Wrong points received - how to fix
 

Recently stayed at a Fairmont property in Canada for 2 nights, booked with the ALL app.
I had paid for the 1st night 3 weeks prior to the stay as it was a non-refundable portion, and paid the remaining balance at the checkout.

The very 1st line item on the hotel invoice shows the partial prepayment as "Deposit transfer at check-in" on the date of check-in, and the last line item shows the remaining balance charged to my credit card, on the date of checkout.
The invoice of course has the room charges, hotel service charges, and taxes all itemized.

For the stay, I have been awarded considerably less rewards and status points than what was estimated in the app and the calculator on accor.com site.
The difference is about 30% (or 26% if I were to exclude the valet parking).

Tried contacting the hotel, who told me to contact Accor support.
The Accor live chat agent claimed I received the right amount of points on the basis that the "Deposit transfer at check-in" was merely a pre-authorization and what was charged to my CC at checkout was the total before-tax cost of stay.
The "deposit" was definitely not a pre-auth, the CC amount was after-tax amount, and you can easily see it isn't the total by adding up the line items.


The agent would not budge nonetheless and advised me to email the support for further help, which is what I did next.
The only response I got to the email was a generic "points are calculated only on the pre-tax amount of eligible charges" message without any further detail or explanation.
I've replied back asking how they determined the "pre-tax amount of eligible charges" but have not received any answer after days.

It is especially frustrating because I had picked the room and rate that would comfortably push me to the Gold status, but I am now short measly 51 points.

Is there a better way to contact Accor and get this solved?

I have always had points discrepancies corrected by e-mailing the hotel directly. It's a 100% success rate for me going that route. I don't even bother trying to go through Accor support for that. If somebody at the hotel told you otherwise, then you got a poorly trained hotel staffer, and you should try again with someone else. When I'm staying on Fairmont Gold, I typically just email the Gold concierge team, and they handle it, or I contact the Front Office if I have their e-mail and the regular concierge team if I don't, and they will deal with the front office staff.

Unfortunately, I've been told that the process of points calculation is still very manual at many properties, but it usually resolved quite easily and quickly.

Thanks for the suggestion.
The stay was at Fairmont Gold. I've emailed the gold team. Hope they will be able to help.

This is a classic example of why you should always ask and keep the receipt

you may also send them the original booking which will show all details. But it's really a pain and unacceptable to face such things. It should be straightforward.

You can also try to call CS.

every 3. - 4. stay the credited points are short of what I should get. Last time last week. I ALWAYS contact directly the hotel and do not accept, if they tell me to contact customer support as I know, the points are calculated by the hotel and its just an ugly try of the hotel to refuse responsibility

I always make sure:
- to get an invoice from the hotel with ALL amounts (in particular if the rooms are prepaid and I pay the extras at check out)
- if the check out agent ask me whether she/he can send this invoice by Email, I only leave the counter AFTER I got the Email...
- I calculate the status points I should get after EACH stay (with the E/R of the check out day) and complain directly to the hotel if the shortage is >2-3%

By experience, i know that i always expect the amount of points to be incorrect, in both ways, simply because it's not an automatic process but a manual one from the front desk to credit them.

Sometimes for a fully paid stay i am a bit short by a few points, especially when having incidentals.

But some other times when paying with points (which are not eligible to points), i usually get more points that I should get.

Same as BinSabai, i only ask for my points if the difference is more than 2-3% otherwise i just don't care.

I am in this situation now, and unfortunately, the person who is answering at the hotel seems unwilling to correct things claiming there is no mistake whilst obviously there is. It was one booking for two rooms. Total bill came to over $3500 but they did the credit based on $1500 (paid in local currency but hotel enter amount in USD). I would say they did it based on one room, but curiously they (wrongly) credited us the nights for both rooms (cumulatively) though of course I don't need those as I qualify by spend. I'm not so sure what to do. Might try Accor's central customer service but that doesn't seem to work too great. I even sent a copy of my credit card bill showing the amount charged but I genuinely think that the person answering me is simply not understanding the issue. Oh dear...

Frankly I had no problems when requesting correct points through the form on the website when needed. Good luck!

Forgot to update my situation.

The Fairmont Gold staff greatly and thoroughly explained the point calculation.
I had booked a golf & stay package and he pointed that the golf portion of the package charge was not eligible for points.

It wasn't my first time staying at a Fairmont with golf package and never had those payments excluded.
The golf couse not being Fairmont owned made a difference but as it was not mentioned anywhere in the booking process or the package offer page, I never thought it would work differently.

The Gold staff however made an exemption of awarding points for the valet parking charges, to help me achieve the next status level.
I understand parking fee eligibility varies by hotel.
At this particular location, it was ineligible because it was operated by a 3rd party (although it is available exclusively to the hotel guests and every staff is wearing Fairmont name tag so I had no idea it was a 3rd party service).

All in all, the Gold staff was amazingly helpful and courteous with both the explanations and kind gesture with the extra points. I am very satisfied with the after-stay service.

That was very nice of them.

For any purchases, tours and other excursions made through the hotel, which are from 3rd party vendors, they are indeed typically not eligible for points. If it was a hotel-owned course, then it should be points-eligible.

I'm curious which hotel this was?

Tremblant.
The package included $200/night credit which can be used towards hotel services and golf.
I've had golf package stays at Manoir Richelieu and Montebello where I believe the courses are Fairmont owned.

Yes, that is one of my regular hotels. Also one of the coziest Gold lounges.

Indeed, there are 2 golf courses nearby, but they are part of Station Mont Tremblant, and are not part of the hotel. It would be the same if you bought ski tickets through the hotel, where you wouldn't earn points for that either. It's similar at the Chateau Whistler. But Charlevoix, Banff and Jasper courses are part of the hotel.

I'm surprised to hear the parking at Fairmont Tremblant is independent from the hotel. Now I'm curious to recheck a past stay to see if they included the parking in the points.

EDIT TO ADD: I just looked back at my receipts from my last stay, and sure enough, the claim ticket they gave me with the car isn't branded by the hotel at all. There is another parking company name and logo on it, called SVMT. I am a bit surprised they don't have their own valet staff, given how small the hotel is at only 312 rooms, and with a small garage under their own hotel, not accessible or usable by anyone not staying at the hotel or owning one of the suites in it. I didn't think there would be enough in-and-out traffic in the garage for a third party company to have a 24-hour operation there, so I always assumed it was just the hotel bell staff also doing the parking valet services. I wonder now if SVMT is contracted to provide the parking services across all of the hotels in the resort village, with parking staff going between buildings as needed, providing the scale and efficiency.

So to update the forum, 4 weeks after our stay ( 3 after starting the formal process) and several nudges later, this has been corrected at long last and correct points have now posted.

The correct total is slightly above what I had calculated and the account funnily (and confusingly) shows various iterations and withdrawals of both lees and more generous credits!

My recommendation to anyone facing the same is be precise and firm and don’t hesitate to send copies of the bill and for hotels which like this one charge and credit using different currencies (in this case, ARS and USD respectively!) a screenshot of your credit card charge if you feel comfortable doing so. In the end, the total was adjusted by more than 4000 statue points and more than 8000 reward points so I just didn’t want to give up and am glad I did not, but it was certainly a lot more time and energy consuming than it should have been…

Very good :tu:, but what a pain...:(