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so tired of having to prove stays. Time for Marriott to figure it out

so tired of having to prove stays. Time for Marriott to figure it out

Old Jan 13, 2019, 12:18 pm
  #16  
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: YVR - Vancouver, with most winter weekends in Whistler.
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I've been getting paper copies of all the bills; even the free stays on certificates. I frankly don't trust them to handle it appropriately. I am still chasing stays 30 days old. . .
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 2:08 pm
  #17  
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Yes, it is expected if someone is tracking your activity they should be doing it right. However, once proven incapable (as Marriott has), we have to decide what's important to us. I treat my program membership has a valuable asset (although I own nothing) and I do my own tracking knowing it will be much more reliable than what the program provides. I've also added the ability to forecast expected activity so I can see where I stand in maintaining and obtaining status. It does make it easier to chase missing posts and having specific dates helps, it all seems to blur together after a week or two.

SPG did seem to be better at looking internally to confirm stays whereas, MPG has continued the Marriott approach of making us provide the documentation, probably hoping we'll just go away (CSR approach). Many properties try to say there is no folio when the balance is zero. My response is to insist upon a folio given the high failure rate of the stays to actually post and the need for a folio to get them to follow up.
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 3:10 pm
  #18  
 
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Since the MarWood mashup with resultant stay and points credit issues that just seem to drag on--with no resolution or interest of a resolution in sight--I've been booking at other hotels. Quite a pity, since I used to go out of my way to stay at Starwood Hotels, and became a Lifetime SGP Platinum member.

Now I feel this has become a debased status.
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 3:17 pm
  #19  
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Originally Posted by Globehopper
Since the MarWood mashup with resultant stay and points credit issues that just seem to drag on--with no resolution or interest of a resolution in sight--I've been booking at other hotels. Quite a pity, since I used to go out of my way to stay at Starwood Hotels, and became a Lifetime SGP Platinum member.

Now I feel this has become a debased status.
It's a pity Marriott will never see your post here on FT. Have you thought about writing to Arne and let him know your plans and including your history with SPG? I doubt it will register with him given any individual travel will not be significant, but if one of his staffies starts adding up the lost business, they just might want to see why everything is not as rosy as he's being told.
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 3:26 pm
  #20  
 
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I have thought about writing. I haven't had time to hunt down an email address. Or a postal address.
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 3:43 pm
  #21  
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Originally Posted by Globehopper
I have thought about writing. I haven't had time to hunt down an email address. Or a postal address.
This may gjve you a clue: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/30190037-post281.html
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 3:46 pm
  #22  
 
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Originally Posted by UA-NYC
Marriott has a now-deadly combination of poor IT and poor CS...I could live with good for one and poor for the other
And seemingly no desire to change things .
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 3:58 pm
  #23  
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Originally Posted by PointWeasel
and why is this yet another new thread?

old news. this mess has been snowballing since August 2018, and eveything is stablizied under the awesome cloud-based software.
Hi. The issue is many of us are trying to get our night credits correct for 2018. Many are still having to prove stays. I find it interesting that says show up on "my trips", many times I used sna, marriott # shows up on portfolio but I am still having to prove my stay. it is an old subject but like for me to stop having to do the legwork.
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Last edited by puntamita; Jan 13, 2019 at 4:05 pm
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 5:06 pm
  #24  
 
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I've been requesting a paper folio for every stay...and...knock-on-wood...I've yet to have a problem with a stay posting. What I have had issues with is the Make a Green Choice - which has only posted correctly 1 time since September. I tried a couple of times to get credit through Marriott CS but was either told that the hotel didn't offer MAGC (when it did) or that I had to prove I used MAGC (how do I do that?).

So I just don't bother anymore.
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 5:22 pm
  #25  
 
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Do you all really go straight to Marriott CS when trying to resolve these issues? I make a point of getting the business card of someone in the FD or lounge with a decent job title so that I can email them directly if the stay doesn't post or posts incorrectly. In my experience since the merger it's quite possible for stays to post within 48 hours of check out (happens almost 100% of the time for me) so if it's wrong then I email the named person directly within a few days of checking out thanking them for such a great stay etc. and asking them to fix it. Works 100% of the time for me without having to engage with CS. On the one occasion that nothing posted, I waited about a week before emailing the FD person I had chatted to (it was a Design Hotel in Mexico). Posted next day. I am beginning to believe that these things are largely manual errors on the part of the hotels that the hotels can fix. But I may be wrong and it's all random IT flashes.
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 7:43 pm
  #26  
 
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My recent email exchange shortened for brevity:

Me: I did mobile check out and requested my folio be emailed to me. I never received folio, so I can't send to missing stay section as I did not get credit, and we are past the 10 day time frame. Please contact hotel for me as I can't find their email address.

CS: please send folio to missing stay email address for help

ME: I don't have folio which is why I requested help from you in 1st please. Do you even read my emails?

CS: call a toll free US number for help (I don't live in US)

​​​​​
I finally reached out to property directly. They said they will fix in 1-2 weeks. Boy am I glad I don't need those nights to qualify for ltp or next elite level


3 of 6 stays post Aug 18 I have had to chase down. 12 years with starwood? None.

I understand to an extent technical difficulties. What I don't accept is the bad CS follow up. They don't even read or respond to issues.

I sent another note to complain. They said they will give me 3000 points in goodwill gesture.

I don't want points. I don't want to waste my time





​​
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 7:54 pm
  #27  
 
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I know this thread will be merged into the other soon, but this really is becoming an escalating failure on Marriott's part and deserves a true non-stickied rant thread. This just falls into things I should never have to worry about, and yet I do. I stayed at Marriott hotels 177 nights last year. I don't have time to chase down every issue with my folio.

Between missing stays (6 in the past two months), materially incorrect point posting (received 3000 points instead of 11000 I was supposed to), and the usual shenanigans around green choice points and welcome gifts not posting right (made difficult to detect due to Marriott bundling the points into "Other"), I am close to giving up.

The missing stays usually take a week to get fixed. The incorrect points have been sitting with the research team for 3 weeks. I spent enough with Marriott to qualify for Ambassador twice last year and I can't even get a minor issue like this (that is clearly Marriott's issue) resolved in less than three weeks. Absolute insanity.

To me the question is how do points and stays not post? This is clearly a major, major IT issue that is systematic and impacting Marriott's guests in a noticeable way. How is this not getting fixed faster?
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 8:28 pm
  #28  
 
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Originally Posted by ethernal
To me the question is how do points and stays not post? This is clearly a major, major IT issue that is systematic and impacting Marriott's guests in a noticeable way. How is this not getting fixed faster?
The question is key but I don't think the answer is necessarily that it's all down to bad IT. Obviously we don't have visibility of the systems that hotels use or the processes they have in place to post stays and points but I get a greater feeling that the root cause of many missed stays or incorrect points lies with the hotel itself rather than the IT mangling a correct post.

For example, I have two examples of missing stays (ok, one stay and one F&B) that didn't post and a quick email directly to the hotels in question resulted in the stay/points posting within 24 hours. I had two examples of incorrect points posting (both missing the 1000 Welcome Bonus points). Two emails later and one was fixed immediately by the hotel while the other took escalation to the FT Lurkers - it was before LeM hotels moved to the Marriott system and once posted (incorrectly) the hotel couldn't retrieve the post and fix it at the time.

For me, the IT problems are about incorrect application of programme rules (such as the current 50/75 night choice outage) rather than endemic to the posting of points which I suspect is down to errors at individual hotels. But I could be wrong. The hotels could be posting everything on the day of check out entirely correctly and the posts are being delayed and mangled by Marriott's technology.
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 8:36 pm
  #29  
 
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Originally Posted by ftrichard
I get a greater feeling that the root cause of many missed stays or incorrect points lies with the hotel itself rather than the IT mangling a correct post.
That doesn't explain the growth in issues, including with the posting of stays at pre-merger Marriott properties. I've three posting failures since the merger and all the properties were from the Marriott side. There was no change made to their property management systems, so there's no cause for an increase in problems.
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Old Jan 13, 2019, 9:37 pm
  #30  
 
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Originally Posted by ftrichard
The question is key but I don't think the answer is necessarily that it's all down to bad IT. Obviously we don't have visibility of the systems that hotels use or the processes they have in place to post stays and points but I get a greater feeling that the root cause of many missed stays or incorrect points lies with the hotel itself rather than the IT mangling a correct post.

For example, I have two examples of missing stays (ok, one stay and one F&B) that didn't post and a quick email directly to the hotels in question resulted in the stay/points posting within 24 hours. I had two examples of incorrect points posting (both missing the 1000 Welcome Bonus points). Two emails later and one was fixed immediately by the hotel while the other took escalation to the FT Lurkers - it was before LeM hotels moved to the Marriott system and once posted (incorrectly) the hotel couldn't retrieve the post and fix it at the time.

For me, the IT problems are about incorrect application of programme rules (such as the current 50/75 night choice outage) rather than endemic to the posting of points which I suspect is down to errors at individual hotels. But I could be wrong. The hotels could be posting everything on the day of check out entirely correctly and the posts are being delayed and mangled by Marriott's technology.
Agree that MAGC and welcome points are usually a hotel issue (which is why I said "the normal issues" with them). Stays not posting at all, or points being mangled against paid rate? That is 100% an IT failure. It is either an IT failure because the sweep is not picking up the stays from the hotel systems or it is an IT failure because there is something so non-intuitive with the MARSHA system that hotels can check guests in, check them out, generate a final folio, and bill a credit card and yet somehow not have that pass to the loyalty program system.

Is the hotel perhaps not pressing some menu item or setting the right field value? Maybe, but that is still an IT failure because there is no reason for the link to the loyalty program sweep / database to be dependent on the hotel mashing the right series of keys if the guest has otherwise been successfully checked in and checked out in the system.
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