I've had another extremely frustrating experience with SPG/Marriott over the targeted promo.
As background, I'm currently a UK based Titanium member - *very* loyal to starwood - with 10+ years as a Platinum/Premier member and in the region of $200K lifetime spend ,and even more via my businesses.
When I read about the targeted promos here in early February I phoned Starwood UK to ask if I would receive one. I I had some good news. I was told I should have received one but my profile was not set to receive marketing emails. I was told that a mistake due to the SPG/Marriott account combination, as I've been receiving marketing emails for many years without problem. I was promised that the marketing setting would be corrected and I'd receive my targeted promo shortly.
Fast forward a few days and no promo. I then called again and had a very helpful customer service member take my details, then emailed me to ask several questions and escalated it to her senior management.
After several emails I eventually received this from a different CS representative who clearly hadn't read any of the prior comms :
I hope this correspondence finds you well.
I am reaching out to you regarding how are promotions program works. There are promotions that are offered to all guests and there are others that are targeted promotions. Targeted promotions are sent to randomly selected members using a program to make those selections. Your account is set up receive offers from us.
This is so frustrating to me. Why on earth would they set targeted promotions to be random, especially in the age of social media ?
I have to say this is just one incident out of several I've experienced where the customer service has been dreadful. My prior experience of SPG support was very good on the whole - since the acquisition I'm tearing my hair out. The app is worse, the website is worse, the (formerly excellent) lurkers seem powerless to fix things, the live chat has disappeared completely, the customer support is inconsistent and generally much worse...
I'm now making most of my bookings elsewhere and considering which other chain actually cares enough about customers to be worth my loyalty. Any advice would be appreciated ?