[QUOTE=pinniped;30012726]Has Marriott issued any kind of public statement about the current phone support situation? Or are they taking the time-honored approach of not acknowledging that a major systemic problem exists at all?[/QUOTE]
This. I called 3 times today. The first 2 times after listening over 30 min finally got a human but the first call was disconnected by itself., and the second call required a transfer, and more hold time, then it too, disconnected when a rep was talking to me. BTW said rep greeted me with Good Evening. You can guess he is not North America based and when I jokingly pointed this out, he sheepishly agreed. Unfortunately before I was able to finish my question, the phone went dead.
3rd call took similar 40 min hold but this time got a SLC based rep. She still needed to check with supervisor on my question - a supposedly expedited AS delivery is still a no show in my account. I just worried if the rep who did it had taken down the correct AS number, given on Jul 18, someone posted here that he paid $15 for expedite delivery at 1pm EST and when he checked his AS account at 6pm EST, the miles were there. Mine was initiated on Jul 22nd Sunday and were told 48 hours would be the max time. I dont need the expedite delivery but since it is offered and fee waived, why not? Turns out it is not expedited at all.
Apart from the phone system issues, the competence or the quality of the reps is very problematic. 2 of my friends have really horrible incidents caused by extremely incompetent reps.
2 days ago one friend had to call back 5 times to get a mistakenly redeemed package fixed and got back the points.
The friend called last night just to attach a cert to an existing reservation. He has a cert and a reservation. You would think this is the simplest task to perform ...
The rep redeemed a new 50K package instead. I think my friend was too naive when the rep asked him what airline / FFP number - none of that is needed to attach a cert. From what he described to me, myriad of alarm bells went off but he failed to catch it.
I myself have to end a few calls when very obviously the reps on the other end have no clue at all.
Called me paranoid, I only transferred just enough pts for 1 package, redeemed it then transferred another batch. Even so, when I called today, asking the rep to check on the AS package done on July 22nd, she still said, you have redeemed 2 packages, what do you need me to check on? That is AFTER I clearly told her to look at the July 22nd redemption. Reps dont listen, that is a big problem too.
Such issues also compound the phone system problems as there are so many mistakes made and people have to call back to get the mistakes fixed.