Oh, but they leak stuff to the bloggers, so we're all good, right? ;)

It's unclear how Marriott will actually implement "peak" periods.

At one point, they said something to the effect that hotels cannot have more than 50% of the days of the year be "peak". They probably said that as a way of assuring us that a property in, say, Hawaii wouldn't just call all 365 days a year "peak". But the more cynical view is this: probably 90% of the hotels in the entire Marriott portfolio have a peak season that is much shorter than 50% of the year. Will these hotels exploit the 50% rule to block out half the year as "peak"?

This is an area where I'd have greater trust if Starwood was running the show. They historically were tight on what they called a "special" demand period, whereas Marriott generally let its hotels do whatever the hell they wanted in terms of declaring exceptions and opting themselves out of program rules. The peak/non-peak thing could easily go the same way.

I have a feeling we're going to see a lot of complaints next year about peak award pricing during months when a given hotel is not actually in any kind of peak demand at all. It's just a big stealth category creep.

There was an email pre merger on August 10 telling me about the month long blackout. If after September 18 they haven't communicated and packages still arent redeemable, then its time to get angry.

I agree that Marriott has serious a communication problem since the merger. I wouldn't be surprised if on September 18 parts of the information that has been scattered through different sources ends up being false.

The only thing I saw was from Starwood letting me know the site would be down on the 18th of August.

Well one thing for sure is it's going to be an interesting few months as this all plays out. I've pretty much resigned to the fact that we're not likely to see a satisfactory solution to travel packages by the 18th of September. Then we'll another round of category bumps/peak pricing in 2019 which won't be pretty. I'd love to be proven wrong, but since I'm about to renew platinum I've started moving my spend to Hilton so that I can match to Diamond and then have the flexibility next year after I review the landscape. Gotta hedge the bets!

I'd be shocked if certificates are working seamlessly on Sep 18. People may start to lawyer up at that point if things aren't going as planned.

The only thing that Marriott made clear was the new Travel Package rates that caused a huge run on Travel Package redemptions. That was their plan; get points off the books at a desirable rate for them. It is a pump'n dump scam.

1 - Create huge demand under the guise of needed because of merger
2 - Establish deadline and blackout period
3 - Withhold information (new category map)
4 - Misinform (CSRs telling lies or making things up)
5 - Analyze redemption data after the deadline date and release an optimal new category map to mitigate losses
6 - Use blackout period to let furry fade
7 - Juice media (travel bloggers) to put out all is better posts that are not true
8 - All blows over and you have taken a huge amount of points off books and with your consumers settling for what they got
9 - Hope that being such a huge market player post-merger that your customer defection numbers will be low

Wow lots of data in this thread since I last checked. I have 2 certs - can either be upgraded??

Both are old category 5 - 5 night.

Below is a link to an article from Quartz covering all the issues with the merger and Marriott's top tier customers. Regarding travel packages it has the following:

"Another user started a Facebook page titled Marriott Rewards Fraud, in regards to a conversion error for travel packages. It has handily amassed more than 3,000 followers since August 19, though Marriott told Quartz it has since rectified the issue."

https://qz.com/work/1373177/the-marr...holders-irate/

I see you guys are making a lot progress with the TPs.

I just wonder if there is any DP about NC to another NC movement. Say, I attached a TP to a NC-5 property. Now I like to detach and attach again to another NC-5 property. The two properties had different old categories. I've not seen any DP here. I'm not interested in getting back the original MR points. Not sure if this would be doable after 9/18.

Marriott finally completed one of my downgrade requests from the Contact Us submission form. After a few canned responses, finally got someone to issue me a new Cat 1-4 in exchange for my OC6 and provide a 30k point refund. The nice thing is that I didn't have to make any calls or deal with rep roulette after the wait times.

Request to add to the wiki: A summary / fill in the blank of steps with the syntax and codes to be used to get a rep to convert an OC to a NC?

I think this would help too. Especially if "what do you want to attempt to do" is the first step:

* Downgrade 1 category (OC) and get 30K point refund and the NC based on the new map (i.e. OC8 > OC7 > NC5 +30K refund)

* Upgrade 1 category at the old travel package rate and get the NC based on the new map (i.e. OC8 > OC9 > NC6 @ 30K cost)

* Total travel package refund minus airfare (i.e. OC8 > 135K refund)

Not sure how many "I want to..." starting places there needs to be, but downgrade/upgrade 1 category and the full refund is a start.

Did you contact the department that the bloggers said to email or someone else?