Originally Posted by
rny321
I believe it will be less stressful if you ask a rep to detach the certificate before cancelling the reservation. One of the Lurker's told us that we can downgrade a Cat 8 to a Cat 7 and receive a new Cat 5 and 30K back. Unfortunately, CSRs don't appear to know about this option.
It appears that canceling a reservation with a certificate attached will cause you certificate to be canceled as well. People have been successful in getting new certificates issued but not with it wasting a lot of time.
It is going to be a multi-steps process and would involve lots of HUCA primarily to find a rep / supervisor willing to help. Most seem would not touch any TP certs. Based on at least 2 conversations with different call centers, a rep and a supervisor who sounded very robotic and very "by the book", both mentioned about agents would be reprimanded if they touched the TP certs including one guy who claimed he was a supervisor, said he valued about his job and would not put his job at risk to do anything against the internal memo that was issued 2 days and 3 hours ago (that was on a call made on Friday day time) by giving me the EXACT date and time of the memo...
I suspect that Marriott has put a lot of pressure on their CSRs NOT to help customers on TP, may even with threat of terminating employments - that explained why it was so hard to find someone to help when the system actually allows remedies. Marriott does NOT want to make those remedies available to us the customers.
Back to the task on hand - trying to change a cert
1) Detach the cert from existing reservation first. This should not meet resistance from the CSR as the cert remains the cert as it is.
2) Using the codes we have deciphered so far, ask the CSR if s/he could "replace" the now detached cert with a new cert. Using the Codes would facilitate the communication and understanding. How much progress you can make depends on how the CSR's willingness to try. Essentially this is to cancel the detached cert with the full points returning to your account (from instant to a few minutes if the CSR knows how to do it - thru the "old" system - the CSR who helped me on Saturday had to call to find out the How To, then she told me she had to use the "old" system to cancel my QP80. It took several minutes before I saw the pts returned to my account.
A day before that I had a helpful CSR "did" it but was a failed attempt as I did not see any confirmation email nor points coming back. She told me it would take a few hours for the system update. We know that is NOT the case - that it is instant as long as the system is up and running (as evidenced that I could log in and out and back in.) Said rep was kind enough to send me an email 45min later, informing me the system did not fully cancel the cert. That I should call back in a later date. I appreciated her thoughtfulness to let me know the cancellation wasn't successful. What is interesting is, the email was sent from Starwoodhotels.com address... The number she gave to call back at a later date, is the old Marriott Gold Elite number.
3) The next step is to order the new cert you want. Again, using the Code to facilitate the process.
Read back
tonywush's excellent write up on how he successfully did this. This should be used as a template for anyone who wants to swap their old certs with new certs, and get back their overpaid 30K in the process.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/30121520-post6238.html