Originally Posted by
Flying for Fun
Where in the old MR program did it say you could attach your certificate to a former SPG property after migration? You bought a pre-merger TP. A month ago cancellation of unattached certificates was a real possibility. The debate then was "worth" & "value" of the certificate. Clearly, the Cat 1-5 certificate was not "worth" it's 150K "value." in the old or new MR.
Recently everyone was advised that they would be able to apply their unattached certificates post merger and that the new chart would prevail.
By not attaching to a Marriott property, which would have afforded maximum value, and maybe better flexibily, you are still getting better value than the 45K residual "worth" you would have gotten if it had been cancelled.
I purchased a Category 8 TP and attached it to Category 8 property which is now a Category 5. Would I have preferred to book at former SPG property? Yes, I would have. But it wasn't possible to at the time. I locked in a tangible $2100 USD savings for 135K Marriott Points. I wasn't going to risk that for an uncertain outcome. Having attached my certificate, I will be able to, upon request, get 30K points refunded, without a cancel/rebook, as my 40K per night reservation now only requires 35K per night. That 30K refund will provide a night in a Cat 4 with 5K MR extra or a night in a Cat 5 with an additional 5K MR. That is a nice little value added bonus.
It never added up that an old 30K per night certificate should have converted to a 35K per night new certificate.
Most of the value of the former TP was in the FF Miles. No complaints there that I have read. If you didn't have a real need for a hotel certificate under the old program then perhaps speculatively leaving a certificate unattached in anticipation it would offer better value post merger was not a good approach. Now 300K will give you 125K FF Miles. Anything extra with a certificate for a stay is a bonus.
Everyone should be happy they still have a certificate with value! Much better than 45K residual "worth" in your account and a cancelled certificate.
James
This is just brilliant. Here's the translation of the internal Marriott meeting where they decided on the strategy:
"Let's keep getting people to pay 30,000 more points to go from category 1-5 to 6 and from 7 to 8 even though we know that they actually get nothing for those 30,000 points. Then, when they get upset about that, we'll tell them that they should be happy, because as badly as we treated them by knowingly taking 30,000 points from them for nothing, we could have treated them even worse."
If you do work for Marriott (which I sincerely doubt), you should tell your bosses that it's not working.
One other thing: you keep talking about being told to attach to maximize value. But that advice came from Starwood Lurker in a post where he said that floaters would be converted to points. 99.9% of SPG/MR members never saw that because they've never heard of FT or Starwood Lurker. And even the 0.1% who did see if later learned that the entire post turned out to be wrong -- they decided not to turn floaters into points. The only email that they tried (and failed) to send to everyone did not say that you had to attach to maximize value. IMHO, that excuse doesn't fly.
And I don't think it's at all unreasonable to think a certificate with a maximum value of 30,000 would be converted to one worth 35,000 where they chose to have no 30,000 point properties in 2018. It was either 25,000 or 35,000. They choose to stick it to their customers rather than absorb the cost themselves. I think a good company does the opposite.