sethMCOflyer

My girlfriend had a problem recently where they were limiting the "green option" to 3 days a week but didn't make this clear until she was checking out and she was wondering why the bonuses were so low.

dcchi

I agree it's been a scam on the whole, particularly since it is such a hassle to contact MR for missing points. If there was a better online option (where you could write a message in the online form), it would be better, but having to call for 250-750 points and having to wait forever makes it quite frustrating.

bsannich

This has happened to me many times, but was isolated to only 2-3 Starwood properties that were owned by the same franchisee. I stayed in the Baltimore area for several months of 4- or 5-day stays. I declined housekeeping every single time, only to have to fight with them about getting the points....every single time. Many back and forth emails/phone calls, etc. every week. Completely unacceptable. Several times, I had to call SPG to start a formal complaint before they would give me the points. I, too, believe it is some kind of scam.

I have no idea how these programs work, but I am assuming that the points that you get have to get "paid for" by the individual property, so they are hesitant to give them up. That is the only reason I can think of that it was so difficult to get these points posted until it was elevated to corporate.

rowingman

I completely agree with this post. Housekeepers are frequently people with honest jobs trying to raise families with stable jobs. But they are also frequently "piece workers" paid by the room. I never take the "green option".

pinniped

I'm staying in a hotel right now that offers the green option on housekeeping and uses disposable plates and utensils at breakfast. It's possible that the plates are a biodegradable paper but the cups and utensils are plastic. Glad I'm saving the hotel money on laundry, but we're still cranking out huge heaps of garbage every morning at breakfast.

I've had mixed results on the points myself, so at this point I take housekeeping every day at Marriotts. At Starwoods, where I've seen 500 SPG points per night to decline, I've taken the green option. Pretty easy call since a lot of my stays are 2-night solo stays. I'm more willing to bug someone about Starpoints than I am 250 or 500 Marriott points.

MSPeconomist

EWRtoLAX4life

Great post and thank you for the clarification!

Voodoo Daddy

I don't agree that this would be a massive conspiracy. If we all know that hotel personnel are generally bad at providing what corporate promises, corporate also knows. And how would it alienate the franchisees? They're the ones who are failing at customer service. All they have to do is follow the rules and all is fine. I just believe corporate knows that many of them won't. Also, I don't agree that it's tiny. If you add up all the costs savings over thousands of properties, it is real money.

joshua362

I surmise, just like the now moot delivery of the PAW, it takes several manual steps and hand-offs by several disinterested employees to verify the events and give the OK for someone to actually post it. One break in the chain and it collapses. Much like the PAW F&B delivery which was about 50% successful IME. No great conspiracy - sloppy processes over a meaningless amount of points.

pinniped

LOL...bit of a karma moment today. Shortly after making my above snarky post about the mixed greenness of my current Spring Hill Suites, I left the room for the day and forgot to take in the DND tag from the door.

So today, I made a green choice. And I won't be getting any points for it!

bmr12

And....after two weeks, I finally got an email response from corporate:

Nothing like a "one time goodwill gesture" to get what you were already promised to make you feel special and valued. Instead the service recovery ought to be "sorry we screwed this up; they're now posted" would be much less annoying.

For me, the points collection has been all about making lifetime status, especially in my case since my nights were accumulating faster than points under the old scheme. Now that I've made lifetime gold (under the old rules) and it's almost impossible to accumulate another 100+ nights/400k points in the remaining six months, lifetime platinum is out of reach I guess I'll go back to keeping the housekeepers employed.

P.S. "Participating hotels" looks like a hyperlink above and in the email, but it's just blue font!

dtremit

Same here -- I was initially glad to see the program appear on the Marriott side, but 500 Marriott points isn't worth the trouble (let alone 250). 500 Starpoints (the rate everywhere but Four Points) would be equivalent to 1,500 Marriott points.

At SPG properties I've generally had good luck asking the FD to confirm the bonus points at checkout, but I'm not sure if the Marriott system allows that.

drphun

How about: Check to see if they have posted the points before you check out, and if they haven't, retaliate by leaving a big mess?

RogerD408

Housekeeping points don't post until after checkout.

writerguyfl

In this version of the "scam", the person surmised that it was Corporate that was intentionally not posting the points from all hotels. Doing that would certainly alienate properties because they would be the ones getting blamed by the guests. Some guests might decide not to stay at that individual hotel because they falsely believe the hotel is the problem.

Also, compare the money associated from scamming guests/hotels out of points verses the franchise fees paid to Corporate. In that comparison, the points money is tiny. It's not an amount any company the size of Marriott would ever consider committing fraud over. The reward is tiny, compared to the risk of losing franchises and the possibility of lawsuits.

I stand by my original point: This is not a scam. It's just poor implementation at select properties.