This is possible. My ambassador was able to confirm the time and date that I made my PA reservation on March 4th. That said, it took several e-mails back and forth and she said that she had to ask for assistance from her leadership team to figure out how to do this.

This is interesting. I spent an hour on the phone with Marriott this morning insisting this very thing could be done. Even the supervisor said that the only thing possible was to see the date. Very annoying that Marriott doesn't provide confirmation emails for points advance reservations so there's really no way for the customer to prove the date/time they made the reservation other than screenshots. Normal guests would never even think of doing that.

I print a copy of the reservation when I make it. So it shows the date, time and all details of the booking....

You can either Print, or Email the reservation at the time of booking. Both the Print (PDF file) and the Email would have the date stamp in the case the BonVoy IT is so bad that they could not know when the reservation is done.
I even have email reply from the property on questions I asked regarding the PA reservation made in Feb, and their replies were on Mar 3rd and 4th. I am not going to waste time and energy to "sort" this out as the stay is in Dec. Bu that time, most dusts would have settled. Marriott has had Point Advance feature for ages, and it always is done by depositing needed extra pts into the account then promptly issue the eCert. Most people's PA bookings probably still dont have enough pts to cover the bookings, so it does not make much sense to "sort it out" at this juncture.

That's what I did. I never got a confirmation but you can click on your reservation and click "email" to send it to any email address. That email will then be timestamped and have the cost of points at that time of the email.

Here is my email of a hotel that went from 50k to 60k

Looking for advice regarding how to handle the following situation:

• Cat 7 hotel booked prior to 3/4, held as 'Points Advance.'
• On 3/5, I called and asked to pull the points to book the hotel (meant to do it before the category changes, and forgot to). I guess I got lucky, because the agent I spoke with knew exactly how to handle this: He added 125,000 points to my account, and deduced 425,000 points (the hotel changed from 60,000/night to 85,000/night). No issues there!
• I now need to chop off the last night of my reservation, turning it from a 6 night rez to a 5 night rez. I know that pre-cat change prices are locked in unless a change has been made, however do you believe that Marriott will go back and recalculate the cost of my first 5 nights, or just remove the final night, and refund me the points for that night?
• If they do just refund the price of the 5th night, how much will they refund me? They did add the 125K points as a separate transaction, then deduct 425K for a 6-night stay, so technically, in their system, it should show I paid 85K per night - will I get back 85K points or 60K points?

Thanks for your insight!
Bostonbali

I don't know what Marriott's policies here are (either in MR or Bonvoy), but under SPG, you would not have been able to cancel your last night and get back the points in this situation. Your only option would have been to reprice the entire itinerary at the new cost, meaning your 60K * 5 (6 nights with 1 free) = 300K points price for 6 nights would go to 85K * 4 (5 nights with 1 night free) = 340K points new price, so you would be better off keeping your old booking and just checking out a day early (and/or, if it's of any value, you could take advantage of your "free" 6th night to avail yourself of a very late checkout).

Kinda what I suspected. If I do rebook under the old pricing and cancel the old rez, I wonder if Marriott will clawback the 125K points they deposited in my account to equalize my pre-3/4 rez which was paid for after 3/4.

THIS!

Thanks for pointing out the real underlying reason.

And probably it is one of the reasons behind the new languages showing up on the Chart Change Notice. In the past years we never have seen such language but with so many speculative bookings to game the Travel Packages fanned by some bloggers, and again the Point Advance bookings some members have the "creative thoughts" in mind, that Marriott puts the new languages up in hope to deter people's speculation (abuse).

My fear is, eventually Marriott will take away the Point Advance feature once and for all, so people cannot book speculatively (and take up inventory).
After all, no other program allows PA booking. Now with excessive PA bookings on the top categories, apparently many are just speculative, Marriott may consider this is abusive and just take away this feature, a loss to everyone.

Read on the comment section on one blogger's site that someone said W Miami has canceled every PA booking the poster made, citing "excessive speculative bookings". The poster said he was talking to the corporate on this... I wonder how many separate bookings this poster has made that promot the property to cancel them all?

After the TPs are cleared out and the last few devaluations, some folks (me included) will just move on and use Marriott as a casual program. So we do not care much about the PA any more.

I have 500,000 Hyatt fully booked and it has no point advance. Taking away more features will not make the program any better....

The PA feature is one of the very few spots remaining that are still more advantageous over other programs. At this moment Marriott Elites are still easier to achieve than Hyatt due to the sheer size of the properties all over the world. Hyatt simply cannot compete in this area.

On a short-notice Apr trip to Japan tried as I might, I choose not to book Marriott properties - old, outdated and outrageously expensive. On our 9 days precruise, that we need hotels in Osaka, Okinawa and Tokyo, 6 nights are booked with CSR's UR pts on equivalent hotels but locally owned. In fact at Osaka, the Miyako chain owns Marriott Miyako and Sheraton Miyako in both Osaka and Tokyo, you can find these listed on the Miyako site - yet the local Miyako compatible properties are cheaper, and after the 33% CSR discount, it makes a no brainer to use UR. The remaining 3 nights are Hyatt points, direct transfer from UR, with much higher value.

With all the changes Marriott has made and is making, it is hard to stick around with it. Most of us do not have lifetime status. Eventually hotel will become like airline, hard to stick with one or two. Right now I keep most of the major hotel programs. I can easily switch to Hilton since the CC gets to the top Diamond status.

With the 85k Cat-8 and the peak, off-peak, Marriott is not attractive any more.

For sure if Hilton is a better program for you, you should switch. I don't think anyone here will beg you to stay, especially the people who get top tier by actually staying in hotels. I don't like Marriott for many reasons, but not giving out top tier to everyone isn't one of them.