Marriott charged incorrect payment method and will not correct their mistake
 

I stayed at the SpringHill Suites by Marriott The Dunes On Monterey Bay almost a month back. I used a free night award to make the booking as it was going to expire shortly. The confirmation email for the reservation also mentions that the booking was sone using the free night certificate. I kept an eye on the free night award for a few days after checking out and noticed that they never redeemed it. Instead, they deducted point from my bonvoy account which I have been saving for a 5 night stay.

I reached out to the hotel and they had no idea what to do and transferred me to customer service. Customer service gave me a ticket number but there hasn't been an update in more than a week.
I sent an email via contact us on the marriott bonvoy website and the response I got was "I understand that this reservation was made online and you wanted to use your free night certificate and not the points for this stay. Once a certificate has been redeemed by the hotel we can not change the form of payment. I am sorry for any inconveniences this may cause."

THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG!! They never redeemed the certificate!! All my replies to the email have not even been delivered to marriott(It was a no reply email). I even looped the hotel's email in the chain but never heard back.

I am appalled by the terrible level of customer service. They can change payment methods as per their will?
Highly suggest to avoid this property!!

Something doesn’t make sense. Your FNC should have disappeared from your account when you made the reservation, not after you check out.

Another thought, what was the dates of your actual stay and what was the date the coupon FNC expires? The coupon has to be valid through the stay itself, not when you made the reservation.

Sounds like your FNC was not attached to reservation correctly. FNC should have disappeared from your account when reservation was made. Do you still have email confirmation as proof? If so, send it to Bonvoy to correct it.

Yes the FNC is still valid. I have the email confirmation which mentions that I reserved using the FNC. The customer service associate who raised a case for me did say that I had made the reservation correctly using the certificate but Marriott somehow charged the points instead.

I just received another email from the hotel.

”Thank you for reaching back out to Marriott Bonvoy® regarding your free night award certificate. I apologize for any confusion my wording may have caused. A certificate can be a points redemption certificate or a free night award certificate or even a gift certificate. The certificate can not be changed after you have checked into a reservation. I do show that you have two free night award certificates in your account. One will expire on 6-30-2022 and the other on 12-2-2022. If you have additional questions, please reply to this email or contact Marriott Bonvoy® Customer Care at 1-800-535-4028.”

I have asked them to provide the terms and conditions where it says that Marriott can choose to change the payment method as per their will and not honor the original reservation.
Edit: Just got another delivery failed to recipient email. It’s like Marriott intentionally wants to have a shoddy customer service

If push comes to shove, Marriott could correct this mistake by just removing your FNC from your account and dumping the points pulled for your stay. And then they could deal with the hotel in the background (if they needed to.) I'd say up until the SPG merger, they would have done that. Today though given experiences/posts we've seen in other threads, I'm not so sure they will any longer. Way back in the day (i.e. I'm old now), back when Marriott sent actual paper certs, I accidentally handed the front desk the wrong cert for that stay. Once I figured it out, I had to send in the actual cert and they sent me back the one I'd accidentally used. But back then benefits and how Marriott dealt their elites was different than today.

I have seen a Reddit thread with the same problem but the property worked with the manager to get it corrected. That wasn’t too long ago.
It is clear that in my case they have 0 intent to even check whether a solution exists

Message the lurkers. That’s where they actually shine.

Closing this thread as the OP has the same post in the https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marr...thread-31.html thread. Respond to the post there.

Thanks.