pay less and generally get better service.

Let me quantify what this means for SPG. Right now, I stay enough nights to get Gold for Starwood. I usually double what I need for Diamond at Hilton. That means, this stops Starwood properties from getting 15 stays from me per year. I figure $150 per night room rate, plus an average of $40 for F&B. That's just under $3,000 just from me.

Globally, there are costs that are not as easy to quantify. Clearly, as people have noted, this would benefit a lot of people and Starwood loses goodwill in lost customer service. Also, picture the massive amount of time wasted across all hotels with people dealing with this issue. It's an absolute mess.

I stay at a $60 Hampton, the receipt is online. I stay at a $250 Sheraton, I have to call, listen to voicemail, dig up information and write a letter, fax the letter and wait 48 hours. People at Starwood think that is acceptable? It's a absolute joke. Their management should be ashamed of this and their CIO should be fired.

I'd status match today if they fixed this and I'd stay enough stays to at least be Diamond. I absolutely refuse to pay more to get less.