Originally Posted by
skimthetrees
Today I tried to cancel a res with an old cat 8 cert attached and get the cert returned to my account. Fail. Even after confirming with her multiple times that I wanted the cert returned to the account and asking her to confirm it had been returned she screwed it up and canceled the cert and now I have 135k points instead of a cert. When she was confirming she returned the cert I think she mistakenly saw another cert I had in the account and thought that was it - but it wasn't. Now I am on hold again trying to get it fixed and the new agent is telling me she does not think she can fix it - still on hold while she checks. What a fiasco.
Edit: Agent 2 claims the system is hardcoded to cancel and refund legacy certs when the attached res is cancelled (so if anyone wants points back attach legacy cert to a res then cancel it). Now on hold to get a supervisor to see if anything can be done to fix their mistake.
Originally Posted by
Happy
Please dont blame the first agent because what you are told by the 2nd agent is what exactly how the current system behaves.
I blame Marriott for not training their agents properly. The first agent was just wrong and the second agent only knew how it worked from first hand experience not instruction from Marriott.
Originally Posted by
Happy
It is very ironic that those of us who attached a cert to a booking now as we are being URGED to do so, could not change hotel due to the coding in the system. Else you lose your cert and got back the point refund instead. It is NOT the agent's fault. It is how the system is coded to do it this way.
It has become clearer and clearer to me that, the legacy cert has to be converted to the New certs before it could be used.
Unfortunately for those of you who have attached the legacy certs, now it becomes a nightmare to detach and rebook, Marriott Insider's post from Aug 20th after 5pm notwithstanding. System is NOT ready to handle ANYTHING she said in her post!
For those of us whose certs are NOT attached, if you really want to use it now before the dust settled, you should ask the supervisor to CONVERT it to the new cert. A competent supervisor did this for me on Sunday around 2:30pm - she canceled my Partial 6 and redeemed a Partial 1-4 in the new system, noting the new Partial 1-4 contains 75K value (versus the 45K from an old Cat 5). She was very honest to me that she did not know if the system would allow it and be prepared for failure. We agreed to go ahead. System allowed it. And I have the Partial 1-4 with 75K in my account. The 75K value does not show online but is indeed in the confirmation emails I received. A P870 was canceled, and a QP80 with 75K value was redeemed. I saw the usual 0 pts on a Cancelled Reward and a Negative 75K on a redemption, in the Activity page after overnight.
So if you want to try this route, ask for a supervisor and suggest if this would work. You will get a NEW Partial cert based on the new TP conversion level, and then that cert should be able to book the corresponding hotel. That would be my guess.
Good luck to those who continue to struggle thru this mess. Personally I would just make reward reservation without points on Marriott properties and wait for the eventual solution days / weeks from now. Unfortunately this would not work for SPG properties as right now it seems you have to still use SPG side to book those with actual points in your SPG account, from what I have read.
I believe you are right. Any certs reissued have to be as new certs (new categories). A supervisor attempted to fix the problem for me but ended up making another mistake. I had an old cat 8 cert before the first agent mistakenly cancelled it (not her intention, she just did not know how the system worked). The supervisor reissued a new cat 6 certificate by mistake when it probably should have been a new cat 5. This would be fine except the system charged me an extra 30k points to make it happen which the supervisor evidently did not realize. So now they have basically upgraded my old cat 8 plus 30k points to an old cat 9 which maps to a new cat 6. Unfortunately I have no use for a new cat 6. I want a new cat 5 plus 30k refund instead of a 30k upgrade to a new cat 6 which I have no use for. If they gave me a new cat 7 I could use that but I am pretty sure that is not happening. So, it is going to take another hour on the phone to try and fix it again.
The takeaway here is that there is a way for supervisors to upgrade your legacy package one level up. I think the supervisor I talked to made a mistake and was not supposed to do it, and I did not want him to do it, but the system does allow supervisors to do it.