Originally Posted by
margarita girl
Just had a frustrating gift card experience, but with patience, it all worked out. I’m sharing the story in case it can help out someone else.
I had a 3 night stay booked at a Marriott hotel, and due to a flight delay, I only arrived on the 2nd morning. One of my friends who happened to be in same city as me offered to check in and stay in my room for that first night. I said sure. He also offered to pay for that night on his credit card to keep things simple and I agreed.
I was leaving the hotel at 06:30 on the 3rd morning, so the day before I went to front desk to pay for the last 2 nights with one of my few remaining gift cards. (Amex, where are you?) It turns out there’s only one person at the hotel who knows how to process gift cards and he wasn’t in that day (even though it was a weekday). FD Agent assured me that they’d do it the next morning after my departure. Perfect!
The next day, I see that my card has been charged for 3 nights instead of 2. Aargh! I emailed FD Mgr about the error and asked her to refund 1 night to my gift card. She apologized and said they couldn’t refund my gift card but offered to refund my friend’s credit card or give me a credit that could only be used at their hotel. I didn’t want either of those! I wrote back and said gift card refunds were possible, and she could call CS at 800-442-6132 (this number is in the wiki) if she needed assistance in how to do this. 30 mins later it was fixed and refund for 1 night was posted to my gift card. Whew!
(It’s not usually this difficult. Thankfully, FD Agent was very helpful and willing to work with me.)
Glad you had it sorted out. Yes the property can refund the overcharge to the GC.
In April a Marriott in Germany drained the full balance of my 2 GCs despite the night before a FD employee actually worked out the math for me on a piece of paper, informed me I would have a balance left on one of the two GCs... But according to him, hotels in Germany could not process payment immediately upon check out, needed to be one or two days later (by law?) Well, when the hotel finally processed the GC payment, someone drained the full balances of both GCs. It took a week of back and forth email / phone exchanges with FD staff, none of them was willing to take up the matter, all pointed to the FD manager whom I finally was able to talk with over the phone. The woman acknowledged the error and claimed they would refund to the GC but it would take time, WITHOUT a shred of apology in her conversation... Very annoying.
I actually emailed the Givex Marriott GC support after 2 days in contact with the hotel but not getting anywhere for a solution. By the time the lady over there replied my email, the hotel processed the refund on the same day, 8 days after check out, 5 days after processing the initial wrong charges.
On the contrary, CY Sha Tin in HKG every single FD person knows how to process GC, in 3 min max to take care of payment. Ditto The Notary in Philly. But it took a big struggle for the Marriott West Chase in Houston to process the GC - the head of FD took out a notebook full of handwritten little dribbles then searching frantically on the page where she wrote down the steps - none that I could recognize... At the end she was able to process it, whew! Meanwhile the assistant FD manager at a Springhill IAH was able to process the GC at check in, saved me the hassle to get it done next morning, as well as preventing the system automatically produced a prelim folio that charged to the guarantee card (that was what happened at that Marriott West Chase where they refused to process the GC the night before check out).
Yes it is still a hassle to use GCs largely depending on your luck, but if AMEX offers a 30% statement credit, I think I would continue to utilize it. LOL.