After I encountered some obvious cases, where I get much less points credited, than what I paid for, I calculate each stay (deduct VAT and service charges, take google E/R of the day I checked out and convert to EURO and multiply by the factor for according property).

This year I had a stay, where I got over 30% short...it was adjusted after my complaint to the hotel and they claimed some system error..

but from which difference is it feasible to complain? I tend to complain from a shortage of 3-4 %...Am I too greedy?

The common mistake comes from the currency conversion, using most of time sites like xe.com while it is more complex than that for hotels who use a rate already determined in the system and not based on the rate of the day the points are calculated. Moreover the rate given on site like xe.com is never accurate, it�s an interbank rate.

Instead of complaining to the hotel, you can also drop a nice email asking for more info about your point credit

I never complain in a rude manner....even after the 5. follow up!

of course the exchange rate is the main source of differences... but should the tolerance be more than 3 percent, in particular as I never use an interbank rate or any other rate, which serves someone to gain some profit or at least a margin to cover costs, but the rather average google rate....

This is a very good question. I have very often differences between my own estimate (using the calculator provided by Accor - for those who are not aware of it, see link below) and the actual credited by the hotel.
https://all.accor.com/loyalty-progra...index.en.shtml

Reasons for this can be:
- an honest mistake by the hotel
- some hotels trying to fool you by saying that the expenses at restaurant X are not eligible because it’s independent, while it’s fully integrated to the hotel and accessible only from the hotel and, of course, nobody told you about non-eligibility (Sofitel Dubai downtown is expert for this ).
- a wrong estimate by me of the taxes. Invoices in some countries are not detailed enough to understand properly the taxes.
- exchange rate issue, as described by Macaron95 above. For this, using the Accor calculator above, avoids this problem as all currencies are listed so I believe they are using their internal exchange rate.

I usually don’t act for a difference <50 points. Sometimes it depends on my envy to � fight � as it takes a significant amount of time.

on the app, for each reservation, when you scroll down, the estimated amounts of reward and status points are now given (by scrolling at the very bottom of the reservation details). It is a good indicator to contact or not the hotel. Please bear in mind that these numbers only show up on the app before the stay.

once the stay is over, they cannot be seen anymore. I would suggest to make a screen capture of your phone before the stay.

Excellent suggestion . I am about to checkout from an hotel and just did a screenshot of this info in the app .

I don't know what they do at other brands, but whenever I'm at a Fairmont property, the Account Review accessed through the room TV provides a very detailed breakdown of every line item on the invoice. It will break down every tax, resort fee, gratuity, etc for each and every line on the invoice. I've never left the hotel without an accurate breakdown of all charges, right to the penny. I just take a photo of each screen from the TV, and use that in assembling my spreadsheet to calculate the points.

As for the exchange rate, I've found the rates used to be within a couple of hundredths to the interbank rate. It's one of the few parts of Accor, where I've noticed consistency and fairness. The rate used to convert on earning points matches the rate they used on the redemption, and the local hotel doesn't have control to manipulate it. The pull it from a Reuters exchange rate database. If there's a spread added, I've been unable to see it on any of my stays.

When I've found incorrect points awarded, it's usually due to something the local hotel didn't report properly. I just e-mail them my spreadsheet, and the hotel normally fixes it quickly. One area they used to get wrong most of the time for me, back when the LifeExperiences program was still good, is they often posted those certificates as a reduction to the charges, rather than as a gift card payment toward the stay. It would almost always necessitate an e-mail to the hotel for them to correct that.

Well, no hotel wants to be in trouble with a guest sending a spreadsheet

Here's an example of a screen from the room account at a Fairmont stay...



That gives me all the detail needed to properly categorize the charges into earning and non-earning.

for my last stay I followed macaron95's advise and asked superfriendly (adding how supersatisfied I was with my stay and the staff's service) more info about the point credited....

within half a day they apologized that they did not include a mini bar charge of 20 USD into the points credited and that they adjusted this already...

I will not ask how come that the charge was on my bill but not credited as points in the first run...

Overall, there are too many mistakes done by hotels on number of points credited. For status holders, obviously we are the ones spending the most nights in hotels and so it takes a significant amount of time for regularizations which is often not a straightforward process.

it goes the other way too, sometimes, you also get more points than expected, but it's not happening very often

Indeed, but those cases are quite rare.