kiltedflyer

simply not true in every case.

I absolutely only received one email for an AXON stay in HKG this Nov.

I have read and re-read that email 20 times if I've read it once and nowhere is there any mention of an expiration date.

in fact, it is nearly identical (I've printed them out and compared them) to the confirmation email for our GLON stay in the Maldives; nowhere a mention of cert expiry on either one.

not deliberately trying to be contrarian, but it's just not possible to make blanket statements on this issue.

LTH

Totally agree. This is exactly my case - if they ultimately deny my reservation, I will try to use it as an excuse. There is no way they expect us to know this 1-year expiration period without explicitly stating it on the confirmation AND through the reservation agent. Their agents should know better!

kiltedflyer

thx LTH.

if one asks any question of any agent of any company, one should have the reasonable expectation that they are receiving the correct answer.

the agent making the booking is a de facto confirmation that the booking is legitimate.

especially in those instances where no further terms of the agreement are materially provided or accessible.

and that is the point: the agent should have known better.

and since it was HHonors' error, I simply feel it should be corrected to the advantage of the customer rather than the customer suffering from the error of the company.

azepine00

You "simply fee"l? Surely you don't mind going to hotel after being denied cert validity, paying rack rate and then taking them to court and reporting back to us?

All this self-righteous talk is great when it's not your reservation but a number of folks were told flat out "no" - what do you suggest they do?
Write to Blackstone - they run the show there these days?

LTH

No, we should all get it straightened out and confirmed before we begin our trip. Most of us have nearly a year to work on this, I'm confident they will have to provide some reasonable solution, whether that's to grant us exceptions, or to allow us to change the reservation to within one year without paying for more points.

Happy

Good luck in your endeavor.

It took almost 3 weeks for HHonor to refund 40K pts on a canceled award booking that the points did not automatically return back to the account...

1) I was told it would eventually work itself out... Yeah right!

2) I was told that 10 biz days must pass before a case number can be assigned.

3) Finally a rep felt it wasn't right and he generated a case before the 10 biz days were up.

4) It still took another week before any rep would escalate this to the appropriate dept to refund the pts.

And that is just for a normal award booking cancellation that the HHonor system somehow decided to swallow the pts without refunding it.

Just think how much time / effort you would have to put in to make sure you indeed have a valid reward redemption because you are "not told" the cert is only good for a year when it is quite clear that reservation cannot be made over 12 months out.

kiltedflyer

not quite sure how anything I said is self-righteous, but whatever.

back to reality:

I also never suggested anyone just "show up" with an expired cert, thanks. I'm simply astonished that the company isn't making good beforehand on their own agent's, ergo their mistake.

exactly what I've been getting at. pretty simple really. and in my opinion, only fair.

luv2go

I actually don't think it is "quite clear" that a reservation cannot be made over 12 months out. I did indeed make a reservation for the Hilton Moorea for a reward stay for late summer 2014 ; I made the reservation in march 2013 before the devaluation.

The hotel emailed me a few weeks ago,( 10 weeks after reservation made) without a prompt or query on my part, to confirm the reservation, with the 2014 date highlighted in red. I responded back that I did indeed want the reservation for 2014, ( ie it wasn't a mistake on my part). I clearly stated that I made the reservation to get the reward booked before the devaluation. I received a prompt and very polite reply from the hotel that ok, all was fine and confirmed.

azepine00

All these "it got confirmed for me" "i had no idea" "it was agent's fault" "dog ate my homework" thoughts and ventings are great - now does any of you have specific suggestions for those who were told "NO" by hilton?

Don't get me wrong - i agree that hilton is largely to blame here (although concerns about validity of those awards were raised here long time ago) but what are you gonna do about it?

whimike

Quite clear how? The booking engine allows for reservations over 12 months out. I have even made paid reservations over 12 months out without problem.

kiltedflyer

+1

Happy

When I tried to make a reservation past the 12 months mark, the site has a pop up said reservation cannot be beyond 12 months. Yes, you could ignore that message and continue, the system does let you. However it is as clear as day and night to me, that you are not supposed to do so but the system would only warn you, not stop you.

LTH

You just don't get it. We're talking about AXON reservations, something that must be done manually by an agent through the phone. There was no warning whatsoever given when the booking was made by a Hilton official. Some of us didn't even receive the second email with the certificate deadline. How the hell do they expect one to know!

kiltedflyer

Actually, I made a GLON rez online at the Conrad Maldives 23 months in advance.

There was no "pop-up" to ignore; no 'warning' of any kind.

There was no error message.

There was no work-around to do this.

End of story.

nittany987

Just wanted to come back and give final update.

I'm essentially throwing in the towel on this one after I sent an email to some Sr. Hilton executives, which had gotten me in touch with an escalation specialist. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to do anything with the AXON certificates and so now I'm trying to scrape together the nights through refunded AXON points and some CC nights. I still think it'll work out, but it's been a royal pain.

Good luck to those in similar situations; hope it works out better for you all than I.