Dec 30 Not Counting Towards 2017 Status
 

My 60th night for this year was Dec 30th. This was the first night of a 5 night stay.
From reading posts on flyertalk I knew there can be problems around the new Year so I called the Glob line and talked to a representative and asked him if I needed to check out on Dec 31 to get that night to count for 2017. He assured me I did not and that if that night posted to 2017 to call when I got back and they could fix it. It posted to 2018. I called the Glob line and ended up talking to supervisors and all said the terms and conditions state stays are based on checkout date and there is zero flexibility. Has anyone had similar problems? Any suggestions as who else to contact?

I don't have advice for you, but I can say that there have been similar posts here in the past, and that the T&C's do state that the entire stay and all nights are credited based on the year you checked OUT, not IN.

You might get a supervisor to cut you some slack, but no guarantees.

Also keep in mind for future reference that checking out and checking back in will also not solve the problem since back-to-back stays at the same property count as one stay. You would need to check out and check into a different hotel.

LOL...This is awesome!

They changed the rules when the program changed. In the past, customer service could give you the credit.

Unforunately, the person you spoke with gave you bad information... check out dates now matter AND checking out and into the same hotel will also not count. I ran into it for last year's promo, so I checked out on the last day and my husband checked in.

Those are the games we now have to play :(

Same thing happened to me. Stayed 58 nights before my end of year trip. End of the year I stayed 5 more nights that ended on the 1st. I called CS and had a discussion about this. I've been diamond since 2012 but since i've never had an issue with needing my last stay. The supervisor I talked to stated simply that management is not allowing for any flexibility and that the best that she could do is send a note to management.

IMO the T&C are a bit vague on when the nights will count towards your stay. They do state the: Qualification for elite status is based on the Member’s activity (Tier-Qualifying Nights stayed or Base Points earned) over the course of a single calendar year, January 1st through December 31st (“Calendar Year”)."
Later this is some language about: "A Member will only receive credit towards elite status for a Tier-Qualifying Night after the Member completes his or her stay and is checked out of the applicable hotel or resort (including for pre-paid reservations)."

I took that to mean that they would only credit you if you check in and check out... (in otherwords no points if you're a no show). However, they could still mean that they credit you your 2017 nights towards 2017 and 2018 nights towards 2018 only after checkout.... to me this language speaks to when you will see your points not which year they will credit towards.

I stayed with Hyatt because of what i perceived to be excellent customer service at the hotels. This is clearly not an example of good customer service. If they are going to deny me status based on a technicality I really have to take my business elsewhere. In my experience Marriott has always been flexible if you are close. With their larger footprint in Europe it should be easier to hit top tier anyway.

To me this almost flippant response of, "I'll send a note to management." Without any promise of followup or discussion pisses me off. Seems like someone who stayed as often as we have at Hyatt should get a better response.

I literally wouldn't hang up, until I got to someone that would fix this. That is terrible Customer Service. 60 nights is a HUGE number and with taking away some benefits, anyone near 60 should be a Globalist, imo.

The rules are pretty clear and the very same number of nights gets credited. This was very extensively discussed last year I dont know why thete is bitterness over this subject.

That being said if you got erroneous info from customer service you should push for resolution that would honor that statement - perhaps they can look up transcripts/tapes of your call.

I had the same situation last year, i had the (incorrect) info in writing from gold passport and they honored it. Plus i now know very well how counting works in new system.

Thank you for the replys. I tried not to hang up but after 15 minutes having the same discussion with multiple supervisors I realized i was getting nowhere. Was told people who are within 1 or 2 nights from Globalist get reviewed in late January or February and I might make it. She did not offer to write a note. Refused to answer if she thought I was lying about globalist rep giving wrong info or whether they were refusing to take responsibility for their employees actions.

let me guess: because people are being told one thing and then another thing happens. And because there is a vast difference between Explorist and Globalist? I don't know why that is hard to understand.

Yes this was an issue last year as well. As you note, Hyatt did wind up bending the rules.

Total caveat emptor situation (as is everything these days WoH), though I do sympathize with anyone who gets hosed by this.

If Hyatt provided misleading info they owe OP a correction.
It is a good idea to confirm smth like this in writing but CS will be less likely to bend the rules and do anything above and beyond T&C...

Most of the respondents in the threads I've seen here like Hyatt's weird policy and hand-waved complaints by saying it's easy to call in and get the nights credited to the prior year, if needed.

Regardless, it's utterly ludicrous that a nights-based program would operate like this. No rational person would expect a Dec. 1 to Jan. 1 hotel stay would count as 31 nights in 2018.

i find it hard to believe that at the end of the day Hyatt will refuse to honour those nights and decline Globalist status. However, given the Keystone Cops/French Farce/generally clueless way they managed the changes, nothing would surprise.

my advice from last year is to request the front line membership services rep change the checkin date to a day earlier and checkout date a day earlier. that’s a simple keystroke that the rep can do easily himself with no technical need to escalate.

in contrast, a rep will have to escalate if he understands the request as splitting the stay so that each night stayed credits to the proper year