thanks all for the replies. No, I didn't wait until until now to start dialogue with Marriott. I figured calling the day of arrival would have earned me more than the total brush-off that I got, however.

RE: date of billing for the room, the confirmation e-mail states pretty clearly that "we will charge a pre-payment of $123.85" when I booked it in late Nov. In fact, that apparently didn't occur until the date of (non) stay, Dec 17th. My general understanding is that the cc information is sent to the hotel and goes into some queue for processing. The actual date and time that the individual properties process their "queue" may vary, however. I'm not going to cry over $123.85, its small beans in the scheme of my yearly self-funded travel, even though its still irritating.

Funny part though is its already affecting my booking pattern. Last week, HNL-LAX flight... and I needed a room in LAX that night. I waited until we were halfway across the ocean, signed into the in-flight WiFi, and booked the room. I figured if the airplane had some problem in-flight, at least we'd have to go forward and not back to HI by that point