Originally Posted by
Pseudo Nim
Yeah haha. That’s really not how Marriott works.
In past years, it was the hotel’s timezone. (which wasn’t announced, so that made for some interesting discussions with the ambassador.
This year seems to have been some timezone.
Yes, I remember this has been discussed in the past - that some hotels changed their categories before what the US has passed the midnight hour.
The explanation has been the changes are based on the local time the hotel is at.
Besides it has always been this way that the point requirement goes up regardless what it showed before. That is why when you redeem the points you have to call, and the rep would deposit pts into your account then order the cert, then attach the cert to the booking. Been ALWAYS like this, without exception every year, and also without exception some reps would have no clue. Now it seems the customers also have no clue probably many are from the SPG side where there was no such thing of PA booking.
Though we did learn something from the announcement of chart change - that it is the "CEC" agents who would handle the manual issuance of the eCerts. What the CEC stands for I have no clue but it is obviously enough that a specific group of reps know how to do it / authorized to do it.
For those of you if your stays are not in the immediate future, just relax. This is not IT mess from the merger, it is how always being done with PA bookings on hotels that go up in categories.
Finally, Marriott has STOPPED sending out PA reservation confirmation since long long time ago, before the merger. However there is a Print and Email buttons atop your reservation screen - that is where you can send yourself a copy as well as print a PDF for your file. Both features have been there as existing features, nothing to do with merger either.
You guys just need to learn how things work / system shortcomings. So you know you need to keep good records of your bookings etc and not relying on the emails coming from the program - because not just Marriott, but I often do not receive email confirmations from Hilton or Hyatt. When that happens, esp with Hyatt, it does not have the email request function, I just call the reservation and ask for an email confirmation being sent.