Originally Posted by
boolean64
The most troubling part from my conversations is that there is no mechanism or desire from marriott rewards to even attempt to take corrective action. First, there was a definite "the systems says...that's all I can do." Well I can look on the website and see what the system says. Worse though, the T&Cs are apparently merely guidelines. SPG would have had a case file opened through the lurkers and corrective action taken before I woke up this morning.
This is fundamentally where the effort to capture the SPG secret sauce will break down. I was loyal to SPG because, while imperfect, there was still a level of value beyond "hey you can earn a lot of points and then cash them in...if the hotel feels like it," which for now seems to be Marriott's primary, if not sole, value prop...ok, maybe lounge access and a slightly nicer room. If the soft side of "no gimmicks" with strong education and enforcement gets lost in translation, it seems a tough argument to stick with Starriott if my travel patterns continue to give me Hyatt options.
Marriott Leaderships focus is obviously not customer satisfaction or customer communication.
It seems like: they haven’t conducted proper training of staff on the new combined program changes and probably kept the tc’s secret internally until just before the merger, they don’t allow telephone agents to make common sense decisions or be proactive in getting to an agreeable decision (that’s IF you can actually get through to someone on the phone) staff don’t seem empowered to make these kind of decisions, they play the “supervisor can’t help you/is not available” game, fast or quick is not part of their solutions strategy and it seems there is no accountability for timely response or solutions, the customer isn’t the one who is right even if it’s obvious they are right, they don’t communicate with the members as is very evident in all our problems post merger, they don’t really care.
It’s very obvious this is their style and it’s not changing.
It’s a dramatic shift from how we were all treated by SPG.
It might not be something or a style that is going to work for many of us. Time will tell.
I don’t believe it’s ( Marriotts attitude) going to change at all.