Time for me to move on - charged a cancellation fee after being told I wouldn't
Apr 15, 2019, 2:30 pm
#76
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 143
My reservations and contracts are booked through Marriott. The hotels use a Marriott platform to manage room inventory, billing, and invoicing. I book my rooms through a central Marriott system. All of the hotel webpages are hosted on a standard Marriott page. From my perspective, my primary contract is with Marriott and not the hotel. The hotel is the channel that Marriott uses to fulfill its contract with me. Of course the hotel operates within a framework and has significant independence within that framework - they set the specifics of a cancellation policy for example. Perhaps that is not the actual legal construct of the hotel reservation, but that is what it feels like to me. If Marriott does not want to set that expectation, perhaps they should not set up their booking structure to make it seem that way.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I feel like this is the fundamental difference between Starwood and Marriott. With Starwood, corporate would have closed with the hotel to make sure this issue is resolved. With Marriott, you're probably right - I am forced to go through the hotel. Marriott takes no ownership of protecting the guest. But of course, I can't even contact the hotel via e-mail anymore. So I guess let me call and have no audit trail of our discussion and just hope they do the right thing.
I am not okay with that, especially when Marriott is the one who told me that I would not be charged a cancellation fee. In my eyes, the hotel didn't do anything wrong. Marriott is at fault here, and they should fix the mess that they created.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I feel like this is the fundamental difference between Starwood and Marriott. With Starwood, corporate would have closed with the hotel to make sure this issue is resolved. With Marriott, you're probably right - I am forced to go through the hotel. Marriott takes no ownership of protecting the guest. But of course, I can't even contact the hotel via e-mail anymore. So I guess let me call and have no audit trail of our discussion and just hope they do the right thing.
I am not okay with that, especially when Marriott is the one who told me that I would not be charged a cancellation fee. In my eyes, the hotel didn't do anything wrong. Marriott is at fault here, and they should fix the mess that they created.
Apr 15, 2019, 2:52 pm
#77
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Apr 15, 2019, 3:18 pm
#78
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 143
. Is it unlawful to make a recording or only if you end up using it in some particular capacities? Or maybe when you dial customer service, before you say anything else you go.. "this call may be recorded for quality, training, and legal purposes". 
Apr 15, 2019, 6:28 pm
#79
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL
Posts: 3,360
Starwood had a very specific time and date on when a flexible reservation becomes non-refundable.
So if the cancellation policy was cancel before 3:00 PM on April 14, 2019 to avoid penalties, then it means exactly just that.
Not some ambiguous BS we have right now where even employees of Marriott have no clue what the cancellation policy is.
And actually SPG had a very customer/guest focused environment in their call centres than what we have now.
So if the cancellation policy was cancel before 3:00 PM on April 14, 2019 to avoid penalties, then it means exactly just that.
Not some ambiguous BS we have right now where even employees of Marriott have no clue what the cancellation policy is.
And actually SPG had a very customer/guest focused environment in their call centres than what we have now.
Instead, I was referring to the how policy overrides happen. If your asking for anything that will cost an individual hotel money, it's best to call the hotel directly. Calling a frequent guest program desk or central reservations simply puts an additional person between you and the person making the decision. In most cases, that's not beneficial.
Sorry for the confusion.
Apr 15, 2019, 7:47 pm
#80
Join Date: Sep 2006
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The law has been tested at least a couple of time - Young V Hilton Worldwide and Kight v Cashcall - both times the Court of Appeals ruled Hilton and Cashcall could record the calls in California without consent, as one does not have a reasonable expectation of the call not being recorded.
Apr 16, 2019, 2:38 am
#82
Join Date: Jan 2014
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I asked once on Twitter and this was their answer:
Hello, thanks for reaching out. We just had a look at we found the cancellation policy. This says that you may cancel your reservation for no charge until January 13, 2019 . More specifically at 00.01 AM hotel time on January 13th.
Hello, thanks for reaching out. We just had a look at we found the cancellation policy. This says that you may cancel your reservation for no charge until January 13, 2019 . More specifically at 00.01 AM hotel time on January 13th.
Apr 16, 2019, 8:09 am
#83
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In a sense, I appreciate this. Unfortunately, (1) they don't say this anywhere in the reservation as such and (2) as shown by the sampling in one of the previous posts, if anything Marriott is going against what seems to qualify as standard practice with how they handle this (everybody else indicates a specific point in time, either explicitly or relative to check-in from which one can clearly derive the explicit time). If that is their interpretation, we're back to the fact that Marriott is arguably encouraging a mistake on the part of a consumer (particularly if someone is making a reservation around the time of the penalty kicking in).
Apr 16, 2019, 8:19 am
#84
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If this is indeed the policy (which I doubt it is given that everyone has had different experiences on this as you noted...) - then Marriott absolutely must change the language of reservations to say "You may cancel your policy for no charge before April 8th, 2019." rather than "until". Until is an inherently ambiguous word that, in varying contexts, may be inclusive or exclusive of the date in question.
I've no doubt Marriott's ambiguity is deliberate and intended to deter cancellations.
Apr 16, 2019, 1:34 pm
#85
Join Date: Jan 2014
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There are a surprising number of apps I don't have (partly because of a few instances of botched implementation), but the app also doesn't tend to generate screenshots (or, as far as I can tell, have any functionality that I can't just get via the website).
Apr 16, 2019, 2:14 pm
#86
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The app holds your reservations. The reservations, as held on the app, show the cancel policy. With Hilton and Hyatt, this includes the specific time of day you must cancel by. With Marriott, it does not.
Apr 16, 2019, 4:41 pm
#87
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Yes, and the issue is that if we're worried about properties pulling shenanigans, does the app keep the reservation locked to the original T&C? Or does a property-initiated change to those T&C get slipped into the app? Because if it is the latter, the app doesn't fix the problem...and given that Marriott is arguably at least passively complicit in this nonsense, I'm inclined to suspect that the app will reflect an involuntary change of that nature.
Apr 16, 2019, 5:07 pm
#88
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Yes, and the issue is that if we're worried about properties pulling shenanigans, does the app keep the reservation locked to the original T&C? Or does a property-initiated change to those T&C get slipped into the app? Because if it is the latter, the app doesn't fix the problem...and given that Marriott is arguably at least passively complicit in this nonsense, I'm inclined to suspect that the app will reflect an involuntary change of that nature.
Apr 16, 2019, 6:40 pm
#89
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Yes, and the issue is that if we're worried about properties pulling shenanigans, does the app keep the reservation locked to the original T&C? Or does a property-initiated change to those T&C get slipped into the app? Because if it is the latter, the app doesn't fix the problem...and given that Marriott is arguably at least passively complicit in this nonsense, I'm inclined to suspect that the app will reflect an involuntary change of that nature.