Elite status errors -- and their correction
 

On Sunday night, I logged in to my MR account and made a reservation for that night. At this moment I was a MR Gold Elite member. I logged in again today and saw that I had been bumped down to a Silver. Does anybody know the reason for this.

According to my account I have 28 nights this year and need 0 to maintain silver. I noticed I had achieved gold status for the first time just a few weeks ago. Could they be correcting an error?

Ditto
 

From an earlier thread on mysterious Gold Status. My status has changed 3 times since Jan 1!

It seems that the rollover nights + the 12 month rolling qualification window may have been caused some people to be upgraded accidentally. I think that the rollover nights were being counted twice accidentally.

Just happened to me. I am going to rail them for this. If they want my continued business, they better not reneg. This is ridiculous.

Reneg on what? How many nights did you stay last year, and what is/was your status?

My elite status has also jumped around a bit these past few weeks.

I ended 2009 with 45 nights and Silver status.
After the 35 rollover nights hit I became a Platinum.
Yesterday the system was apparently recalibrated and now I'm back to Silver.

I'm not complaining. The temporary upgraded status was clearly a mistake. It would be nice if the issue was communicated a bit better though. The agent on Marriott's Platinum line had no idea of what I was talking about when I asked about the odd status changes.

Marriott has a bit of history with this kind of mix up. A few years ago when they first brought out the Premier Visa Card, they flubbed the 15 nights and accidentally gave everyone who had the card many more nights. And for a while, there were a whole lot of Plat members running around. :eek:

Once they fixed that little "error", they put everyone back to the elite level they were supposed to be at. They didn't let those affected keep their new found status.

My status has been reverted back to Gold as well. For awhile the first couple of weeks of '10 I was Platinum and I had no idea why. Luckily I got a couple of stays in and was able to grab some extra points with the Platinum Arrival Bonus. Looks like just 26 more nights and I will be Platinum again thanks to Rollover and that doesn't count my 15 Premier nights.

On an earlier thread I remarked that the jump experienced by members from silver to Gold or straight to Plat was due to an inability to "rollover" nights on a computer in the way that we humans would do so, causing the "rolling calendar" to kick in...

Hence a silver with 43 nights rolled over 33 nights which became 33 bonus nights in 2010... when added to the rolling calendar previous total of 43 nights, that made a total of 76 nights, and one newly minted Plat.

I felt this was overall a good idea, engendering more loyalty from regular stayers who achived a pretty impressive total (one that would achieve middle or top status in other chains) and Marriott would hopefully see these guests trying to maintain status by directing more of their stays Marriotts way in 2010... Others saw this as dilution of the status causing more competition for scarce upgrades and CL facilities. Whilst I do see that point of view, there has been little short of a devastating fall in hotel stays and a terrible fall in rates across all brands, and this in turn means with less people staying, less pressure on available resources, but much more pressure on cashflow.

It seems now Marriott has decided this was all an error, that the rolling calendar Gold and Plat bumps are slowly being undone and that, apparently, the rolling calendar element of the scheme (never a stated benefit anyway) is being done away with, since the rolling calendar software seems incapable of distinguishing between nights rolled over from last year and those physically earned this, hence causing these bumps.

This thread may well have many more entries yet to come :eek:

Well said BrightlyBob! The other thread you mentioned was the one I started where within the lifespan of the thread, I went from Silver to Gold to Platinum.

Lo behold, I check my status today and I am back to Silver. I think I am officially taking back all my kudos that I lavished upon Marriott. I know that I did not have the nights for a bump all the way to Platinum, in the first place, but giving the upgrade and taking it back is not cool!! :td:

A good friend of mine just got the downgrade too, and she may be done with Marriott in response. Not cool. :mad:

I was walking down the street the other day and looked down and found a $100 bill laying on the ground. I picked it up and put in my pocket.

The next day, the rightful owner came up and asked that I give them the $100 back explaining that it was lost by accident and they were the rightful owner.....

Of course I felt like the $100 was mine and I refused to give it back, knowing all the time that the $100 was not really mine.

I really do wonder where the sense of entitlement comes from with some folks on FT?

I have to say - I am amazed at the sense of entitlement some people have here.

To be bumped from Silver to Platinum in error, and then be mad because you are Gold only - well, I have to say, get over it.

Its really simple: If you want the status, stay the nights.

You buy a coach ticket fully aware of what kind of service you get for that price. At the gate, the airline offers you a free upgrade and asks you to sit in the business class and even serves you a drink. Right before take-off, they realize they made a mistake and ask you to get the h*ll out and go back to coach. Now if you complain to the airline & on FT about the way you were treated, do you think it would be fair if I jumped in and said that you had a false sense of entitlement for the period while you were seated in business. NO!

In this case, my issue is why make me go through these changes while I would have been perfectly fine with retaining my Silver status. The thumbs down was not for the downgrade but the mis-communication in terms of status changes.

Your analogy does not work. Marriott has not ask for you to give anything back nor have they asked you to give anything up. If you want the perks of the status, earn the status..... Anything is else is very false sense of entitlement as you simply did not earn it.

And for the record, I showed being premier a couple of weeks ago. I had earned premier at one point several years ago and lost it when I did not stay at Marriott for a year or so because of a very bad experience. I had stayed close to 90 nights last year in just over 6 months. And for a moment I thought maybe I had earned it back based on a fairly high level of activity in the last six months of the year. Was I disappointed when it no longer showed. Yes. Did I earn it. No. Life goes on....