After giving them 1,000,000 dollars every other year in conference revenue, and showing them a statement of over 40 stays so far this year, I was given a gold challenge.

I told them that they were the challenged ones, and decided to keep my 75+ stays with starwood . . . and to favor starwoods for future conferences.

I wish certain programs would do a better analysis of challenge requests before defaulting to stingy mode. While I understand that some programs think most people are trying to get something for free through status match requests, they need to watch that some good candidates don't fall through the cracks.