Matt4200

So I had a booking with Hyatt for February at Mar Monte that was made before the hotel changed from Cat 4 to Cat 5.

Today that reservation was cancelled and rebooked by Hyatt because it was “Off Peak”.

I originally paid 15k points for it, and now was charged 17k points. The only way I even knew was I received a points deduction email, just a standard one as you get when you make an award booking.

When looking in account activity I noticed a 17k booking today. I never made or authorized this booking. I contacted Hyatt who said that this has been happening that their “offline department” has been doing this apparently.

They credited us back the 2k points difference, but if we hadn’t called it never would’ve been caught or corrected they said.

Definitely double check if you get a random points deduction email today and in the next few days the CSR said.

Jaimito Cartero

That’s not very nice.

Matt4200

Definitely a downfall for Hyatt.

WasKnown

Another Hyatt IT fail lol. Wonder what excuse the cavalry will come up with this time?

Matt4200

Another fun fact -

These reservations that have been cancelled and rebooked will literally show the original points amount despite being rebooked at the “Off Peak” higher price.

So despite it being rebooked at 17k on Hyatt.com and in the Hyatt App under the reservation it actually showed 15k. It’s only through digging deeper on Hyatt’s end internally not something you can see on your end.

The only way to potentially find which reservation (if you have multiple at said property) would be to check the Off Peak calendar which I did after getting off the phone. I was a bit baffled as none of the (4) reservations showed a price difference they all showed 15k, but my points balance was 2k short and it showed the transaction in Past Activity along with the points deduction email.

Just a bit lost on how and why this is something happening.

Colin

“you test edge whatifs lightly bc time is limited and then sh!t happens. calm down, mary, we’ll run a query to find the 0.042% of existing reservations affected and sort it manually, ffs. get some perspective.”

WasKnown

Lol that truly sounds like a mess. If more people have this issue, it’s possible they tried to automate point refunds and got something wrong when flagging for hotels that now price at off peak. If very few people have this issue, hilariously, that could mean that Hyatt is checking these manually. Given how often Hyatt substitutes functioning tech with manual labor, that would not even surprise me.

If your reservation still prices at 17K, you might get that full 17K refund if you cancel and walk away with the 2K CS bonus points for free. Something similar happened when Marriott went to peak pricing but even that was less of a mess. People that booked at standard and canceled peak reservations got refunds for the peak pricing. This is obviously less consumer friendly but could still work out for people that made a lot of speculative bookings and want to spend the time auditing each reservation.

Lol. Of course… they’re prioritizing more important issues. Like building a points calendar that doesn’t show availability. Or building a suite upgrade system that requires human intervention from multiple parties. Or building a free night certificate system that doesn’t let you choose which certificate to use. Or building a website that has been broken for 2+ years and serves 429s to legitimate users (while my scraper can now run fine). Or…. Lol

Very revealing when people choose to die on the Hyatt IT hill. We have eclipsed Apple fanboy levels of fidelity.

azepine00

Having spend many hours recently screening for travel plans across multiple chains I don't find hyatt IT much worse than others - all have some shortcomings...
For example Hilton wouldn't instantly return points from canceled awards, marriott wouldn't return cert from the same - both required lengthy follow up calls. Hyatt is no perfect either - chasing stay credits for HRC or mlife is not fun.

ultimately the substance matters not the wrapping so I make decisions on that rather than IT perfection but ymmv

OP case while an oversight is extremely rare and easily fixed - barely any hotels were adjusted higher recently.
Almost all benefitted from automatic redeposit - for all practical purposes this particular rollout is a win..

WasKnown

The cavalry…

No hotel gets IT right. Poor experiences with one chain does not make poor experiences with another chain any more pleasant. A Hyatt fail is a Hyatt fail and there are clearly many Hyatt fails…

Even setting aside Hyatt charging more points for a reservation that was already booked, the fact that Hyatt did not create a points calendar that can actually show availability is hilarious. That doesn’t sound like a win to me lol

UA-NYC

You seem to have a lot of (bizarre) issues with Hyatt - between those, and accordingly to you, an incredibly weak luxury portfolio as you repeatedly say, why don't you just leave the plebeians here and make the permanent move to Marriott? After all, they have the best portfolio in the business, top notch IT, great benefits, and fantastic customer service. Problem solved

Colin

there was this business user at my former company that was always speaking in management's ear about how long systems projects would take to implement. he rarely got it right, had a hissyfit when sh!t broke, and was ultimately fired for being repeated wrong. Hyatt's IT is fine. Better than most.

UA-NYC

Agreed. Proclaiming Marriott IT is somehow superior due to their web site code is a total joke. It’s only superior if you don’t mind stays not posting, points not posting or posting incorrectly, room inventory that never matches reality, booking emails that never come, years of status that never update, and a god awful web site experience. Other than that it’s just peachy.

WasKnown

So something with Hyatt broke again but no worries, it is completely fine.

And I agree, needing to be worried about getting fired as a w2 employee is probably not fun. Much easier to be the one firing and being right 😉. Hope I can learn about that from all of experienced Hyatt titans here lol

No one claimed Marriott had good IT. In fact, the opposite many times lol. It must be tiring to constantly get so upset over my posts without having the capability of ever actually addressing the content. I guess that’s another manifestation of the difference between me and you.

No one did. 😉 As someone once said, “reading is essential”

serpens

I got a points deduction email out of the blue and didn't dig deeper; I just called and asked what happened. Same story; date went to "Off Peak". But in my case, the required number of points did go down, so I had more points in my account after getting the points deduction email.
And my reservation shows the original number points, despite being rebooked at the "Off Peak" lower price.

UA-NYC

complain, complain, complain, nothing ever good enough, everything beneath you. Guess that’s that outcome of the silver spoon life!