Originally Posted by
sdsearch
Well, maybe it works differently for people who don't have enough points.
IIRC, I changed the room type and it took the new lower rate. Then later I changed the room type back to the original room type, and it held the new lower rate. But in my case, I have many hundreds of thousands of points, and this was a change from 31000 to 29000 for a one-night stay, where it refunded me 2000 points after I made the change.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say, it only worked that way because you had at least 29k points in your account.
If your account had less than 29k points, I believe you would have had to get the 31k refunded before it would let you rebook. That is to say, the system wants to determine that you can make the new booking outright, before it processes the change. Even though you shouldn't need to have any points at all, since the net position to you was a refund of 2000.
Reading the OP again, it sounds like there was no more points availability left for some of the original dates (17-21 Dec). The OP was already holding a points room for those dates, and there was availability on the new desired date of 22 Dec, so theoretically it should be possible to modify the reservation.
But like with not having enough points to make a fresh booking when the rate has dropped, in the OP's case the system could not make a fresh booking for the new dates, thus the modification request was rejected.
As it's unknown whether points availability will return if the existing reservation is cancelled, it's risky to do so, but if the OP can't arrive on 16 Dec they will have to try it. They could also book the 22nd as a separate booking and beg the hotel to allow check-in for the first reservation on the 17th - but that removes the 5th night free benefit.