Originally Posted by Happy

Strange experience in using eGC at Renaissance LHR.

The hotel was super big and super busy as BA uses it to accommodate their passengers that missed connections due to BA cancelled their flights with foggy weather. I waited till late night to get diwn to FD to ask for paying with eGC. The girl said she needed to ask the manager, took a picture then went into the office.

A few minutes the night shift manager came out and asked me Do you have the physical card with you? No Sir, this is eGift Card all it has is card number and PIN sent to me by email. It took a few minutes to convince him there was no physical plastic card…. Just the email. He then ask me a print out if it. No Sir I do not have a print out. He then asked if I could forward the eGC email to him because, we have to send an invoice to the sales office (which turns out us Givex) with the copy of the eGC attached. I was like, isn’t all you need to do us to enter the gift card number and the PIN in order to redeem? He said no, not at this property. Trust me I know the Givex system you talk about but at this property we need to send an invoice to the sales office. OK, as you say so. I forwarded the eGC email to him. It took a few minutes for the email to show up in his end. He then said he needed to wait till after midnight and at quiet time when nightly accounting was performed then to process the eGC. The balance was either just enough or slightly less than the stay cost. They already took a card authorization of twice tge stay cost at check in, so any shortfall can be billed to that.

The next morning he told me it was done. I logged in my GC account and saw indeed the transaction was processed with $0,61 bal remaining on the card. I then asked for a print out of the folio or email me a copy. He tried to email it from the system at the FD. It did not come. (Something happened later when I checked out, the FD staff said she emailed me the folio a few times, none ever comes). Upon my insistence he went in the office to use a different system to email me the eGC application. It showed as an Informal Invoice, billed to the Guft Card sales office with my stay details, and the itemized charges, But it still said Amount Due, without a credit entry to make the balance of amount due to be zero, He insisted it up was zero amount due now. I showed him the usual folios I got from previous Marriott brands stays. He said that was because those properties were on Opera system. They are not therefore they cannot generate such folio.

Later at check out the print out of folio FD gave me, was identical to the one the night shift manager sent me, except it now said Invoice Copy versus Infirmal Invoice earlier before check out.

Thankfully the stay and points posted 3 days later, despite I never receive the folio email.