Crazy mysterious booking on my Bonvoy account
 

Just wanted to share with the FT community, a kinda crazy thing that happened to me a couple weeks ago with my Bonvoy account. I am at home here in the states on Sunday morning and upon waking up I get a notification from Marriott to check in for my room in London that night for four nights. What? I called Marriott Bonvoy (I;ve been a Platinum/Gold member for the better part of two decades) and relayed that this is not me - that I played no role in originating it and please cancel - I was informed that it originated the night before with a travel agent in Spain - I confirmed clearly I have no connection to this (I reserve directly with the app) and I was advised to change my password and get a PIN and to contact the Marriott Rewards credit card center to have my number reissued. Within 15 minutes I had an email confirming cancellation of the reservation. That is until mid- afternoon, when the reservation mysteriously returned sans the cancellation number. Over the course of the next 24 hours I made several more calls to the center in which they opened a "file" but they shared their communication with hotel was unresponsive - and they couldn't act without hearing from them I tried contacting the hotel by phone directly myself but a combination of an unanswered phone and the system being down continued the mystery. I had success finally by communicating via chat (on the reservation that I didn't make) - I learned that someone was indeed checked in under my name. They relayed they disabled the key card and would investigate. Later that evening I finally found out what was going on - someone who had the same name as me had made the reservation and "the system" had somehow conflated my account with his reservation. I had never heard of that.

So I just wanted to ask one of the most well informed communities in social media - whether this experience mixing up names with others' accounts is more commonplace than I was aware.

Ghost stays.

It happens from time to time. I have had it happen a couple of times, though long time ago. For me it seemed to be hotels I had stayed at before, where someone with my name booked, and the hotel assumed i was returning. First time I panicked a bit, and called to cancel and check etc. Later, as I could see the last numbers of the credit card in the booking, and it was not mine, it just left it.
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if you had kept quiet about it, you would have gotten the stay credit and points!

That could indeed happen.

Only if the correct membership number is added to the account.
Several years ago I had couple emails from hotels in Europe about my upcoming stays because a person with the same last name was staying in SPG hotels I have visited before. I never got the points....

I received points and night credits for a hotel in Korea once. I had actually stayed there previously.

Or.... they may not check and you get the extra night and points!

When this happened to me a few years back (also a hotel in London - one where I had stayed previously), I took the same approach and called to find out. Someone with the same name as I, which is definitely not an uncommon name, had booked a room and had not provided a MR number. For some reason, the system added mine to the reservation. The Marriott rep indicated that it looked like a legitimate reservation that had my number inadvertently added to it. It disappeared, only to come back the next day.

The reservation information posted to my account had enough information on it for me to track down the person who actually made it - what privacy protection?? - which took about five minutes using a search of publicly available information. We traded e-mails, with the other person being as confused about what happened as I was. Both of us called Marriott again to correct the situation, but the reservation remained on my account up to the time of the stay.

I also followed up afterwards to satisfy my curiosity - they (it was an anniversary trip, as I recall) did not receive any of my Platinum benefits. I did not receive any credit for their stay.