In December, I made a reward reservation for February at a European hotel costing 35'000 points. The points were deducted and I received a booking confirmation.
At the end of January, our plans changed and I cancelled the reward booking (14+ days prior to check-in). I received a cancellation confirmation,
but my account balance did not increase through a refund. Instead, a line showed up on my account statement saying
Standard Redemption Rate
01/31/2019, Cancelled 0 Rewards
+0 Points
At first, I thought it would just take a few days for my points to return, but when they still weren't there by Feb 6th, I called Marriott. The agent insisted that "the certificate had been returned" and and could not grasp that no points had been re-credited to my account.
Upon insisting, she created an issue ticket and promised a call-back within 6 business days. 12 business days later, I hadn't heard anything
and called for a follow-up. This time, the agent "checked with the technical team" and they confirmed that the points had been returned. Except they haven't.
The agent said they refused to do a full account audit and unless I could prove my prior account balance through a screenshot taken at the time, they would not do anything.
I'm dumbstruck. Naturally, I do not have screen shots of my account balance in December but I find this level of service shocking (Titanium member Lifetime Elite yada yada). And I'm still out 35'000 points.
Has anybody experienced something similar? Ideas?