Originally Posted by Willbur

What will happen to your normal unused certificates (non-TP) is more clear and is spelled out within the Marriott FAQ.


https://members.marriott.com/faq/#i-...a-after-august

Personally, I don't think the SPG Lurker's comments necessarily fall outside of the above definition.

For example, if you have a Category 9 certificate, you can currently use it for 7 nights at a category 9 hotel. With a free night this comes out to 270,000 points for the 6 nights x 45k/night. If they can provide certificates of 25k value for the free night on the Marriott certificate, they can clearly provide certificates of 270k (just includes additional digits). Like the free night certs, it'd be easy for them to make these non-refundable (so you can't simply cancel and get 270k points). So in Aug you'd get a 270k certificate (maybe it as a minimum stay requirement of 7 nights, maybe it doesn't but has to be used as a single reservation). Then if you want to upgrade the certificate you pay the difference just like you do now. For any amounts that don't map to a new point class they would just issue the cert for the category lower and issue a refund of the points difference. So in the case of a current Cat 9, they'd map you to a category 5 in the new chart and refund 60k points (10k/night). You could then use those 60k points + 30k more to upgrade to a Cat 6 cert if desired.

I think a scenario like the above could absolutely labeled as "converting to equivalent points" and is infinitely more likely. In the same way they don't cancel the other free nights and instead convert them to a certificate of equivalent points, it simply doesn't make sense to refund actual points on the TPs alone.