Several bad experiences with Marriott. Need help/advice
 

Long post, but I'm looking for some help or advice from anyone that has experience with my issue. I've beyond frustrated with Marriott and I don't know how else to maneuver this situation.

I've been having such a nightmare situation with Marriott. I was awarded an 85k Free Night Certificate and 150k points off of the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant credit card when they had the increased offer. When trying to redeem the certificate plus points at the St. Regis New York for 185k points + the 85k free night certificate, I would get an error that my "certificate number was invalid." I phoned up Marriott and the CSR on the phone was getting the same issue as well. After a long hold, he said he had a "workaround" and was able to make the reservation for me. A few minutes after I hung up, I received a charge of $325 for a points purchase through Marriott. I checked my account activity, and it showed I had purchased 27k in points. I figured this was maybe an error and the charge would fall off. Little did I know, this would be the start of a series of awful experiences.

I called back Marriott's customer service to inquire about the charge. They filed a case and I was told I would hear back from the Loyalty Department in 3-5 days. I waited a week, no response. I called back and they told me they would make another case with the same timeframe of 3-5 days for a response. Again, a week later, no response. I decided to file a dispute with Amex against the charge as I did not authorize nor have knowledge of why I was being charged for a points purchase.

When checking on my St. Regis New York reservation, it stated I still needed 185k points to cover the reservation, even though the points have already been deducted from my account. I have no idea if my reservation is even valid at this point. At least the stay isn't until November, so I can figure out all the other issues first, before trying to fix this one.

A couple of days after the dispute, the 27k points had been deducted from my account, so I figured I'd be getting the $325 refunded. A few days later, I tried logging into my Marriott account to see if maybe a refund or reversal of the points came through. However, after multiple attempts at signing in, I received an error saying my "account is under audit."

Again, I phoned up Marriott to try and figure out what is going on. CSR told me points purchases are not refundable, whether I authorized the transaction or not. Annoyed at this point, I asked to speak with a lead or someone higher up to get more information. After talking to the lead, he said he would file another claim and remove the audit from my account. After being on hold for a while, he came back saying the system was down and I would have to call back to get the audit removed. Frustrated, I hung up and decided to let the dispute run its course and have the bank resolve the issue.

Another issue came up when I canceled my Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay reservation for April. I canceled the reservation in March. The day I was supposed to stay at the Ritz, I get an email saying my "points advance reservation had been canceled due to insufficient points." Again, I thought this was an error and looked past it. A few days after that, I received a $900 charge from Half Moon Bay. Since my account is under audit, I can't log in to check the activity of the charge, so I called up Marriott yet again. Like before, the CSR told me they would make a case, and I would receive a response/refund by the end of the week. To no surprise, I did not get a response or refund by the end of the week. I called back and was told they would make another case, and to wait for the response. I decided to just file another dispute with Amex on this charge.

To this day, I have no access to my account, I have no idea if my St. Regis New York reservation is in good standing, I have 2 pending disputes on my card and I have become increasingly frustrated with Marriott's customer service. I know I'm just a small clientele to them, and my issues are insignificant to their book of business, but I feel like I'm spinning my wheels trying to fix these issues.

If anyone has any tips, suggestions, or knows someone I can contact other than the generic customer service line, please let me know. Thank you.

I was getting upset just reading this. Your experience just continues to show the incompetence this once great hotel chain is operating under now, and the fact that nobody higher up even cares. This merger officially ruined what Marriott used to represent. I'm an Ambassador and it honestly means ZILCH to this company.

Maybe a Marriott Lurker could help you but because your account is in Audit, you'll be getting lots of excuses why nobody can help you. It's like a continual black hole that keeps sucking the life out of you, dealing with this behemoth hotel corporation.

I hope you can get this all sorted out because you earned that certificate and the 150,000 points and you should have had no problems using both. Instead you got horrible error messages, charges that never should have happened and your account put on Audit status.

If you have detailed paperwork/documentation/emails/call descriptions I would consider emailing Eliott Advocacy. They help frustrated customers get fair resolutions from companies that screw them over or just don't correct their errors. This imo would be a good case for them.

Hi Daniel Chen,

We would like to help look into the issues mentioned in your post.

Please send us a private message or an email with your full name, Marriott Bonvoy member number, reservation details and contact information. If you prefer to provide the information via email, please include your Flyertalk username.

Best Regards,

Christina Z
Specialist, Social Media
Marriott International

[email protected]

You are far more calm and patient than I would be in this situation. It appears that others have had similar experiences in this thread. Best of luck sorting out this Marriott Mess. bonv-OY!

This is truly a terrible experience.

I think the lesson for others to learn from this experience is to always give a freezed CC for one’s profile and flexible bookings. If a bogus charge is posted to the card it’ll get declined and one can always argue it out later without being down $100s. Let the hotel chase you instead of being you doing the chasing…

That's fraud.

Dubious business ethics, perhaps. Fraud, not at all.

Leadership! Everything leads back to the person (people?) in charge! A lack of leadership and/or leading by example must be at the root of this rotting of the Marriott brand..been with them as an elite for 40+ years, and am aghast at the lack of leadership and positive action to right the ship!

That's like carrying a dummy or drop-wallet if you're visiting a place where pickpockets and street crime are prevalent. Marriott is circling the drain IMO. I hope the recession punishes them.

My advice would be to jump ship to Hilton/Hyatt/Wyndham.

It's fraud. There's an implicit but knowingly false representation the card is valid, which the guest intends the hotel to rely upon, and which will cause the hotel harm if the guest no-shows.

This takes the cake… Theft is OK, because our T&C say so! :D

If a hotel requests a CC to hold a reservation giving them one that's frozen isn't fraud. Not paying charges agreed upon is fraud.

It's good to see that a Lurker has reached out to you. They can do great things. Let's hope that they can get this sorted.

Same thing happened to my dad. It's also been posted on reddit, flyertalk, and I've seen it on facebook.

This is a technical issue that they're ignoring and blaming the customers. So far, my dad's responded and not received any follow up emails, and given the run around.

Here's last post with someone having the exact same issue.

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