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Originally Posted by farnorthtrader
(Post 29888726)
so you believe that a multi billion dollar corporation would change their entire strategy and their IT just to spite a blogger?
Calling Marriott used to be easy with great systems and reps. Today calling in for a travel package sucks, no one knows how to do it, and the systems constantly crash. Hopefully, they will dump their new IT and go back to what worked before. |
Originally Posted by farnorthtrader
(Post 29888726)
so you believe that a multi billion dollar corporation would change their entire strategy and their IT just to spite a blogger? The FACT IS, at least up to this moment, Mazrriott has NOT yet adopted a stragegy to handle this conversion. It has several options of which we do not know which direction the corporation would take. Options we can speculate based on some logic and assumption. Still NONE of them is a "known" "strategy". Hence your comment is off base. On the other hand, Marriott definitely monitor these boards. If it sees many are making speculation trying to "Make a Huge Win" on the upcoming conversion, Yes, the corporate would take it into consideration on WHICH option it will take. FYI, the very same blogger has written articles on how to become Marriott P / PPE after August 1st. He wrote about it again last week, as a "reminder". One of the methods he wrote about. was to sign up the Challenges. Guess what? Shortly after this latest article was published, his readers reported that Marriott no longer let people sign up Challenge... Co-incident? I think not. We have seen what "deals" have been killed by this particular blogger in the past... Off the top of my head, the tout of everything 5x with the Chase Ink business card when there was no cap no restriction on what to buy at office supply stores... the tout of getting 7 BofA credit cards to pursuit a Million Points vacation redemption at the Richard Bronson's private island... Of course, such "deals" died shortly after the touts. |
Originally Posted by Willbur
(Post 29890418)
What will happen to your normal unused certificates (non-TP) is more clear and is spelled out within the Marriott FAQ.
https://members.marriott.com/faq/#i-...a-after-august Personally, I don't think the SPG Lurker's comments necessarily fall outside of the above definition. For example, if you have a Category 9 certificate, you can currently use it for 7 nights at a category 9 hotel. With a free night this comes out to 270,000 points for the 6 nights x 45k/night. If they can provide certificates of 25k value for the free night on the Marriott certificate, they can clearly provide certificates of 270k (just includes additional digits). Like the free night certs, it'd be easy for them to make these non-refundable (so you can't simply cancel and get 270k points). So in Aug you'd get a 270k certificate (maybe it as a minimum stay requirement of 7 nights, maybe it doesn't but has to be used as a single reservation). Then if you want to upgrade the certificate you pay the difference just like you do now. For any amounts that don't map to a new point class they would just issue the cert for the category lower and issue a refund of the points difference. So in the case of a current Cat 9, they'd map you to a category 5 in the new chart and refund 60k points (10k/night). You could then use those 60k points + 30k more to upgrade to a Cat 6 cert if desired. I think a scenario like the above could absolutely labeled as "converting to equivalent points" and is infinitely more likely. In the same way they don't cancel the other free nights and instead convert them to a certificate of equivalent points, it simply doesn't make sense to refund actual points on the TPs alone. |
Originally Posted by Happy
(Post 29891454)
The FACT IS, at least up to this moment, Mazrriott has NOT yet adopted a strategy to handle this conversion.
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Originally Posted by HHonors OUTSIDER
(Post 29891558)
Excellent post. I agree. It seems clear that a free one night Cat 1 - 5 cert if not attached by this August will be converted to a "point-based" cert to used for example a value up 20,000 points in the new redemption chart. No actual points deposited in the members account. Being realistic that is what will happen to TP certs if not attached by August with maybe a small amount of points refunded if necessary but I don't think it will be necessary.
"Floater certificates, including outstanding Marriott Travel Packages, will be cancelled and converted to equivalent points, credited to the member’s account for future redemption" Key word "certificate" missing there. So no "equivalent points certificate". |
Originally Posted by RafKa
(Post 29892235)
And yet, SPG Lurker's quote comes back to haunt (bolding mine):
"Floater certificates, including outstanding Marriott Travel Packages, will be cancelled and converted to equivalent points, credited to the member’s account for future redemption" Key word "certificate" missing there. So no "equivalent points certificate". |
Originally Posted by HHonors OUTSIDER
(Post 29893091)
And yet RafKa if Marriott would tell us how many points refunded this issue/discussion would end immediately.
That is why I said Marriott has NOT yet made a decision on what it plans to do with these floater certs. People can do all their wishful thinking and speculating they want, as the blogger would lead them to, but the Realty is, Marriott has chosen to keep us in the dark for as long as it could be. For the record. question 35 in the SPG wiki is added by me a few weeks ago, with a much longer description that is eventually being edited out by somebody, but the essence remains - asking for a clarification on how the point refund would be calculated. We finally have an answer of some sort - that is, soon we will have an answer on that, as per William's June 19th update... As for the IT implementation, anybody has visited Marriott site to try make a revenue booking would experience first hand that the site is not functioning lots of the time. It went down multiple hours during business hours on several occasions, as latest as a few days ago Who knows what would happen on the site once August 1st has come. |
Reading the various threads and FAQs on the SPG forum, this is what I think will happen:
Most likely scenario: The certs will map to a new category/point level for the same # of nights. So for example a current Cat 1-5 might map to 7 nights at a (new) Cat 1-4 hotel OR be points based (i.e. 7 nights at any hotel up to 25,000 a night) similar to the credit card certs that they will be offering (e.g. 1 night at any hotel up to 35,000 points). A slightly less scenario might be a cancellation of the certification and redeposit of the face value points into your account i.e. 150,000 points for the current Cat 1-5 cert. This will obviously be huge for us but the only reason I think this may be plausible is due to IT limitations and not being able to roll out anything new before Aug 1 (with everything else they have to do). So the easiest way would be to manually cancel the certs and re-deposit for points (will be easier to get people to manually do this then to roll out an IT solution by Aug 1). But as time goes on and people figure out the arbitrage opportunity, this scenario is becoming less likely and/or the there will be no notice for us to definitely know and take advantage of it. The least likely scenario would be that the current Cat 1-5 cert becomes a 150,000 point cert for use with any reservation for any # of nights as long as the total stay is less than 150,000 points. Don't see them doing that and this would require the same (or more) IT work than the first likely scenario. |
Originally Posted by HHonors OUTSIDER
(Post 29893091)
And yet RafKa if Marriott would tell us how many points refunded this issue/discussion would end immediately.
Originally Posted by Happy
(Post 29893116)
Exactly!
That is why I said Marriott has NOT yet made a decision on what it plans to do with these floater certs. I have plans to get 2 TPs between now and mid-July. Let the dice roll. /shrug |
Originally Posted by Happy
(Post 29891454)
You got it wrong. Marriott has NOT had a strategy yet. At least not any one that has been made public. So what you said the corporation would change its strategy is not even close to any fact.
The FACT IS, at least up to this moment, Mazrriott has NOT yet adopted a stragegy to handle this conversion. It has several options of which we do not know which direction the corporation would take. Options we can speculate based on some logic and assumption. Still NONE of them is a "known" "strategy". Hence your comment is off base. On the other hand, Marriott definitely monitor these boards. If it sees many are making speculation trying to "Make a Huge Win" on the upcoming conversion, Yes, the corporate would take it into consideration on WHICH option it will take. FYI, the very same blogger has written articles on how to become Marriott P / PPE after August 1st. He wrote about it again last week, as a "reminder". One of the methods he wrote about. was to sign up the Challenges. Guess what? Shortly after this latest article was published, his readers reported that Marriott no longer let people sign up Challenge... Co-incident? I think not. We have seen what "deals" have been killed by this particular blogger in the past... Off the top of my head, the tout of everything 5x with the Chase Ink business card when there was no cap no restriction on what to buy at office supply stores... the tout of getting 7 BofA credit cards to pursuit a Million Points vacation redemption at the Richard Bronson's private island... Of course, such "deals" died shortly after the touts. |
I too plan to grab a couple of TP's before Aug....but I would say there is a max 5% chance of the scenario the blogger promotes being the end game
I have my own ideas on what it will turn into, and I do not expect a windfall. I also expect the airline side of the equation to worsen after Aug (maybe 30% deval ?) hence I want my TP's in July |
Originally Posted by RafKa
(Post 29892235)
And yet, SPG Lurker's quote comes back to haunt (bolding mine):
"Floater certificates, including outstanding Marriott Travel Packages, will be cancelled and converted to equivalent points, credited to the member’s account for future redemption" Key word "certificate" missing there. So no "equivalent points certificate". I'm sure others have asked about 1000X....so right now, I have a (7) night Cat 9 and a (5) night Cat 5 in my account. Based on this, I should expect the certificates to vanish and to receive 270k and 100K points respectively? I am actually ok with that. Much more flexibility. I may order one more TP prior to Aug 1. |
Originally Posted by Mr. Vker
(Post 29894476)
I'm sure others have asked about 1000X....so right now, I have a (7) night Cat 9 and a (5) night Cat 5 in my account. Based on this, I should expect the certificates to vanish and to receive 270k and 100K points respectively? I am actually ok with that. Much more flexibility. I may order one more TP prior to Aug 1.
There are 3 possibilities, I think. 1. A strict read of "equivalent", which would give you the points you suggest. 2. A loose read of "equivalent" where they give the same number of points as you currently get in the old program for a voluntary return, e.g. just 45K for a 7 night cat 5. 3. A new cert of approximately matching value, possible if Lurker himself was misinformed. Many on this forum have strong beliefs about which of these will occur. I suspect we'll only know for sure come August. |
Originally Posted by swag
(Post 29894544)
I wouldn't "expect" anything in particular at this point.
There are 3 possibilities, I think. 1. A strict read of "equivalent", which would give you the points you suggest. 2. A loose read of "equivalent" where they give the same number of points as you currently get in the old program for a voluntary return, e.g. just 45K for a 7 night cat 5. 3. A new cert of approximately matching value, possible if Lurker himself was misinformed. Many on this forum have strong beliefs about which of these will occur. I suspect we'll only know for sure come August. Thanks...regarding your possibilities. 1) Is preferred 2) I would be at Marriott's HQ with a torch and pitchfork. That would be a ridiculous result. 3) I could tolerate. |
How do you buy these, I go to the site, re login cause somehow it forgets who i am :(
Click on the link, get the popup and it asks me to enter a quantity, but I don't see a spot to enter it, nor anywhere to click to complete the transaction. Anything else basically results in the site locking up and i have to close the browser window. |
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