toomanybooks

As always, this is the answer. You Marriott folks just get kicked in the teeth over and over and over and over. Come join us Hyatt guys.

Yeah, yeah, no footprint. Then Hilton.

The problem is that United sucks almost as bad.

Oxon Flyer

Folks, a reminder of FTs ground rules : Friendly & respectful, and no 'piling-on'.

There is a substantive topic for discussion : is there evidence that Marriott has sent out communications which have led Bonvoy members to reasonably expect they would receive a soft landing ?

kauppias

MANY of us were under the impression that TiTs would be softlanded to Platinum. sure that did not happen. it sucks for sure. it does not make me personally trust Marriot anymore and as a consumer I can make my choices and move my paid stays over to other chains.

perhaps at some point I will return and finish collecting my LT status but as is Marriott is not a healthy choice for me.

as for this forum there is alot of us vs them mentality here which is a pity.

I have a hunch that can be partly explained by the different programs and attitudes of premerger programs but since neither exist anymore its a moot point.

I was told by a lurker that softlanding was one level, however I doubt he lied, he simply had that information at the time.

that said Marriott was quite silly in not communicating these facts clearly to all members.

if you disagree great, if you agree great but please people stop attacking each other just because you have a differing opinion.

some love marriott some dont.

as a disclaimer I only read the first 4 pages after that it got too toxic for me and I skipped to The end...

appledabble

I have written confirmation on the one level soft-landing via email and twitter. But I have my status dropped from Tit to Gold. I, too, feel cheated. With the evidences, I have written in to customer care to seek clarification and upgrade back to platinum. Hopefully it’s just an IT glitch. Let’s see how this pans out.

KRSW

khabah You've said exactly how I feel about Marriott since ~2018. It's obvious Arne and the board don't actually use/interact with Marriotts the way regular business travelers do. No doubt their assistants handle everything and are probably handled with kid gloves on top of it. They're uninformed and clueless. It should be no surprise that the same people who thought promoting Asia travel in February and Europe travel in March think kicking elites the the curb is a great idea when occupancy is <10%.

The resolution and fix for this is to ensure all further travel bookings are made via Hyatt.com or Hilton.com. Pure and simple.

I don't fault the Lurkers on this one. Given my interactions with various Marriott employees over the years, the Lurkers are likely being fed the same bullmanure we are. I know of an instance last year where MAR corp hung William out to dry.

Cyberhacker

As someone wiser than me once said: you should never attribute to malice, that which can easily be explained by incompetence.

Marriott's IT is no an exemplar of how to do things... it is quite possibly an coding error. Perhaps, when it matters, you could take it up with Marriott?

Ah... beaten to it by craigthemif

BRITINJAPAN4

I agree, I cant understand what the big problem is, I understand he expected a one level drop and is not happy, but I doubt ANY ex SPG ,members are happy with the changes, and with more stays the disppointment should be higher, if he did not qualify for TE, he cant have stayed much , his reaction is extreme and a mystery

LondonElite

Right, because if the points are still there, he can spend them. I don't understand what the fuss is all about.

margarita girl

As a Gold, you don’t get breakfast or lounge benefits. I would be upset too if I lost those privileges.

I sympathize with the OP. I don’t think his personal attack on the Lurkers is justified and calling them liars is completely unacceptable. His beef should be with Marriott mgmt or marketing or whoever made the decision to do away with soft landings. Lurkers were just the messengers. Using incendiary language does not make me want to support him though. Obviously, he’s never received coaching on how to write a good complaint letter.

LondonElite

If it's about lounges and breakfasts, OP completely over-reacted, and I agree the overall approach was not conducive to much sympathy. I don't understand getting riled up over this.

nrr

I stopped staying in Marriott's a long time ago. Hilton is my haunt. Via AMEX for around $500 a year I'm DIAMOND (highest level) = free breakfast, upgraded rooms, executive lounge. Is there a similar FAST TRACK for M?

yurtripper

The soft landing (in line with their previous unofficial policy) would have cost them nothing this year and generated a lot of goodwill; the removal of it will destroy a lot of goodwill.

My personal situation - I could have retained it for sure by forking out £100 for a meeting and suffering some mild inconvenience, which I chose not to do. You can say that's on me and you'd be right. However, I now have a status which is junk in comparison to my Hilton status and so have no incentive to stay at Marriott any more. Any H2 bookings I had are being cancelled. As said above, I'll vote with my wallet as I somehow prefer the benefits of Hilton Diamond to those of Bonvoy Gold.

Apart from that, I can only cross my fingers and hope that this problem is caused by the titanic incompetence of Marriott IT, and that whichever guy they left in the office to turn out the lights might get round to fixing it sometime around June.

agjil

I've seen many posts on the Internet that Marriott is confirming this is final - some people emailed/called Marriott about this downgrade situation since yesterday and Marriott already responded by confirming this is their final decision and the downgrades were intentional.

appledabble

well, Marriott now outright dismissed my plea even though I produced strong evidences

this is their reply:



This was one of the confirmation given to me via Twitter. I have another email correspondences but too long to attach.



based on their confirmations (not once but twice via two separate channels), I stopped short at 47 nights last year due to some circumstances. So here I am finding myself a Gold status. Will just finish up the points and move on to other chain.

yurtripper

OK so if they really are that clueless and tone deaf then there's no hope for them. Time to cut my losses and move on to greener pastures.