More Lunacy from Diamond Customer Care
 

Earlier today, I emailed Diamond Customer Care about the security and certificate issues with the registration page for the 2,000 Bonus Points per Night promotion.

I politely asked that they forward the info to their IT department.

The response I received was as follows:

Ultimately, I was able to register for the promotion and took a screenshot of the confirmation page.

However, the auto response from the Diamond Team, and the fact that it was factually false, is embarrassing and unprofessional.

Not reading, comprehending feedbacks and blindly responding (incorrectly) is one of the most unprofessional and damaging act a customer service employee can be guilty of. I am seeing more of these with my own correspondences with Hilton as well. Do they not staff Diamond Desk with their better and more experienced staff?

Absolutely ridiculous. Someone should be pulled off the front line until thoroughly retrained, including remedial reading.

I have recently emailed the Diamond Desk with a simple question. Five nonsense responses later I have given up.

Yes, my experience isn't much better.

The 5k for every five stays which was attached to the now finished triple points when booking with the app promo resulted in several emails telling me I wasn't eligible even though I had screenshots of the offer after registering and had sent them in with the original email.

It took me telling them that the points were to be added within forty eight hours or I would be rolling up at their offices at Cadogan Square in Glasgow for an explanation as to why they had not been added.

Apparently the Customer Service team aren't keen on face to face encounters with customers and the points were rather promptly added.

Should not have been as much hassle though and should not have required half a dozen emails of drivel first.

My experience with the Diamond desk had been consistently less than stellar as well, to the point where I would rather go through the concierge or club officers at my local Conrad to get anything done.:td:

It had been a week without a resolution to my issue from the Diamond Desk. I emailed yesterday requesting an update.

Saturday at 4:45pm, I was BCC'd as the Diamond Desk forwarded my request for an update to an internal "internet escalations" team. So now I have the direct email address of the escalations team. Surely this was a mistake.

Oddly, the email subject is marked "spam". No email from the Diamond Desk to me has ever been quarantined in my spam folder, so I'm led to believe that the Diamond Desk marked my email as spam.

It appears they just hire folks to read from a script, and avoid the cost of training them. The average FT'er knows more then the chat/e-mail/or Diamond Desk phone reps about the HH program it seems to me.

The sad part is that these days, we'd mostly only be calling them to help resolve complex things that cannot be resolved on the website. And companies are essentially wasting their money even hiring folks and not training them to solve the complex problems.

I too have have a diamond desk horror story much like the OP.

I hadn't been allocated the correct number of points for a stay, looked like only 1 night's worth rather than the two I stayed, and asked if this could please be looked into. Simple enough request I thought... The first 3 replies were contradictory nonsense that didn't really relate to my request at all, or were down right incorrect. As though they had just been copied from a script. Was finally resolved on the 4th attempt and the agent apologised and thanked me for my perseverance.

Initially I just thought I was unlucky, but judging from this thread it's the status quo, in which case it's so terribly damaging to have such incompetent staff responding to customer complaints.

Oh, and my messages too were marked with **SPAM** , seems they consider anybody replying to their garbage emails as spam..

I now email asking for confirmation that I'm registered into specific promotions, so I can point back to them if points don't post. even then, they give me the runaround.

For over a YEAR I have been requesting my Diamond card be sent to me. Still no card after multiple requests.

Why on earth would you need the card, much less waste your time requesting one numerous times?

I've had two issues with mis-posted points recently.

1. The online chat sorted it out right away when a stay posted as zero points.
2. A missing bonus where the online chat said wait 6-8 weeks - of course it hasn't posted but I've given up

Have also received replies with **SPAM** in the subject

i think all my replies ever received have ***SPAM*** or SUSPECTED SPAM in them.

Replies from the diamond desk usually say SUSPECTED SPAM.. ([email protected])

Replies from the customer service desk say ***SPAM*** ([email protected])

sometimes replies from ([email protected])

not sure why so many email accounts are replying though.
What email address do you fellow diamond members send to?

Here's my totally brilliant [email protected] response.

I have 3 stays in 2017. I have received points for all 3. However, my dashboard says that I have 2 stays. After 3 emails back and forth trying to get the third stay credit, I received a reply this morning telling me that I have 3 stays and I need 28 more to requalify for diamond. Of course, the dashboard still says 2 stays, and one needs 30 (not 31) stays to requalify for diamond.

Sometimes, it so sad it makes me laugh.

Customer service from the Diamond desk is now unacceptable, I've had some horrendous issues recently.
After being put on hold on the phone for 47 minutes because my points were not returned from a cancelled reservation, they simply acknowledged they were in a black hole but said there was nothing they could do about it and could not credit the missing 30,000 points back into my account. ( I cancelled within the required timeframe). None of my visa 5,000 points posted. I simply gave up after about 11 emails having been accused of being a liar and they insisted that I had not booked via the app.
Diamond membership simply means nothing today!

Wow. I hadn't realized that Diamond service was so atrocious. I had an issue a couple of weeks ago, but thought it was just me. I was at a Hampton Inn that had multiple issues, and they refused to offer their satisfaction guarantee because it was due to a plumbing problem they have no control over (??) Every time I contacted corporate, they referred the issue to the hotel, who offered me 20,000 points (one night at the hotel costs 50,000). Finally, I called Diamond, and they offered me the same thing - 20,000 points. I pointed out that's not acceptable, and they finally gave me what the hotel was actually worth for a night (50,000 points) while still insisting I was lying and the hotel had informed me of the issues in question beforehand. About a week later I get an email saying I'll get a $150 gift card in addition (which I've since received) but it honestly makes me think that it might be cheaper for them to actually train their employees instead of throwing gift cards at customers in the hopes of mitigating the damage. I must've spent at least an hour on the phone arguing with them and being told that I was lying.

Totally soured my desire to be loyal to Hilton. I got Diamond from a status match, and once it expires I'm probably going to stick with other brands. If their highest status is treated like their lowest status, what is actually the point?

Exactly, this is the part I just can't tolerate, the ample wasted time to resolve simple issues, and then to top it off, being called a liar.

I am certainly not a serial complainer, I think in my 4-5 years of Hilton membership I have complained to Hilton 1-2 times (always about points issues), so I don't appreciate my integrity being challenged on the rare occasion when I do, all for the sake of a few thousand points (in my case anyway)

Someone understands me! By the end of the entire thing, I just had a completely sour taste in my mouth. I got what I wanted, I suppose (compensation in terms of points/gift cards) and I'll be making a stay at another Hilton portfolio with those points/money, but somehow being called a liar and wasting an hour of your life on the phone takes the charm of staying at the Waldorf Astoria. By the end, I got the sense they just threw money at me to get me to shut up, not because they realized they'd actually screwed up - and I also forgot to mention that they offered me a Be My Guest certificate for a Hampton Inn, then for any Hilton brand portfolio, then for a Hampton Inn, then 20,000 points. Their compensation kept changing, which honestly confirms for me that they either don't want to retain loyal customers or have no idea how to.

Part of the problem is and it's the same with most companies not just Hilton is that every time you call, click live chat or email you get someone different.

Once it gets into what I would call the horror story stage which is the fourth or fifth call within a short period of time the matter should be getting allocated to someone to deal with rather than it being passed round a contact centre where more often than not all they are doing is regurgitating the notes left by the previous colleague you spoke to and adding a bit more onto it which only adds to the fury as what they are adding on is usually even more wrong than it was to start with.

There is no ownership and no checks in place to ensure that what needs to be done to rectify the situation is actually done. The emphasis seems to be on moving on to the next case rather than resolving the current one properly.

The Diamond desk is becoming downright outrageous. I had so many issues with their way of handling my emails in the last two years. The best thing to do, is to really burst into laughter about the insanity that reigns there and spend your money elsewhere. Otherwise it might just drive you crazy.

I had a stay at the Waldorf Astoria Shanghai last year. I booked a room through my own private Hilton account. My Vice-President Corporate Travel had booked two dozen rooms for our employees, to accommodate them for a corporate event. This was during the Singapore Airlines Triple Miles promotion in Asia, for which I registered and received miles for previous stays at other properties. Six weeks after my stay in Shanghai, I noticed that I did not receive the miles for this stay. Since my final bill was well over 8000USD for a suite and incidentals, excluding the two dozen rooms for my company, the number of miles that I should have received was considerable.

I have send 8 emails and got 8 different and completely useless and off-topic replies. The last awnser I received was truly ludicrous:


"Thank you for your inquiry regarding the promotions. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us.

It appears that this particular promotion was only available to a targeted group, and we apologize that we are unable to extend this opportunity to anyone outside of that targeted group.

Hilton HHonors runs several promotions throughout the year, so be sure that the email subscriptions in your account profile are up to date so that you can receive our latest promotional offers".


This was the funniest one of all. I always had all "receive promotional emails" boxes ticked in my account and never received a single one. The Singapore Airlines Triple Miles in Asia promotion was not targeted, it was accessible to any member.

It is baffling how incompetent this customer service has become through my 9 years as a Hilton Honors Diamond member and 9 years of corporate contracts for my company's employees. I just gave up with the Hilton Diamond desk and instructed my Vice-President Corporate Travel, not to renew any of our worldwide corporate contracts with Hilton for 2017. We switched to Starwood, who were happy to take our average spending of 4 million USD a year with Hilton.

Ofcourse all hell broke lose when we did not renew our worldwide corporate contracts. Our Hilton Woldwide sales contacts went out of there way to apologize and promise that something like this would never happen again. But in all fairness, spending 12.000USD or 4.000.000USD through corporate contracts a year as a Diamond member, should not make any difference to the way you are being treated by Hilton.

Only after they discovered that I, as a private individual, was linked to an awful lot of corporate contract bookings, they were willing to to solve the issue. Very sad, but the continuing mess at the Hilton Diamond desk just drove me and my company away.

Too bad not all of us have the same "power" to make corporate folks sit up and take notice. If a few regular diamonds leaves, they would barely register except maybe for some algorithm that sends out a win-back promo. Your corporate account equals to a few hundred (profitable) Diamonds leaving at the same time.

It sounds like they have outsourced cs and just told them to say "no" to everything.

It's really not a smart strategy when several of their competitors still have competent, US based, customer service.

What you refer to as the "Diamond Desk" is simply meant to make you feel good. You are simply having your contact (email or phone) routed to a theoretically more senior and empowered agent. But, all of it is software-screened, so you are really being screened by a piece of software, not a human, which is suggesting a few pre-set responses which predictively respond to the issue.

As is pointed out above, the people who get attention are the customers. Those are the people who drive business. PayItForward is the perfect example. Alone unimportant. But, when the system picks up that there is real corporate business at stake that customer is now important and a live human being was assigned to fix a simple issue. Without that, Hilton figures that if one customer jumps ship it doesn't matter because there is a similarly-dissatisfied Marriott / Hyatt customer who is inbound to make up for it.

Marriott has outstanding cs. Really excellent. Hyatt is okay. At least they're Hyatt employees, not an offshore contractor.

I've had every card since 2010, Silver, Gold and Diamond. I'm also waiting for my card to come through, hopefully I get the Big Ben Gold card through while trying to qualify for Diamond.
Has been over 6 weeks, maybe worth opening a new thread for this. :)

And I thought IHG customer service is bad. Are they competing in an olympics of which hotel chain provides the worst cs?

Both are bad but I still reckon Accor gets the gold medal.

Whoever is negotiating the corporate contract for businesses throwing $15 Million+/year likely doesn't care about that. Room with bed + bath with towel is about it, so long as C-level complaints are handled and those are.

Was just reminded of the time when I asked about a long-term stay that would cost 15-20k (based on property), and asked about stove/kitchenette/microwave options as the hilton website wouldn't let me search for it specifically. Their response was to tell me to call each hotel to ask if it included a kitchenette, as they wouldn't be able to help me due to the time sensitivity of rates (????).

I went with Hyatt, which was fine since they had the stay more play more promo at the time.

In general I find Hotel CS to be terrible. Hilton is no exception. I've had multiple problems with points posting over the years and I'd say the CS agents don't read 95% of my emails when I inquire about the problem.

Right. Accor don't even bother with the nonense replies. They just skip replying altogether.

I think that part of your problem may be that you include too much information in your complaint emails. They would not have responded to your email with a comment about the Singapore Airlines promo offer had you not mentioned it in your email. But that was extraneous information. Your situation was simple: you had a stay at a Hilton, but the points didn't post to your account. Keep it that simple. That way, there's no way for them to mis-interpret your email as being about not getting bonus miles. In all likelihood, once you got the base points posted, the computer would have posted the bonus miles, since you already know that you're properly registered, so there's no reason to mention it now.

I don't agree with this assessment. Just this morning I had reason to call the Diamond desk phone number. My call was answered immediately, the US-based agent was friendly, and she took care of the issue as quickly as I expected (she had to put me on hold for about 2 minutes). And most importantly, what I wanted was outside Hilton's policy, so I was very happy that she was willing to help.

I'm not discounting others' experiences - I know it's frustrating when customer "service" can't or won't address an issue. But we've had 2 reasons to contact the Diamond desk since switching from Marriott to primarily Hilton last year, and both times I was completely satisfied with the resolution.

It's highly possible they have outsourced some of the call handling. They wouldn't be the first company to go down that route.

If they have it's then a lottery who you get.

3 emails trying to claim 5000 pts from visa points - first reply was to wait 8 wks, second claiming that it was paid with mastercard..

unfortunately at some places there are no alternatives to hilton chain properties...

FWIW, I generally get very good service over the phone. I wish email was better, as I get a paper trail, but alas, the email service is as terrible as others have claimed.

Unfortunately with customer service, especially via emails, you are dealing with very low-level employees that aren't making it a career to answer customer service emails. The ones that last a few months are probably moved up into better positions. I had one job where the majority of new hires don't make it beyond 2 weeks! (I was there 3.5 years, so I got to watch that revolving door quite often!)

It can be questionable if the email is read at all. It could be some program that scans the email for key words, thinks it knows what you are referring to, and automatically sends the response. And even if the email is actually read, they'll probably getting tons of email. They aren't sitting back and closely reading them. They probably have goals or quotas they have to hit, so lengthy emails aren't going to get the time needed to read it all...especially if all you want is a free night or some Hilton points.

Now, think of the posts on these boards when people say they've written emails. Almost every single time, the responses tend to say that the OP has provided way too much information not related to the issue. I'm kind of thinking that this goes on way too often. Email responses that have nothing to do with the issue seem quite often related to something written in the original email...which had nothing to do with the issue as well!

So...do shorter emails = better responses?