Is Marriott customer service REALLY THIS BAD?
 

Lifetime platinum elite, long time SPG/MARRIOTT customer, 1000+ stays total, 150+ stays this year alone.

Had a reservation/stay go sideways, conveniently, just as i'm $100 away from ambassador. - booked through marriot.com, was able to check in and stay for 4 days, but now somehow not registering in the system, no showing up, unable to generate invoice, bad coding on invoice etc. no stays accounted for, no spend accounted for etc.

After about 10 total calls over multiple days - had CS folks laughing at, saying "its not that bad", even yelling at me at this point, hang up, bouncing me around between Customer Service (terrible), Facility Accounting (haven't heard from), Facility Manager (great), Facility Manager front desk (great). "Missing stay" folks unable to help. Every customer service rep claims they are the "manager", refusing to escalate, refusing to provide call case# etc.

This is CRAZY.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Thanks,
M3

some specifics would be helpful, unless you're just venting in which case I'll ask the mods to delete this thread

[QUOTE

This is CRAZY.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Thanks,
M3[/QUOTE]

Welcome to FT, maybee a vent to be deleted. But probably just another Mrt IT 'snafu'. Yes, compared to Hyatt, CS in the US is bad, but in Asia it's not.

No, it is not. Not sure why one would make 10 calls to Marriott ever. These things happen, but they are usually easily resolved. It is one of the simplest things to fix tbh. You take a pic of the invoice that you got when checking out and retro-credit is an easy thing to do.

Respectfully, if this is happening to you on multiple calls with different reps, you may want to consider what the common factor is in all of those calls. Completely unrelated to how justified your position is or how frustrated you are, there's a certain art in how to handle yourself over the phone. Ideally, you want the reps to be sympathetic to your situation and want to help you, rather than reacting negatively to you.

Someone else already alluded to this: maybe what you should focus on is getting a copy of your folio. Did you get one via email? Can you request one online? If not, call the property and explain that you need a copy of your folio. Don't mention the missing credit. Once you get the folio, then submit it as a "missing credit" case, uploading the folio and see what happens.

Also, if you're just $100 away from Ambassador, consider waiting until after your next stay posts and you're officially Ambassador status, then turn the matter over to your personal Ambassador rep.

Can you share more about the specifics? The missing stay process is mature and works in almost all circumstance: 10 business days after check out, if the stay hasn't been posted, you contact the missing stay team and then they reconcile things with the hotel. The hotel is typically the responsible party because they are the organisation charging you. If there's no invoice, they can't charge you, and if they can't charge you, it's a free stay!

I've had the missing stay people push back on a claim if 10 business days hadn't passed, and they have refused to credit a stay due to an overlap, but these are all expected things based on the terms. Aside from those, I've never had a problem, and I stay at Marriott hotels more than you. I can't imagine how a stay would arbitrarily enter into a state where customer service feels the only thing they can do is laugh at you. If you can share more information, we can provide more context / insight / next steps.

The suggestion from another respondent of spending another $100 to get to Ambassador and then use your Ambassador to address the situation for you is a good idea. My Ambassador is always very helpful as an Ambassador can file cases to get an issue resolved.

Sure. Here are more specifics, shortened version:
CS unable to find reservation, asked if i booked through 3rd party, very surprised to hear I booked through marriot.com using my Bonvoy account and couldn't locate the stay or invoice. No credit for stay or spend, couldn't locate in my own profile after checkout (stay completed, 4 days). Asks to contact facility to get invoice.
Next day calls to CS - able to find using booking number, invoice mostly empty, with taxes only, no other charges. Unable to share, but asks to contact the facility's accounting department to fix.
Next day, calls to facility - tell me my contact information was missing for the stay, received invoice, submitted to missing stay team.
Next day missing stay team responds - "eligible credits have been posted" - still missing $ spend on the account.
Next day CS team says some invoice charges missing because i purchased food during the stay, need to contact facility due to coding issue - opened another case, please wait 3-5 business days.

I really feel that CS should own this, make calls, find stays in their own system, find invoices, work with facilities to figure out what went wrong/work on accounting codes/fix invoices, give loyalty credit/points/spend, not the customer.

Every customer service rep claims they are the "manager". Is there a way to escalate such issues? I feel like I have been bounced around for days.

Thanks,
M3

That's what the missing stay team do. I'm a little confused by your experience: you contacted Customer Support first, instead of the missing stay team, and after contacting Customer Support, your stay was added to your account in a partially complete state (nights but no spend)? If I had to guess, by contacting Customer Support, you unintentionally circumvented the missing stay process. A missing stay typically means a mistake on the hotel's part, and the missing stay team rectify that based on your submission to them (which would include validating information provided by the hotel). That said, I have always assumed if someone were to call Marriott about a missing stay then they would be told to submit the missing stay form instead, so maybe something went wrong in the process, maybe a Marriott employee went off piste for some reason.

Anyway, to answer your original question: Marriott is a huge company with a high volume of customer support, their focus is quantity over quality, so almost every common scenario is well defined, with templated emails and information that customer support agents are sticking to. If your customer support need goes outside the bounds of what is well defined, then it's quite possible to have a frustrating experience. I'm still not sure how exactly you ended up in this situation, because missing stays are perhaps the most common issue Marriott deal with and they have a very well defined process with it but that's neither here nor there.

You can contact the Marriott Bonvoy representative on this website (Marriott Bonvoy Lurker II) or send an email to [email protected].

For those non urgent matters, like missing stays/point, I would say email and web form is the best method.

Yes, that's standard Marriott proccedure for limiting the number of Ambassador level members. When you get close, they start losing your stays and spend. :rolleyes:


One way to get their attention might be to complain to your credit card company saying that the charge is substantially more than the invoice, and provide them with a copy of the invoice. When Marriott gets the info request from credit card company, either they will find the correct invoice (which you will use to get proper credit for your spend), or credit card charge will be reduced to match the amount on the invoice.

I think in fairness to the OP there definitely becomes a frustration level of the time you need to personally spend on an error that was not your doing.

I have been there, and at times, not all the time, there seems to be a huge disconnect at a "customer service" level. I agree, that you should be able to make one call with all the information and at that point they should handle it between all the internal departments and the hotel itself. Upon completion, they then provide the customer with an update and/or the solution to close the case. Most other institutions do this.

When you as the customer start talking to 3-5 different people trying to relay information, sending the same information multiple times to different people, etc., it becomes very time consuming and frustrating.

Lying to your credit card company that you didn't get the full stay but were charged for it, when you know it's not true, is fraud.

,.......

I didn't suggest lying to the credit card company. I suggested telling your credit card company thatThat's an accurate statement.

Marriott will then likely produce an accurate invoice/folio, which you can use to obtain proper credit for the stay. Getting Marriott to sort the problem is easier when it (or the individual property) stands to lose revenue than when you stand to lose points.

Claiming the amount (correctly) charged to the card does not match the amount invoiced by the merchant is not grounds for a chargeback. The card issuer will tell the cardholder to sort it out with the merchant.