MRs into Sol Melia free night gift voucher
 

In the UK MR scheme (dunno about the US one), you can use 14k MRs for one free night at a Gran Melia hotel. However the odd thing is that the T&C's state:

You may use your points to redeem up to three vouchers, for one night’s stay.

Now I dont understand why they limit you to only 3 vouchers (3 nights). And what exactly is the restriction here? Most likely in a single booking (as to say, forever!). But AMEX dont issue hotel or date specific vouchers, I understand that they're just free night vouchers and you need to do the booking direct with the hotel. So how do they know whether you are using more than 3 in one booking? The hotel didnt seem to care, as I asked them if I could use 7, and they said yes.

Any experience of transferring MRs to Melia vouchers?

Just a quick bump to see if anyone has experience of the Sol/Melia vouchers? :)

Just had 3 x Gran Melia AMEX MR vouchers arrive in the post today, I think the online T&C's are just badly worded, the T&C's on the voucher do not mention anything about a limit on the number of nights. The vouchers are valid for 1 year and as long as the hotel accepts the booking I cannot see any way Amex could place a limit the number of nights.

Thats great, thanks. I take it that they're all just generic "one night" vouchers? Presumably with the specific Melia brand written on them somewhere given the redemption value is different for Melia/Tryp/Paradisus etc?

How did you find the booking process on the phone? When I made the booking the agent was clueless about Amex vouchers and kept saying that the only rewards that can be made were with Melia Rewards points. In the end he made the booking, but the booking confirmation contains an 875USD 'cost of stay'. Not sure what that's about?!

Think I'm going to have to contact the hotel directly to confirm the booking type.

They are just generic one night vouchers valid for "one nights accommodation, on a room only basis, at any Sol Melia Gran Melia Hotel".

Booking process was straightforward.

Rang Melia first a few weeks ago and booked the 3 nights and got booking email with 283 euro 'cost' (the hotel was showing 684 euro for the same dates though that was for B&B). The Melia agent stated to call back when I had the vouchers or the booking would be canceled 24 hours prior to the stay.

Tried to reserve the Amex MR Melia vouchers online but the Amex website seems to be broken for this (though since noticed all is working ok on the Amex mobile app). Called Amex MR line and quoted the redeem code and the agent processed the vouchers within a minute. Took about 3 days for the actual vouchers to arrive by post and just now need to call Melia again to provide the voucher numbers.

Quite happy overall; got slightly better than 1p of value per MR which is a decent redemption in my book.

Been royally screwed on this. Got charged the notional rate charge as well as the vouchers!

These damned Amex-Melia vouchers are so little used that few are aware of them at the reservations centre, never mind the hotel. It's hard to argue with a receptionist who has only basic English skills. They did phone reservations but must have got a muppet that simply said that the rate shown in the reservation must be paid.

I'm taking it up with an email to Melia. If that fails I'll complain to Amex, but I imagine that their response will be that it's nothing to do with them.

Suspect that I'll be a loser on this.

Why would you be a loser kryten? just raise it with Amex.
As I understand, you used your UK MRs to transfer into melia for stay vouchers. Unless you specifically booked a room that was outside the regular category for the room type for which the voucher is used.....then you're ok I think?

I was looking into redeeming MR in the same way and was interested to know whether status benefits accrued to such bookings ( just got melia plat by virtue of my UK cent recently) hence the query.

Can't see what Amex can/will do; it's a Melia issue. It's hard enough getting Melia CS agents to acknowledge the existence of these vouchers, never mind the intricacies of their T&Cs.

Please advise if you get some resolution on this. Hope it works out in your favour.

Give me a shout if you continue to have problems, I am friends with the Melia marketing team in London.

Pretty impressive issue resolution.

On Monday, I found a little guest-feedback form on the Melia website and sent a 2 sentence feedback saying that I'd been charged when I shouldn't. The next day (Tuesday) I got an email saying that my comments had been given to the Quality Control Dept. Just a standard auto reply I assumed.

I heard nothing more until today, when I was in my room and the customer services manager and the head checkin guy (can't remember his title) came to my room to apologise. They'd been informed of how the vouchers worked and are going to give a full refund. They explained that they'd never had someone use these vouchers yet, so didn't initially know what to do. To be fair, they did phone central reservations who told them duff info.

An hour later I also got an email from the Quality Control manager at the resort, who apologised for the error.

So my comments managed to quite quickly make their way through corporate Melia, have someone verify and agree a course of action, and communicate to local resort, in such a short time. Not bad going.

That said, I don't think I'll use these vouchers again. Because of the lack of knowledge at the call centres and hotels, you're always running the risk of a kerfuffle at some stage.

If you book on the Melia website, you'll often get a little popup thingy at the bottom with a picture of a present, saying something like "Only if you book at melia.com, a gift of 20 euros per day for you to spend in the hotel!"

Given how badly that offer almost always works, which is clearly advertised on their site and used by a fair number of people each day, I'm not all that surprised that you've had trouble using a less common voucher. I normally find that 50% of a Melia stay is brilliant, 40% OK, and 10% terrible. Can never predict in advance which it'll be... Glad you got yours sorted!

(For the Melia dining/food credit things, the first thing to know is that the website will show the offer teaser in a whole bunch of places when it doesn't actually apply. At the end of the booking process, you should get a booking email with the present logo and some details in, but you don't always. If you do, print *2 copies*, with images, text isn't enough. Some hotels want it on checkin, some on checkout, some both. Check the T&C for where you can and can't spend the vouchers at each hotel, it varies. Then ask again at checkin. At checkout, be prepared to have to pull out your second copy of the email with the magic voucher in it. Allow an extra 5 minutes on your checkout time to argue over the bill. Expect to not actually get the full credit every time. Factor all of this into your hotel selection!)