Here is an email I sent to Marriott with all of the appropriate information such Rewards number, confirmation number, time. I have not received a response so I'd like to hard copy the letter snail mail to several officers making it harder to ignore. We only travel for leisure but rack up over nights a year.

Does anyone have any addresses? Thank you.


My room at the Marriott Grand Cayman was extremely disappointing and I think you need to understand why this happened.

Our traveling companions (two other couples, in two rooms) invited us to join them for 4 nights after getting your hotel on Priceline for $129 a night. Your “best available rate” for me was $179 a night. We weren’t happy but didn’t want to chance Priceline and we are only 9 nights away from becoming gold members, plus we’d like the points. Our friends do not even have a Marriott Rewards card so I was hopeful for an upgrade since we have the Visa and are Silver members. They are diehard Starwood Preferred Guests.

We were first at the front desk. We asked for an upgrade but were told it would cost another $100 a night which since they had rooms available that did not make us happy. We took the room we were assigned and were told that it wasn’t ready yet to please check our bags. As we were checking our bags our friends stopped us because, amazingly, their room was ready. We took our entire luggage to their room and were very happy for them since it was a large ocean front room. They got a complimentary upgrade.

After walking through the courtyard, I decided that it was possible to still get a lovely courtyard view and not complain. Until we got to the room. We possibly got the worst room in the hotel. It did not even face the courtyard, rather looked out over the solarium roof. At this point I was so mad I called the front desk to complain and they moved me to an ocean view (through the buildings) room that was handicap accessible. Still not as nice as our lower paying friends but the desk assured me there wasn’t anything else available.

Let me recap that for you:
• We paid more
• We are Marriott Rewards members
• We have the Marriott Rewards Visa
• We booked through your website
• We did not get an upgrade
• Our room was smaller
• Our room wasn’t ready
• We had the worst courtyard room possible

As you can see, we had many reasons for being disappointed with the room we were assigned and were pretty disgusted, as loyal customers, not getting any preferential treatment but rather getting inferior treatment.

In addition, I’ve been having trouble using my points to book hotels in NYC. Whenever we have a weekend and would like to get away, the standard points are never available only the far more expensive “stay anytime” points. However, Starwood’s, no blackout days, policy has provided my friends with many a night in NYC for 16,000 points vs. Marriott’s 87,500points.