Has basic customer service died at Bonvoy?
 

We've all seen customer service decline across most businesses in the last few years. Marriott seems to lead the pack in my experience. However, today really took the cake.

I had 2 reservations for 1 romm each at a property. I stayed in one, a colleague stayed in another. Both were put on my credit card. Both stays were completed. I was charged for and have folios for both. Additionally, I have a GNS guest no show charge for the same dates. No big deal, it's clearly a hotel mistake and should be a quick phone call to rectify.

I call the hotel and ask for accounting. I get a vm flat out telling me if I leave a message that they'll take a long time to look in to the issue. Pretty poor IMHO but I guess that's the norm. No big deal. I just hang up, call back and speak to the front desk. And that's where the circle of ridiculridiculousness begins.

Agent takes my info and then tells me I didn't show up. I keep offering the folio numbers and he won't take them. Finally he tells me I was indeed there but I must not have only shown up for one room because I couldn't have been on 2. Huh? Finally he sees I indeed paid for both rooms but tells me that's clearly a mistake because I could only have had one. Yet I've now been charged for 3. He tells me that's correct because I didn't show up. How is that even possible? I aak for a supervisor. Of course, standard Marriott answer of "there's isn't one here". So I ask for the GM. He isn't there either. He even tells me he's the only one there. At 9am on a week day at a full service hotel and convention center? So should I believe him and be annoyed they're incorrectly staffed or annoyed because he's lying? I'm not really seeing other options here.

I decide to just cut my losses and call the Bonvoy elite line. And service declines even more! After having my number recognized, and confirming my identity, they throw every automated system at me to prevent me from talking to a person who should be able to solve this in moments. No, I don't want you to text me a link to find help on your site. I want a person to look at my account and see I was charged for 3 rooms when booking and staying in 2!

Finally get someone on the phone and explain the issue. Before she'll pull the folios she asks for part of my credit card number "to confirm my identity". Seriously? She was calling my by name for 5 minutes, I already confirmed, I had my account number, folio numbers, dates and location of stay and that's not enough? There's no reason for me to give any credit card info in this situation. I politely ask to speak to a supervisor. And her response was to hang up on me! No, we weren't disconnected. The call actually went to a survey about her performance.

Is Marriott really at the point where they're spending so much time and effort to prevent escalating an unresolved, legitimate issue? Is there no longer an even basic level of customer service or desire to resolve issues? I guess I simply have to have our accounting department dispute the charges.

Am I the only one who's having issues like this? Am I doing something wrong or should I be looking at taking my business to another brand?

You are asking for a mistaken charge to be refunded to your credit card and you won't give part of that number for verification? :confused:

That was your mistake. Having worked as a Reservation Sales Representative at UA for two years during law school, I understand that these agents are under a lot of time pressure. Why make things worse?

There is a lot of turnover in these positions, and a lot of the agents are not very experienced or well trained. This is a problem industry-wide, so you would eventually run into the same problem at other chains, both telephonically and in person.

That said, by the hotel, you got brutally BONV°Yed! :D

Yes, a chargeback on the no-show fee sounds appropriate, as long as you have copies of the two folios for your accounting department to submit to the bank.

I ddon't disagree with you on the refund. However, we werent even close to that. It was litterally to confirm my Bonvoy account. They actually told me I could give ANY of the credit cards saved on the account.

It's ludicrous to require a credit card. What id someone doesnt have it on them and doesn't know/remember the numbers? It's fine if it's one of the options but to require it for account verification with no other options is silly and poorly thought out.

Marriott BONV°Y information technology (IT) is notoriously random and nonsensical. But that is all part of the adventure. :)

Keep in mind, when dealing with Marriott staff, that they are stuck using Marriott IT, too. :eek:

Hilton IT is no better. After a decade of promising, they still can't display your lifetime nights in the app or online. :rolleyes:

(This is mostly just a contextual fyi)

"I call the hotel and ask for accounting. I get a vm flat out telling me if I leave a message that they'll take a long time to look in to the issue. Pretty poor IMHO but I guess that's the norm. No big deal. I just hang up, call back and speak to the front desk. And that's where the circle of ridiculridiculousness begins."

If the property is corporately managed, this has been the norm for a while. Marriott farmed out a lot of their accounting functions twenty plus years ago. A full service property that in 2000 might have had four people in the accounting department, may now have one or two. Even back in the in the good ol' days, responding to outside calls/voicemails was priority eighteen on the daily top five list, I can't imagine what's it's like today.

"I aak for a supervisor. Of course, standard Marriott answer of "there's isn't one here". So I ask for the GM. He isn't there either. He even tells me he's the only one there. At 9am on a week day at a full service hotel and convention center? So should I believe him and be annoyed they're incorrectly staffed or annoyed because he's lying? I'm not really seeing other options here."

At larger properties, a desk clerk would have no clue if the GM is really there or not unless they physically saw them. As an example, at the FS property I worked at for five plus years, the GM/HR/Accounting office was in the basement, two floors below the lobby and the front desk. Best you'll get is transferred to their extension and to leave a v/m. Is it possible that there wasn't a supervisorial presence at the desk past the FDA you spoke with? It's far fetched, but in today's reduced staffing environment, it's also quite possible.

Past that, what you experienced is where the industry as a whole is going. It's why all of the parent companies push their app as hard as they do. It's 100% designed to be a job eliminator. It is an industry wide race to the bottom on FTEs both in customer facing roles and in backend support positions. Don't like it? I guess, don't leave home or don't have a problem if you do stay somewhere because resolutions that are already hard or only going to get harder as more and more things become app/AI/non-human based.

Has basic customer service died at Bonvoy?

No, it has not died - it was never alive. Now, SPG on the other hand....

...was much worse but managed to convince their Stockholm Syndrome customers that they were the best thing ever.

To the OP: This might have been easier if you'd had ONE reservation for TWO rooms, rather than two reservations for one room each. While it's hardly the most complicated thing in the world for the hotel, and should be easily unwound, this (combined with your inexplicable unwillingness to share a few digits from your credit card) is probably what is making this harder to rectify.

Yes.


Apparently not. All the information you have listed here could be gleaned from a discarded folio, no?


Sure there is. That's their verification protocol. Giving her four out of the sixteen digits of one of your credit cards isn't enough information to allow her to make any additional charges on your card, but does verify your identity, as your credit card number does not appear on the folio. So you wouldn't give her part of your credit card number because you don't think that you should have to, and, as a result, your problem is not solved.

If you had discarded or inadvertently dropped your folio without knowing it, and someone picked it up and used your points by phone, you would be here asking how Marriott's verification protocol could be so thin. Instead you're saying that it's too comprehensive because they asked you for part of your credit card number. Sorry, but I'm on Marriott's side on this one. I certainly want Marriott to be very certain that they're speaking with me before they start looking at, and possibly taking action on, my account.

Hotel didn't do what was expected for OP but OP didn't do what was expected for customer service agent

Sames
 

Similar scenario. I have a reservation for two rooms (a colleague and me). I’m Titanium, he’s Titanium. I call to add his name to the reservation and his Bonvoy number. Everything is going along ok until they ask me for the last four digits of HIS credit card number. I’ve already provided his name, address, phone and Bonvoy number. I kinda chuckle to the agent - “Nope! Don’t have that one!” Well, hence commences my ridiculous spiral. If I can’t provide the last four, can I tell them the last Bonvoy hotel he stayed in? (No). Ok, the phone number on the account prior to the currently listed phone number? (Hard no). Ok, the address on the account prior to the current address? (Told her he’s been at his home for 30 years, long before “Bonvoy” was a twinkle in anyone’s eye.).

And that was game over. They wouldn’t add his Bonvoy number. What nefarious thing were they attempting to prevent? I wasn’t trying to claim his points - I was trying to be fair!

Yes, totally the OP's fault for wanting to be able to check in separately to a colleague / needing to submit expenses separately or whatever the presumably legitimate reason for booking two separate reservations was. It is laughable (and I did actually laugh out loud here) that you accused others of Stockholm Syndrome when you apparently seem to have it...

For some years now 1. Getting fraudulent charges and 2. Both hotel and Bonvoy elite refusing to engage in refunding them has been part of booking stays at Marriott. Considering that I only do a handful of stays a year nowadays (excl. a few more at some trusted hotels who never mess things up), I still get an issue more often than from all the rest of my hotel stays put together (200 nights+ a year).

could have done that at the desk when he checked in..as opposed to calling

sure, could have.

But he’s eligible for space available upgrades too and he’d be last in line checking in at 11:30p. There was definitely a reason for calling - wasn’t just to make work for the call center.

could have also called the hotel, can't tell you how often guests call to add their bonvoy number to their reservation as the hotel can add that as well. anything the reservation lines need to add, the hotel can do as well unless it's something the hotel cannot do