Hi all - complete newbie here. I've been staying in a Marriott for the past few weeks with work, and joined the MR programme because my travel agent suggested it would be worth it. I thought nothing more of it. I noticed I'd built up a few points so decided to do a google search to see how you could use them - and found Flyer Talk! My goodness am I glad I did!? As a consequence of this thread a very helpful Marriott employee has upgraded me to Platinum retrospectively (my lengthy stay is almost up) after a simple 5 minute phone call. He said they would have offered me a Platinum Challenge had I known about it at the beginning of my stay, so did it for me immediately. Amazing.

So - thanks to all of you guys taking the time to post advice on these forums. I never knew it even existed. If only I'd have done it a few weeks ago - would be rolling in points and maybe upgrades by now! But believe me I'm not complaining :-)