I'm sitting on a 6K+ gift card balance from last year's end of year 10% bonus. While I'm confident Marriott will get the system figured out and (more importantly) get their users educated, this is a good excuse to take advantage of the Hyatt promo for the next few weeks. Hopefully by the time I burn through 25 Hyatt nights, the Marriott Gift Card processing steps will have filtered down to the desk agents.

No way are the gift cards going to be accepted much internationally. The old ones processed as a visa got lots of blank stares and laughs internationally--but sometimes got accepted. Now it took me a week and the very helpful entire accounting team of a European Marriott to do a "forced redeem" of the givex card. This after it was rejected at three other properties and i gave up.

Marriott has done zero franchisee education on this. I am now very happy that i am down to a $14 balance.

I would LOVE it if someone could get their hands on an instruction manual for franchises to process the card as it otherwise takes an act of parliament

I checked out yesterday morning, and the front desk guy had been trained on the new system. I asked him to explain it to me, which he did. He was great.

Basically, as others have mentioned, it's now a multi-step process.

The first step is to figure out how much of the card will be used. If the card balance is greater than the amount for the hotel stay, that's easy. They just take the folio amount and write it down. Otherwise, they use the entire card balance. If the customer doesn't know the amount, they check it during step two. Step two is to contact the company that administers the card. This can be done by phone or internet. Basically, the hotel needs to manually deduct the amount of the credit you need from your card through the company. If you don't know know your balance, they check it during this step. They then have the appropriate amount deducted. They get an authorization code back. Step three is to go into their system and pay your bill using a new special code and entering the authorization number.

This guy knew what he was doing, but even so it took 5 minutes. He said the trouble comes in when people have multiple smaller cards -- each needs to be run and he needs to get an authorization number for each, and then each of those needs to be entered into the system to deduct the amount on the bill. For example, if you have a 183.00 bill and four $50 gift cards, he needs to get four separate authorizations -- three for $50 each and one for $33 on the fourth card, and he has to be careful to make sure he remembers which card to give you back with the $17 on it. Then he needs to pay off your bill in 4 steps, entering each authorization number separately.

Edit: The one other thing he noted is that if they make a mistake at the property level, they're toast. They can't fix it at the property. For example, if they over deduct from your gift card, it's a problem.

Last time I used a travelcard (pre-change), the front desk clerk got out a ring binder which contained instructions for various procedures/payments, including gifcards and travelcards (as stated, not the same thing). She followed the instructions to the letter. It still didn't work.

This sounds like an absolute night.mare.

The ONLY good thing that might come out of this is that Marriott and Visa seem to have parted ways, thus probably eliminating the Visa-sponsored Megabonus promotions.

In the past, I find that even if I check the balance of the cards online, I still cannot get it right for foreign transactions due to the currency charge. So if the hotel calls the administrator for a balance on the card, does this mean the balance is in local currency after the currency exchange fee?

I recently used a Marriott TravelCard to pay for a stay at the San Mateo Marriott. Lucky me, I was apparently the first one to use the card there under the new system. There was a scramble among the front desk employees, and they had to call for instructions and/or authorization. It took about 10 minutes total.

But thanks to this thread, I knew about the potential problem and allowed extra time in case it was an issue. Hopefully next time they'll know what to do, but from lkar's post, it sounds like they'll still need to call.

Let us know if the MR points post.

I have to question whether he knew what he was doing. I've been using gift cards over the past month on a weekly basis. The first week they changed the system the staff was completely unaware that it had changed. I had to wait until the gift card support opened to get it processed. At that point they explained to them they now need to code it as GE instead of GC. Once they did that it was a 30 second process to get it completed. I did it the following week and the manager was there who was involved in the previous week and while the desk clerk processed the card (once again in about 30 seconds) the manager pulled out the directions they had received after I had left the previous week to show that they had received information now. Today when I checked out they actually put the giftcard charge on the wrong room. After realizing the mistake they were able to void the charge and process it to my room. I have verified the balance is correct online. They should be taking no longer than the previous giftcards took to process. The one advantage now is after they put in the code and swipe the card they are able to see the balance.

And I have received full points. This is for a giftcard and not a travelcard.

A few of you have expressed concern about gift cards not counting toward Visa specific promotions. Because of the numbers we have used in the past, our gift card can sometimes look like a Visa payment in our systems; however, if you are using a gift card without a Visa logo then there is no guarantee it will count toward a promotion co-sponsored with Visa. If the stay does count toward the promotion it is a fortunate error.

As far as standard earnings go, stays paid with gift cards are treated like all other stays. Paying with a gift card does not disqualify the stay from earning credit.

Regards,
Ira

Yeah, I saw that posted here, but the people at the gift card compnay said that "different hotels have different platforms." At the Marriott I checked out of on Sunday, apparently, they only could enter it as a "GE" once they ran the authorization and got an authorization number. He seemed pretty competent and there did not seem to be an option to simply code it as GE directly on my folio on his system. I had actually asked the gift card company to call the hotel the night before and work with them, since I was checking out the next a.m. Not sure if that happened -- I didn't want to admit I was the rabble rouser.

Maybe he still needed more training.

Does this pertain to the Travel Cards also or is Marriott enforcing the T&Cs that state no points for use of a TC?

I just checked my account & received all my points for the recent stay noted above where I used a TravelCard. ^

Just checked my account today also, and the stay I paid for with my Marriott Travelcard received both points and stay credit. Whew!

^^

sounds like a painful experience for international properties!!!