gregorygrady

Already answered above in Post #5974 :

Now that I will be getting a 90k pt refund for my 3 original Cat 6 TPs, I suppose I am satisfied. That said, as I mentioned earlier, I still think it wouldn't be a bad idea if Marriott gave a 1-time exception to be able to upgrade or downgrade your cert (by at least 1 category). I don't think I would pay the 60k pts to upgrade my original Cat 6 cert to a Cat 7 cert (which would give me a new Cat 5 cert instead of a new Cat 1-4 cert), but at least it would be an option, and would solve MOST of the issues people had of having to guess at what categories the new TP certs would cover. As others mentioned above, it's also now somewhat unfair that original Cat 6/8/T1-3 TP holders are now seemingly able to extend their TPs by 1 year compared to everybody else (granted I win here by having original Cat 6 certs and the ability to extend my certs).

skimthetrees

Today I tried to cancel a res with an old cat 8 cert attached and get the cert returned to my account. Fail. Even after confirming with her multiple times that I wanted the cert returned to the account and asking her to confirm it had been returned she screwed it up and canceled the cert and now I have 135k points instead of a cert. When she was confirming she returned the cert I think she mistakenly saw another cert I had in the account and thought that was it - but it wasn't. Now I am on hold again trying to get it fixed and the new agent is telling me she does not think she can fix it - still on hold while she checks. What a fiasco.

Edit: Agent 2 claims the system is hardcoded to cancel and refund legacy certs when the attached res is cancelled (so if anyone wants points back attach legacy cert to a res then cancel it). Now on hold to get a supervisor to see if anything can be done to fix their mistake.

Explore SE Asia

If you use award wallet, it will have your balance pre merger.

Happy

Please dont blame the first agent because what you are told by the 2nd agent is what exactly how the current system behaves.

It is very ironic that those of us who attached a cert to a booking now as we are being URGED to do so, could not change hotel due to the coding in the system. Else you lose your cert and got back the point refund instead. It is NOT the agent's fault. It is how the system is coded to do it this way.

It has become clearer and clearer to me that, the legacy cert has to be converted to the New certs before it could be used.

Unfortunately for those of you who have attached the legacy certs, now it becomes a nightmare to detach and rebook, Marriott Insider's post from Aug 20th after 5pm notwithstanding. System is NOT ready to handle ANYTHING she said in her post!

For those of us whose certs are NOT attached, if you really want to use it now before the dust settled, you should ask the supervisor to CONVERT it to the new cert. A competent supervisor did this for me on Sunday around 2:30pm - she canceled my Partial 6 and redeemed a Partial 1-4 in the new system, noting the new Partial 1-4 contains 75K value (versus the 45K from an old Cat 5). She was very honest to me that she did not know if the system would allow it and be prepared for failure. We agreed to go ahead. System allowed it. And I have the Partial 1-4 with 75K in my account. The 75K value does not show online but is indeed in the confirmation emails I received. A P870 was canceled, and a QP80 with 75K value was redeemed. I saw the usual 0 pts on a Cancelled Reward and a Negative 75K on a redemption, in the Activity page after overnight.

So if you want to try this route, ask for a supervisor and suggest if this would work. You will get a NEW Partial cert based on the new TP conversion level, and then that cert should be able to book the corresponding hotel. That would be my guess.

Good luck to those who continue to struggle thru this mess. Personally I would just make reward reservation without points on Marriott properties and wait for the eventual solution days / weeks from now. Unfortunately this would not work for SPG properties as right now it seems you have to still use SPG side to book those with actual points in your SPG account, from what I have read.

GUWonder

Smiley90

Honestly don't remember what my SPG points balance was before I initiated the transfer(but after August 18), but my merged points total is my MR balance + 3x the SPG points I had before August 18. So either way, the 3x conversion worked fine for the merger for me.

Happy

That is how I feel too. The whole reason behind the current fiasco is Marriott has been sending up trial balloons to gauge the customer reactions by feeding us the "information" that NONE has come true, even as the latest information on the refund process and the no more lock down - still are misinformation - the company is trying to incur the LEAST cost to get rid of the MOST liability, i.e. the points carried on its book. Until customers revolted, just like the SPG LT PPs revolted, then Marriott would try to make some Ad Hoc solutions that now would cost them even more - just see how the system has already been HARDCODED to prevent certain things that Marriott has promised the customers that are possible - i.e. change hotels, or honor the prices booked when hotels going up.
Corporate Greed at full swing.

Explore SE Asia

If you use LastPass, you need to be careful on how you login. SPG.com redirects you to the SPG page on the Marriott domain. LastPass will automatically choose your Marriott login.

rny321

The reason that I believe that a more reasonable policy for handling legacy certificate could have been less costly is the 50K/night old Tier 1-3 certificates could have initially been mapped to new 50K/night at standard pricing Cat 6. Since the initial plan was not to refund points, it would have been even harder to justify converting a 45K/night old Cat 9 to a 35K/night new Cat 5 than rest of the 8/18 adjustments. In the end, the 9:6 conversion and the 30K refund to Cat1-3 was more expensive than it might have been if the approach had been more fair at the beginning.

Explore SE Asia

Marriott should just allow upgrades and downgrades to the new categorys. They have already burned through a lot of goodwill.

Their competitors are already offering status matches. Credit card issuers are retooling their offerings to pick up the high spend SPG American Express customers. Treating your best costumers this way over the travel packages plus reducing the earning rate by a third on your credit card is not smart.
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Happy

I am not sure I understand what you said - You do NOT remember your SPG pt balance was in your account before you initiated the transfer after the merger, but you can figure out after transfer your Marriott balance is the sum of the existing Marriott balance + 3x the "not remembered" SPG balance?

My understanding AND the actual experience is, SPG balance automatically changed to 3x over the weekend whether one merger the accounts or not.

BTW, did you do a TRANSFER or a Combined Accounts? They are 2 different methods. Before the Merger weekend, Transfer is the only way to move the points. After the Merger weekend, it seems it has been a Combined of Accounts.

On top of things, there are some implication on whether one wants to do the Combined Accounts thing now or later - it depends on whether you want to book an SPG property especially those few that are Suite Only properties. It seems ONLY SPG side could book those as they all require small additional to book the "Upgraded room" from the standard room.

If you zero out your SPG account, you would be out of luck if your desired properties are on the SPG high end side.

OMAAT on how to book the Al Maha property has lots of information in the comment section. Though why would people want to book that property is beyond me - other than it has gone from 80K SPG pts to now only 20K SPG pts (or 60K pts), for a property with $1500 USD night retail price tag, in the middle of dessert near Dubai, fwiw.

OssianBlue

I suspect the hotel cert being hard coded to return a small amount of points is quite intentional--they don't want these to ever be "floaters" again and will require the new ones to be attached to a reservation to be issued.

Smiley90

I'll give an example using imaginary points here:

On August 10th, my balance was:

50'000SPG
100'000MR

I merged (not transfer) accounts yesterday, August 20. As a result of which, I now have 250'000MR.

Whether the 50'000SPG became 150'000 "mergeable" MR points on August 18th I honestly don't remember. All I know is that my combined sum of points today is that it's the sum of my MR balance and 3xSPG balance from a week ago, so there didn't seem to be an issue with Marriott messing up the math of the merger at all. Even my Lifetime numbers appear correct (if not too much....), which I don't think is true for everyone on this forum, so I must've just gotten lucky at least on that front.


FWIW: Al Maha is a beautiful property, I was legitimately considering it for a 1/2-night stay as part of a trip to Dubai. Wouldn't stay there for the entire time, but it's an experience.

Soccerjoshj07

Interesting analysis. I would love to know what the point average is for the OC9 hotels and what the re-mapped to - not sure if it is relevant to the discussion at all It would maybe help signify the difference between the old average (42,400) vs the new average and what you could/should have gotten. E.g. I'm sure Elounda brought that average way up.

skimthetrees

I blame Marriott for not training their agents properly. The first agent was just wrong and the second agent only knew how it worked from first hand experience not instruction from Marriott.

I believe you are right. Any certs reissued have to be as new certs (new categories). A supervisor attempted to fix the problem for me but ended up making another mistake. I had an old cat 8 cert before the first agent mistakenly cancelled it (not her intention, she just did not know how the system worked). The supervisor reissued a new cat 6 certificate by mistake when it probably should have been a new cat 5. This would be fine except the system charged me an extra 30k points to make it happen which the supervisor evidently did not realize. So now they have basically upgraded my old cat 8 plus 30k points to an old cat 9 which maps to a new cat 6. Unfortunately I have no use for a new cat 6. I want a new cat 5 plus 30k refund instead of a 30k upgrade to a new cat 6 which I have no use for. If they gave me a new cat 7 I could use that but I am pretty sure that is not happening. So, it is going to take another hour on the phone to try and fix it again.

The takeaway here is that there is a way for supervisors to upgrade your legacy package one level up. I think the supervisor I talked to made a mistake and was not supposed to do it, and I did not want him to do it, but the system does allow supervisors to do it.