Originally Posted by
pwflyer
I found an very good rate on kayak.com for the W Hotel in Hong Kong and entered a claim form for the Starwood Best Rate Guarantee program. The claim was denied at first because the person said that Kayak was a forwarding site to other sites like Expedia, etc. I told the person I spoke with that it was a rate offered on kayak.com directly and the person said I had to input another claim and write this comment in the comment box. I did so and offered to email in a PDF of the screen capture of the rate from kayak. The customer service person said they could not accept an email with the claim form. Then I got another email from Starwood saying they could not find the rate so they were denying my claim. This program is a joke. They did not even look for the rate until three days after I input the claim. I asked to speak to a supervisor. I asked for the telephone number of the supervisor just in case he/she did not call back and they refused to give it to me. I have been put on hold to speak with a manager for 36 minutes so far. Very disappointed in the ethics of this company. FALSE ADVERTISING - BEWARE! I will not support the program any longer because of this.
I have only been able to execute two successful BRG claims for the entire time I have been with SPG. My hassle-free claim was for the
Le Meridien Grand Pacific Tokyo Hotel (no longer w/ SPG). That was back in '07. A year later, like you, my hassle-filled claim was for the
Sheraton Barra da Tjiuca Hotel & Suites. SPG did not want to honour my BRG claim because they didn't acknowledge it, took to long to research it, and/or did not want to process it. I complained to customer service, and ended up getting 2000 *pts for my efforts, and a rate that was even lower than the rate I found on Expedia.
In general, I find that these hotel companies (especially Hilton) have a solid lock on the prices that third-party vendors offer. There is no variation/deviation from the BAR. The only time you can get a deal from these vendors is when they offer a coupon, which means no *pts. At best, it's a cr*psh**t, but not necessarily dishonest.
Sorry.
