Originally Posted by
TinDrum
I do not understand why we have to kow-tow to Marriott.
In all other hotel forums on FT (which are no doubt monitored as well by the respective chains), there is no such imperative for reticence. So why should it be otherwise for Marriott?
More important, Marriott has made their LNF scheme a downright farce by evading claims by:
- not being able to find lower rates on OTA sites, even when these are clearly pointed out in the claim form
- by wrongly claiming compared OTAs use vouchers / are membership site and so on, when that is plainly not so
- by using excuses such as "currency differences" when they run out of other creative excuses to evade the claim
So if Marriott is fraudulently denying claims, what have we got to lose? On the other hand, listing such denied claims on FT would
hopefully shame Marriott into being more honest, though I would not bet on that.
Because Marriott is not denying
all claims, and because even true voucher sites work
for hotels in the USA (except when the LNF team has one of their geographically-challenged moments and says that San Franisco or Los Angeles is not in the USA
!). One person can have a claim denied for site X, and another person can have a claim approved with site X. Why list site X just because of one denial, so that no one else can have an approval with it???
You seem to want to "throw out the baby with the bath water"!
Not everyone has trouble with all claims all the time. In fact, I have had only less than 1% of my claims rejected (but then all of mine so far have been within the USA). With practice comes more success...
Anyway, this is not the thread to discuss how LNF works (or doesn't work). That kind of discussion belongs in:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...rsion-brg.html
As to why Marriott, I presume it's because of past experience. I presume at one time years ago, people did try listing the third-party sites they used, and found them shut down after being listed here. And then when that stopped, they stopped being shut down. In other forums, for whatever reason, that didn't happen. So that's why it's different in other forums.
But you're mistaken that
all hotel forums on FT are actively monitored by the hotel program. Mariott, SPG, Hilton, and Wynham are, but IHG, Choice, and Best Western aren't. (In the Best Western forum, there's someone who works at an independently owned and operated Best Western branded hotel that monitors the forum, but no one from Best Western itself does.)