When I logged on in early August, I (like many others) received a message asking me to change my password which I duly did.

Last week, I noticed that I had been sent 2 copies of the reminder of an upcoming stay with identical hotels and dates. I just thought this was a glitch in Marriott's email system and deleted one of the reminders.

When checking my account today, I found that there was a duplicate of my upcoming stay in question, one a paid booking and one a redemption stay, for which I had been charged 30K points.

The hotel in question is one I stay at very often for business travel, but have never booked a redemption stay there.

Fortunately, the reminder that I deleted was still in my email trash and I recovered it, so that I had both again. I found the one that related to the redemption stay

I noted the reservation number and then went back through my booking emails and could not find any trace of the redemption booking. (I always book online, and keep the reservation email for a year).

I then went back through my account activity and could find no mention of the booking before the May revaluation cut-off (Prior to that, the hotel in question would have been 25K points).

So, how was this redemption booking made without any email confirmation nor account activity ?????

Needless to say, I have cancelled the booking, changed my online password again and will more closely monitor upcoming booking confirmation emails.

My major concern is not a phantom booking (which can always be cancelled) but a phantom cancellation especially of a hard-to-get redemption booking !

Anyone else had a similar experience ?