I would really appreciate some insight and guidance from the community here on an issue that I am having with an upcoming reservation.

I booked a points advance reservation for five nights at the Newport Marriott before the September 14 2019 deadline where peak and off-peak rates would go into effect. The total for the five nights, at 50,000 points a night--standard redemption, category 6--was 200,000 points.

To quote the Marriott Insiders post on peak and off-peak rates:

"As a reminder, any reservations booked with points made prior to today will remain at the reserved Standard redemption rate."

and

"If you made a Points Advance reservation prior to September 14, you are guaranteed the Standard rate when you've earned enough points for the redemption stay."

I have since earned enough points to apply to this reservation, which I did before the category changes on March 4 2020. To the absolute best of my knowledge, based on information here as well as multiple blogs and Marriott's own website, the Newport Marriott was one of the hotels moving up, from Category 6 to Category 7. When I went to apply the points to my points advance reservation, the point total I needed was 40,000 higher than I had thought--240,000 points for the five nights. I was being charged 60,000 points per night (peak rate category 6), as opposed to the 50,000 points per night that I believe that I booked the original points advance reservation at.

My two problems are:

1) that points advance reservations don't include points totals in the body of the confirmation email, so I have no record of the 50,000 a night total that I believe I originally booked this reservation at. It is, to the best of my knowledge, usual practice for points advance reservations to not include the actual points numbers in the email, only 'redemption' under the summary of charges. I have a second points advance reservation that looks like that--no definite points totals in the email anywhere.

2) I was told, in writing, by a customer service associate when I reached out earlier about this issue that the Newport Marriott did not go up in category, it was just always a Category 7 hotel. They said that I was being charged standard rates for Category 7, not peak rates for Category 6. This is a lie, right? Based on even just looking at the chart on FlyerTalk in the hotel category changes thread, it shows the Newport Marriott was previously at a Category 6, and would have been when I applied the points to my reservation before March 4. How can they tell me that the hotel didn't change categories when there is so much evidence that it did?

What I'm asking for is for any assistance from FlyerTalk in recovering the 40,000 points that I believe I was overcharged. Can anyone here please corroborate that this hotel did in fact change category prior to March 4? I know the Newport Marriott is a popular hotel, and if anyone else here has upcoming reservations for that hotel can they provide any data about the points amounts they booked into for that hotel? I genuinely feel unsure of what to do at this point, and I don't feel like I'm in the wrong here, but I have little ways to prove it. Does anyone have any advice for what I should do next?

contact the lurkers.

email: [email protected]

You can't expect front line customer service associates are the most knowledgable for this complex matter.

Hi sublunary,

Due to an issue with our email address, we are unable to receive emails from [email protected] currently.

We would like to help look into this issue, if you could provide the reservation details to us via private mail here.

Best Regards,

Christina Z
Specialist, Social Media
Marriott International

Christina,

I just sent you the details. Thank you for looking into this for me!