roadtoyul

I have tried for the longest time to avoid posting my experience here as I wanted to give enough time for Starwood to find a proper resolution. But since they have failed to do so, I am going to share my story with the rest.

I am platinum member with Starwood and in 2010 I had reached 49 nights by December 31st (including double stays promo and overlapping q4 promo from 2009).

On Dec 31st, I stayed at the Westin Harbour Castle. However they never credited my account with a stay/night credit. As a result, I received an email on Jan 18th saying that my account was being downgraded to Gold. On Feb 2nd, I contact the platinum desk and explained my situation. I spent over 2 hours on the phone fighting my case but the platinum agent kept on insisting that I did not regain status for 2010. I asked her to manually count the stays but she refused to do so. She kept on basing her arguments on the number her computer was telling her.

Before ending our conversation, I asked her to have a supervisor look into it and call me back. I also asked her to put it in writing that I did not qualify b/c I knew it was not true. She sent me an email saying that I didn't maintain status and she sent me a master list for all my stays.

After I received the list, I called back and spoke to someone else and told them to calculate it manually including the bonus and the promotions but they said they've already looked into and I don't qualify.

I never received a call back from a supervior as I had requested. My status hasn't changed yet from platinum to gold so I thought OK, maybe someone caught up and got it fixed. I was wrong, b/c when I checked in to the Westin Mexico on March 14th, they had me as gold.

I had just flow in from Europe and was up for over 24 hours when I checked in around 12. I had just arrived to Mexico on vacation for 3 days and I wanted to spend some time in the sun.

I asked the hotel to contact customer service and I fought my case yet again for over 4 hours that day (all in the lobby). It was a horrific experience being transferred through different departments and chanels. I was being ridiculed in front of everyone and I had the impression that the agents weren't taking my request seriously. I spent alot of money with starwood in the past year and 100% of my stays are leisure only. I am very loyal to them and platinum meant alot to me.

Finally, I was able to reach someone who was able to track down the issue down to a computer glitch. According to him, b/c of the fact that the Westin Harbour Castle wasn't able to credit my night on the 31st, the computer erased all the rest of the nights that were counted due to a promotion (nights advance and double nights) so the agents weren't able to see it.

No one was proactive to look beyond the number on their computer screen and nobody gave me the benefit of the doubt until that moment. The agent apologized and said that his priority was to have my account fixed and since it was saturday, he was going to contact me back on monday to discuss proper compensation due to all the inconveniences.

My status was updated but I have never heard back from anyone. Not even an official apology. Today, I called and asked about that agent and I was transferred to a supervisor who offered me 1000 starpoints for my troubles. She went up to 5000 starpoints but I think it's completely ridiculous. I stressed on the fact that I spent alot of time fighting for something I earned hard by spending alot of money in the first place but she thinks the problem has been fixed and thus I don't deserve anything else.

I am fed up with this attitude and had quite a bit of other negative experiences recently (5x500 platinum amenity have not posted yet this year / specific issues at property level and other).

Overall 2011 is not a good year for me and starwood. I hope that by sharing my experience with you, you can share what you think about it.

I believe they have a great loyalty program but fail to deliver customer service wise big time.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day!