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Old Mar 30, 2019, 10:59 am
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fadippides
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 19
Walked from Hotel mid-stay

Hello,

I wanted to post here to gain some insight into a situation I experienced recently with Marriott. For the last three years, I had to stay exclusively with Hilton due to business reasons after being Marriott Platinum for 7 years. Recently business has changed and I can return to Marriott (I only have lifetime gold at this point). I had booked an 11 day stay at a Fairfield Inn using points. It wasn't a particularly good hotel and had many warts, but the family wasn't with me so I could deal with things like some mold in the bathrooms, worn carpets, etc... It was a category 1 so the points stretched a bit further.

A little after midway through the stay (perhaps day 6 or 7), I got a note under the door notifying me they were switching to a Holiday Inn the following day. I talked with the front desk which assured me that since I had already paid with points, I was fine and it would not impact me. Upon getting back to the hotel the next day after work, I was told by the new front desk staff that I either had to pay for the rest of the nights or leave the hotel. I wasn't paying twice for the same room so I had to haul my belongings out to my truck and proceeded to call the Marriott number to seek assistance.

After about 45 minutes on hold, I got through to a CSR explained the situation and was put on hold for about another 15 minutes for a manager. When I talked to the manager, he said that shouldn't have happened and he would refund me the unused nights. I explained that I am in a parking lot with no place to stay and was informed he had refunded the unused points and that was all he could do. After about 30 minutes of arguing with him, I had finally convinced him that he needed to get me a room somewhere. He finally got me a room about 15-20 minutes away and made the points balance out (the new hotel was category 2).

I got to the new hotel and had several issues before I got into a room that was functional (the hotel staff there handled it great so no complaints). Once settled in, I wrote to Marriott to describe my displeasure with how the situation was handled. The following day I received a response stating it had been passed to their customer service team and I should get a response in 3-5 business days. It has now been 3 weeks and no response.

Is this what Marriott has become? When I spoke with the unhelpful manager, I had requested the Marriott Ultimate Reservation Guaranty for essentially being walked, he said because it had converted to Holiday Inn, that no longer applies. I started staying at Hilton again, although I would prefer Marriott (at least I used to). Am I wrong for thinking this was handled terribly on multiple fronts by Marriott?

Thanks for any opinions.
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