This week I stayed in two different UK Marriotts.

1 night in London
Cost £124. Room cost only. Base points awarded 2005pts = 16.17 pts per pound

4 nights bristol.
Cost £391.48 room. £31.30 Food and drinks. Base points awarded 5610pts = 13.27pts per pound

Is this correct? The Bristol stay seems light on points. Given I have stayed here over 50 nights this year I am concerned they are using a different dollar exchange rate which is screwing me on points.

Can anyone shed any light before I throw my toys out of the pram and look foolish?

Thanks in advance

Officially you should get, for base points, 10 per $
At the current exchange rate of $1.64 = £1 (google) you'd think you got messed over.

However, the rate should only be on the rate excluding taxes (i.e. excluding VAT at 15%).

As such, London rate excluding VAT: ~£107.82 should have given (@1.64*10) ~1768 points base

And Bristol excluding VAT: ~£367.64 should have given (@1.64*10) 6029 points.

As such, strictly speaking neither is correct.... for the first they've forgotten to remove the VAT element and using a worse rate, for the second they have calulated it properly but it looks like either a worse exchange rate or they've forgotten to add the amount from the food+drinks. (Excluding food and drink @ 1.64 it comes to 5582 points)

Up to you if you'd like to take it any further... of course they don't retrospectively check any other claims apart from the ones you make as far as I'm aware so you could only complain about the one that doesn't benefit you - but I'd resist telling them about the one where they gave you too many

PS: This assumes that by referring to 'base' above you really are removing any other benefits (bonuses or welcome gifts)

PPS: I stay in Marriotts primarily in the UK and treat the points as a random game... they are frequently wrong and the exchange rates are obtuse - I think on the balance I end up ahead, but on some stays I'm certainly down. Then again I had one hotel giving me $2 to a £1 for months after the exchange rate collapsed last year.

thanks LV..

did not realise tax was excluded...

Looking back I do seem to have been systematically done down in Bristol. However, given the vagaries of exchange rate, the fact I have been upgraded to suites a couple of times recently and the fact I have receipts coming out of my ears... I am not sure I can really be bothered all the hassle for what might amount to less than 5000 points.

I'll warrant they are using their front desk exchange rate rather than a google derived one - so the margins between buy and sell are more weighted in their favour.

Having just collected the first portion of megabonus and gone past 100 nights since mid-march might just let it go....

ps yes had removed welcome points and Plat bonus....

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2532234/Scr...05.25%20PM.png


check the mistake and the correction in the above link

mmmm...

thanks for replies - it prompted me to do some excel jiggery pokery. Based on exchange rate history and the receipts I currently have to hand. I am 2000+ points down for November alone - the problem seems to be at one Bristol Marriott. I will go back through my history to March - which is when I started staying in earnest. If it adds up to 10,000 points that is half a reward night.... it all helps after all

You can fax your invoice to the number for "missing stay credit" in England, +44-20-7012-7318, and ask them to look into whether the points credited were accurately determined.

If you're in England anyway, you could call that center (Cork Marriott Rewards Guest Services, +44-20-7012-7312) and let them know you have a question about that and will be faxing the invoice. That way they'll be expecting it, but you still should include a note explaining that you realize the nights credit for the stay was posted, and are inquiring about the number of points credited, so they don't think the issue is OBE because the nights were credited.

I have had this issue of undercredited points on several stays. I only realise it when I go through my expenses in detail, 2 or 3 times a year and use the website activity as an aide memoir. Both times so far this year when I carried out the exercise I found I was undercredited on some stays, adding up to over 20,000 points each time, one of which turned out to be a real tussle, but was eventually resolved favourably...

As a rule of thumb I currently use 14 points per £ actually spent (inc VAT, which you don't earn points on). On that basis you should see 5500 for Bristol and 1700 for London. I only challenge when the outcome is obviously way too low, and actually frequently find that in the UK most hotels overcredit slightly against that. When I've raised undercredit Marriott only ever investigates the ones I raise, so you've nothing to lose on a challenge, provided you dont use the London one for comparison purposes...

My first post...apologies if too long and detailed and hopefully posted in the correct place! Opinions on Marriott stance would be gratefully accepted.

I'm currently having a prolonged battle with Marriott over the correct allocation of points for a stay in London in early December. I prepaid 2 rooms, having accessed their website via shops away, which would also earn me Virgin miles.
There were problems with billing at checkout but they were resolved.
My next issue was that I saw a spurious deduction, with no details of date or property, of 45,000 reward points for a reward stay. Turns out it was for one night of my pre-paid cash rate for this stay. Also, a lack of points were credited for my stay - base points woefully deficient and no elite welcome gift. I flagged this with the rewards call centre and the 45,000 points were re-credited and they would request copy bills for the hotel to correct the points.
I then noticed that my 2 miles transactions with shops away had been disqualified.
I emailed my missing miles query to shops away and contacted the hotel directly. I was put through to a front desk manager/supervisor. She was very helpful if totally lacking knowledge in shops away and the intricacies of Marriott reward scheme. She tried to explain I couldn't have miles and points but I got her to agree to go and investigate after I explained both to her. She didn't help things by setting my expectation of exchange rate applied being way in excess of the actual exchange rate when converting £'s to $'s. She was then going on leave so her colleague (front desk manager) picked this up and sent quite frankly an insulting response with a total lack of understanding of the situation and the programs. I asked for escalation and received a further email
My reward points had been increased and reflected the elite welcome bonus but were still incorrect in my opinion.
In the meantime I had correspondence with shops away who explained that Marriott had amended the transaction value on one booking and disqualified the other as the last click of the transaction was "not recorded as through shops away, but another source."
I challenged both and was advised they had remove VAT from the one transaction - fair enough but why apply it in the first place! The other, larger one was still void for the same reason they previously gave, namely that it was made via another source. I have challenged this as it was made via shops away and I'm surmising the issue is down to the double dipping of payment they made with the debiting of reward points from me.
My escalation resulted in receiving an email from the font office manager.
He admitted procedural errors with the incorrect deduction of reward points and advised he would seek to sort out the points and miles.
I replied and sent all correspondence and reiterate all details of my spend to enable this to be sorted.
He replied last night and is still attempting to engage with the correct people in respect of shops away but is insisting the reward points earned are correct.
This is where I cannot confirm if his answer is correct, which was basically ex-vat spend of £821.06 for rooms and food and beverage spend and this has been converted to $1,013.7, as Marriott use a pre-set conversion rate which does differ from the market rate.
I replied late last night that they have used an exchange rate of $1.23 per £, which was 18.6% below the prevailing market rate of $1.511 per £1 on 6th December.
I await responses from him on both the exchange rate and shops away and from my further challenge to shops away.
I also mentioned compensation over the hassle and time in attempting to sort this and have finally got their offer of 15,000 points - I haven't accepted or rejected this yet.

Thoughts on the exchange rate, shops away stance and compensation offer would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

You may be right. But you have conflated multiple issues.

Any issues relating to exchange rates and points earned on stays should be addressed to Marriott Rewards and not the hotel.

Any issues relating to a shopping portal should be addressed to the shopping portal. Raising that issue with hotel management simply complicated your situation.

Given that you have been offered 15k points for what appears to be a fairly minor inconvenience, you should stop while you are ahead.