Sorry, need to vent.

I booked 2 separate starwood stays (8 nights total, over $1K) on orbitz. I read the page below, but had not read the flyertalk reviews.

https://www.starwoodhotels.com/prefe...preferred.html

After my first stay did not post, I contacted spg and they informed me that booking on 3rd party websites does not count towards stays.

Nothing in the starwood page above mentioned that to get stays to count I had to book on the spg site. Surely if you stay in a hotel, it counts as, er well staying in a hotel? Stupid of me to assume that was the case. This really sucks. I have a lot more travel planned but not booked. The spg program seems to be good, apart from this one point, which they do not make clear up front.

So my dilemma is, should I even bother continuing with SPG, given that my $1K and 8 nights don't count, or should I cut my losses and go with another program?

I guess this is a newbie trap, but it does not make me feel particular loyalty to the program, in fact, it really makes me want to switch.

As a side note, the customer support rep did comp me 1k points, which is nice, but still does not help me gain status.