Originally Posted by
gordonja
I am finally Platinum! After 5 days I had not hear anything back on my “case”, so I called again. It was a long phone call where I was told first that award nights didn’t count. (I said that I had evidence that they did count, so I waited 15 minutes on hold for the CSR to check and tell me I was right.) Then I waited another 10 minutes while the CSR double checked that I had enough nights. (I did, but he thought I didn’t.) Then I waited again while he talked to a supervisor. He came back and told me that his supervisor said I just had to wait and my status would upgrade automatically at some point, but there was no way to know when. I begged him to fix it, given how long I have waited on each call to Marriott this fall, how I have been transferred from person to person, and how I just didn’t have any confidence in what I was being told (since more often than not since the merger, information has been incorrect!) He put me on hold a final time for another 15 minutes and was able to convert my status to Platinum. All in all, just over 1 hour for the call. Not bad, compared to some of the experiences I have had with Marriott this fall!
Thanks to your encouragement I decided to call Marriott again this afternoon, since it's been 7 days.
The first rep had no idea what I was talking about and insisted that I had to wait until 12/31, which is the last day of the challenge, to call back. I realized there's no hope here and ended the call quickly.
Then I called again, and this time it was answered by a much better rep. After I explained my situation, she checked my stay history and immediately upgraded my account to Platinum Elite. The entire call took 15 minutes, waiting included. Although she said the new status should be seen online within 10 minutes, it took about 8 hours for my account to be updated. Needless to say I was anxiously logging in and out during these 8 hours, but this is already the most pleasant experience I've had with Marriott in 2018.
A note to other people calling Marriott with platinum challenge issues: reps have extremely inconsistent knowledge of the promotion. If the one you got has no clue about anything, don't even try to push for supervisor or a ticket (which will never be dealt with). Every time I asked for a supervisor, the rep just puts me on hold and go talk to whoever's in charge, which results in frustratingly long calls. HUCA immediately and you'll eventually get a good one.