I have been guilty of this, but I only hold onto the multiple reservations while I sort out my plans. I've never actually kept the extra reservations for an extended period, or when it's less than a month before my travel. Maybe I'm the one guilty of what I'm trying to pin on others! :o

Yeah, I usually book a couple of things for a few days until all plans are hammered out, air is so much harder to arrange.

The paradox is that air is harder to arrange, in large part, because the airlines aren't as flexible as Marriott in holding reservations!

Whoa. Not only were the points deducted from my account when I made a reservation that I was short the points for, they CHARGED MY CARD TO PURCHASE POINTS for the additional that I was short. I will be calling this evening to have that charge (and the points) reversed, but beware!

For detail, this is for a reservation at the Cosmopolitan at the end of December/beginning of January. I was charged roughly $540 for 43,000 points. Woof.

I booked a 90k res with 82k pts in my acct last week and the 82k is still in my acct

Wow - I'd be royally pissed!

I have a reservation for next June which requires 120K and right now I have 111K . No problem with the current points and when I booked it last week it said I had until 7 days out to come up with the points just like always.

Yes, I noticed this one.

If you click through on a booking when you have insufficient points, the review your reservation page now has 2 options, buy missing points now, or order e-certs later BUT the " buy now" option is preselected, so if you don't look and just click through, *poof* credit card charged for missing points at $11.50 per 1,000... OUCH:eek:

Thanks for the heads up on the pre-selection bit.

Cheers.

What's a ressie? A cute reservation? :-)

I personally think it is fair to expect the points to be there when one books the reservation. Maybe extend this as a benefit for high level elites but I don't see what is wrong.

I personally think it's fair to have the necessary points when the e-cert is pulled a week before the stay ;)

Cheers.

I don't necessarily disagree, but if they are going to change this "benefit" (even if relatively unpublished), then there should be some form of notification.

As an update, I was able to get the points purchase refunded - it did take going through a very condescending phone rep to do so, though. Oh well - all's well that ends well! I'll be more careful to actually read the reservation page next time and un-select the points purchase.

How would this work when making ressie against a TP cert? Can cert be used to book double ressie or or would need two TP certs?

A TP hotel cert is no different than any other award cert. Once it is linked to a reservation, it can't be linked to a second one. It would have to be "unlinked" from the first and then re-linked to the 2nd reservation. And that would require calling MR to get their help to do.

If someone were to do that, based on the comments in this thread, it looks like the first reservation can still be valid even without a cert attached to it, but it would need a valid cert attached before the actual stay.

Marriott would like to bring to your attention a processing error recently discovered on Marriott.com. Typically when a member makes a redemption reservation without a sufficient amount of points, our system gives the option to purchase the needed points, or to continue earning points and redeem the reward later. The issue has been identified, where the system has been automatically purchasing the needed points and applying them to the reservation on the member’s behalf, erroneously bypassing the option to purchase or defer.

Please know that Marriott is working to correct this issue. We anticipate the problem being fixed within the next 2 weeks. In the meantime, please contact reservations directly by phone if needing to book a redemption reservation without having the full amount of points currently.

Thank you for your patience.