Originally Posted by ftrichard

I've said it before and I'll repeat it again: Marriott clearly doesn't care about rewarding members who specifically earn status "the hard way" because there are numerous official status fudges involving credit card subscriptions for its largest market of US residents who similarly clog up and devalue executive lounges around the world in territories where the hotels still offer good status benefits. No sense getting upset about status programmes in China that those of us who are not US residents view as equivalently unfair. That's not to say that third parties who sell status shouldn't interest Marriott's lawyers but the OP's point of this thread highlighted apparently legitimate ways of gaining status through legitimate Chinese retailers just as Amex apparently does.