Originally Posted by
sbedelman
I think you've got it wrong.
[...]
My suspicion is that where the time is not specified the system is unable to know exactly what the hotel intended. The system could be set up to default to 11:59 pm, but my guess is that rather than imposing that as the cutoff time Marriott decided to have the system say it doesn't know and leave it at that.
That's exactly what I was saying, except that since this was a thread about "date only" cancellation deadlines, I didn't think to repeat that in my post.
All I was saying was that the script doesn't know what exact time a "date only" cancellation deadline ends (whether it's 1 day out as in the first post or 7 days out as in the post that brought up the "may" message), and so for those it says you "may" incur a cancellation fee.
Scripts at plenty of hotel sites know whether you'll be charged cancellation or not based on exact time. I've watched the website change it's language between 3:59 pm and 4:01 pm when viewing reservations that had until 4 pm to cancel. What's being discussed here is a Marriott goofiness of only listing the number of days, not at what time. (Many other sites not only list what time, but clarify what exact date and time the cancellation deadline is, no matter how few or how many days before you stay start it is.)