Originally Posted by
mikebor
Haven't read any other responses to your post yet but I had to chime in. I get your frustration I really do, but the thing you are against doing imo will resolve this for you. You have an Ambassador, you are the highest level of customer. Call the hotel, ask for a manager and explain it to them. I'm willing to bet that they will understand and refund you the cancellation fee. Calling random untrained(sadly) reservation agents imo will get you nowhere and high blood pressure to boot.
On a quick different note - I think your ambassador was terrible in the response and I would ask to speak to their supervisor and change ambassadors after complaining about the lack of assistance. I wouldn't want an ambassador like that.
I've been pretty happy with my Ambassador overall. Unlike some here, I can actually get her to respond. I pretty much never bother her for anything except to get stays/points posted, and on rare occasion ask if she can try to get an amenity for me if I am traveling for leisure rather than work.
Perhaps she could have tried to push this further, but I have a feeling that Ambassadors are no longer empowered to actually fix customer problems - either because of workload or because of lack of overall corporate care. Even back when it was Starwood, they couldn't really truly "make" anything happen on their own. That said, whenever I had an issue like this (never had a cancellation fee, but I had a hotel accidentally charge me an extra day after a late checkout), it was promptly taken care of with no issues. I feel like this should be an equally "no-brainer" type fix.