Thanks William, and certainly understandable on call center pressures.
That said, those pressures are entirely of Starriotts own making. The poorly designed, tested and implemented combination of the programs, the botched updates and self induced issues are all issues, not surprisingly, driving this volume. Marriott needs to find ways to communicate with customers, not remove them.
For example, the fact that I can not merge my accounts is because of a slight variation in my name and it necessitates that I call an agent to make the change is absolutely ridiculous, and is illustrative of how badly managed this whole process has been.
Making matters worse is that Marriott has largely been silent on all this. Transparency and honesty can go a long way to soften the impacts of a negative situation. Apparently Marriott thinks sticking its head in the sand is a better approach.