"Known issue" with certificates
 

Last night, I was trying to book an AC hotel for an upcoming two-night stay. Nights were 33K + 37K, so the system asked at checkout if I wanted to use a 35K award that expires well after the night in question and pay 35K points. I chose to do so but noticed that I never received a confirmation for the booking.

I checked the reservation today and it exists, but the confirmation lists it as a Points Advance stay for 70K with no certificate attached. I have the points already in my account, so that shouldn't be happening.

I canceled this reservation, rebooked with the same method, and got another confirmation with no certificate attached as a Points Advance. Canceled again.

Decided to try booking it one night at a time. Went to the first night, saw that the price was 33K points, got to checkout .... and the 35K certificate won't populate in my account. Only a 50K certificate shows up. The 35K certificate is still there - it shows as an option if I try to book two nights - but it won't show up for one night.

Called Bonvoy and got an excellent, thoughtful agent who tried the same thing I did ... and got the same results. She asked to put me on hold so she could get assistance. When she came back, she said "it's a known issue" and to try again in a few hours.

So, just posting here: if you've made a reservation using a certificate or some combination of certificate and points in the last day or so, I'd encourage you to check the reservation and make sure it's as you planned.

Something is screwed in the system today, sigh..I cancelled two reservations, 200K points, Not returned. I know they should come back instantly. Called, got a nice agent, who told me there is a system issue, they are manually logging issues. Could be 5 business days. No help when you want to book something else. I asked for a guarantee on a points advance booking until the points come back, that was a no. The people who may be able to fix it don't, obviously, work weekends. So I would advise not touching award bookings.

Am I confident the points will come back? Nope...

See also https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marr...t-website.html .

Interesting. I also do want to add that I find the front end of Marriott CS to be great. I got connected in 2 minutes to a good agent, who really wanted to try and help. This makes it frustrating for us both, but thank you to those who work the phones and emails. I wish your systems didn't make it so unpredictable.

I made a reservation with a certificate yesterday, received a confirmation, but see two reservations in my account for the same dates and properties. Only one confirmation email has been received. Sigh.

And the beauty of it all is that you shouldn’t have to check. Why wouldn’t your reservations all be in order? You used their system, after all, to make your booking.

To then later be told, but we didn’t pull the points yet… and now, the rate has doubled and you’ll need to pay more.

I called and the agent was confused because the second reservation was coded as Points Advance, even though I had plenty of points in my account. Hoping I don't see a charge on my credit card....

Thanks very much for posting this info. I made a couple of certificate reservations and one certificate reservation cancellation today. They all worked fine. But I realize I might have just gotten lucky. This is good info to know, regardless.

I'm getting the same error for a booking in Switzerland. Using a free night certificate + 3,000 points leads to "An unexpected error has occurred. This service is temporarily unavailable. But don't worry, we're on it. Please try again later." Hope they're actually on it. Would be unfortunate to see the point rate increase, even though I have more than enough points in the account. The free night certificate, however, is going to expire shortly after that planned stay.

Edit: Instead of trying to modify the existing reservation, I canceled it and booked the same stay again. This time, it went through -- certificate redeemed and points deducted.