BostonFlyer1624

How about booking non-refundable rates? For example, if the hotel I want has a non-refundable rate, how are individuals supposed to book that rate if they aren't sure they want to stay at the hotel unless they get a LNF rate?

sdsearch

Good question. The thing to know is that marriott.com has a 24-hour period in which you can cancel an (otherwise) non-refundable rate. (They either don't charge you until the 24-hour period has gone by, or they reverse the charge if it went through already.)

This dovetails perfectly with the LNF promise to respond to your claim within 24 hours. It means that if your claim is denied, as long as you check your email before 24 hours are up to find that out, you have time to go back to marriott.com and cancel your non-refundable stay and not get charged for it.

nacho

I'm not sure about the ADP rate now because they have 2 kinds of ADP:

1. Prepaid in full, cc will be charged upon reservation no cancellation;
2. Prepaid in full, cc will be charged upon reservation, no cancellation 1 day after booking.

The second one sounds promising, however when I tried to book that rate today it states that you have 1 day to cancel, and that one day is the same day as the today (I used to remember that I have at least 25 hours to cancel the reservation in case of I screwed up).

I don't like the fact that they charged my CC even before the cancellation deadline. It happened to me once and the hotel was quite reluctant to issue a refund. Fortunately it's Marriott - I know they will sort it out for me if the hotel refused to pay.

Twickenham

You only have to book the non-refundable rate if your comparison rate is also non-refundable. I actually got a LNF claim rejected because I had booked the (lower) NR rate, and was comparing to a refundable rate. Ended up cancelling within the 24 hours, then booked the best available rate, re-submitted, and was accepted.

sdsearch

Q. How often can I do LNFs?

A: There is no known limit in Marriott's LNF program. (Some other hotel programs, on the other hand, limit Best Rate Guarantee claims to, for example, only once a month!)

Q: Can I LNF the same hotel repeatedly (if I need to stay at the same hotel repeatedly).

A: You can, if the matching rate continues to be available. However, in some cases, the very act of doing LNF claims causes the hotel to pull the rate soon thereafter from the third-party site. So if you have several stays at the same hotel coming up, you may have more success if you submit the multiple LNF claims in a more rapid succession, compared to waiting until you've completed the first stay before doing the LNF claim for the next stay. (At the very least, you might want to make the second reservation and submit the second LNF claim as soon as your first LNF claim is approved.)

Q: Should I put anything in the Comments field?

If there's anything in the least bit potentially confusing about the lookup / booking process on the other site, it may help to explain the exact steps to take.

Some LNFs get rejected simply because the LNF staff couldn't figure out how to replicate the results you got. While sometimes that's because the same results aren't obtainable many hours later, at other times it's simply because the LNF claim didn't explain well enough how to duplicate the results the claimant got on the third-party site.

Comments can help explain issues like having to search a paritcular way to find the hotel, spelling differences between the third-party site and the Marriott, date format differences, room or terms description differences (even though both descriptions are really of the same room type and both terms work out to about the same thing), etc.

maggiew

If your claim is rejected because "the rate is no longer available" but it REALLY is still available, do you respond to the email or submit another claim? What about the 24 hour time frame in that case?

Maggie

nacho

Yes I do, and I usually file a claim right after I made a ressie. So I usually have 1 shot to write back and argue.

Twickenham

I've done both successfully.

Dolphinyong

I have some questions, hopefully somebody can help=)

If marriott website offering a room-only rate and it can be cancelled for free up to 1 day before arrival date, while a non-marriott website offering a lower rate for a room plus breakfast and it can be cancelled for free up to 3days before arrival, will my LNF claim be approved? Has anyone has experience with this?

The cancellation policy of that website is 3days before arrival, so it can't match marriott advance purchase rate too?

sdsearch

Well, those are two separate questions. I can't answer the one about the mistmatch between room only and room plus breakfast.

I have gotten 1-day vs 3-day cancellation differences approved using at least one particular site for at least one particular hotel, but YMMV. (In my case, that was the only difference, ie, rooms/amenities were identical, and the reservations were weeks out, and I simply pointed out that both the Marriott site and the other site both had terms that allowed cancellation.)

Dolphinyong

Thanks for the guidance ya=)

GlennTheBaker

Q: If I have filed a claim which has been approved and then a competitor site subsequently has an even lower rate available, can another claim be submitted?

A: Yes. Make another reservation on Marriott.com and file another claim. If approved, cancel the previous reservation and keep the new, lower-priced one.

In 2007, I was looking at going to Toronto for my honeymoon. I booked the Marriott Eaton Centre and filed a LNF claim which was approved. A couple of days later, the same competitor site had a lower rate so I did the process again. Then it happened again...and again. I actually submitted around 5 claims before the price stopped going lower!

sophiegirl

Certainly it could be approved, but is doubtful that it would be. The cancellation policy is not the same, one has breakfast and one doesn't...LNF is pretty clear that rate comparisons have to be identical in all aspects.

Could an agent miss one or both of the differences - yes. You can try...

nacho

Q: If Marriott's rate is room only, and comparison rate includes breakfast, do I get breakfast if my LNF claim is approved?

A: No.

Q: If the lowest breakfast inclusive rate at Marriott.com is a package (including more than breakfast), and the comparison rate is breakfast only, can I get the LNF approved?

A: No.

apodo77

What other sites should one search for lower rates?