William, in light of some of the other posts here, I wanted to be clear that while I don't like that a whole region is excluded, I will not redirect my business during Q1 (during which I probably have about five weeks of stays already booked). I like the properties where I'm staying; and I still get points, upgrades (good success percentages at the properties where I will be staying), bonus points for PLT and bonus points for Starwood AMEX usage (although I will likely try to use MC for obvious reasons). I understand that the MC bonus is only for AP; but I still find excluding an entire region from a quarterly promotion to be disappointing.