Regarding the phone call, I needed to call rather than email, as it was an acute issue with the hotel I had just checked in to, and I was getting nowhere with the front desk. Their response time to email is very variable, so calling was the most expedient option. It would have been helpful to have something in writing, I agree, but it wasn’t exactly impressive that the Ambassador team then refused to pay me the promised points after taking more than a week to post them, attempting to argue post hoc that the hotel had already given me some points, so they didn’t need to honour their word.

This is not to mention the fact that they had failed to challenge the hotel’s bad behaviour at all. I would consider Ambassador worth the money, perhaps, if they actually had the teeth or balls to handle the occasional issues I have with hotels - but they don’t stand up for you at all in such disputes and just try to fob you off with points. And I often find my initial email doesn’t solve the issue, unless it’s very simple, so I can waste far more than two minutes emailing the service. I’ve found that Marriott Bonvoy Twitter is just as efficient at solving the simple issues, sometimes more so. So why would I pay a massive premium for a service that doesn’t provide CS above the average? I cannot think of an occasion where the Ambassador service has managed something for me that I couldn’t easily do myself or outsource to another convenient, free Bonvoy service. The status should come with both hard and soft benefits above Titanium and it fails on both fronts.