Hi all - I have an upcoming reservation at the Renaissance Carambola in St. Croix USVI. I booked the reservation several months ago while it was a category 6 (120,000 points for 5 nights). I don't have enough points in my account yet to have the e-certificate issued but I will in about a month. The hotel changed to a category 7 in the recent category change. I logged into my account today to find that it is now 140,000 points for the 5 night stay. I thought that reservations made before the category change would still be honored at the old rate? Is that not correct? I sent an email to Marriott and almost immediately received a canned response about the category changes and nothing specific about my situation. Very frustrating...

No worries, just call them when you have enough points for a cat 6 and they'll honor the old rate.

Never mind - found the answer

I had this happen last year and it was fixed with a phone call, but.... (rant alert)

The cynic in me finds it hard to swallow that this is accidentally happening again this year. One might almost think that this might be intentional, in the hopes that many people might not realize and/or might not read FT and know that they can call and have the correct points charged. MR could have fixed this in the past year. Are those who don't notice and/or don't call actually charged the higher number of points? That would be very sad. Of course, we don't know, as only those that notice would come here to post.

It's bad enough that Marriott has not fixed this known glitch in a year. It would be inexcusable if Marriott were to take the higher number of points from those who do not call. It would be a PR disaster if it were to turn out this was done intentionally. It's unexplainable that Marriott would put itself in the position for a second year to even have this questioned.

End of rant.

It has been going on more than a year.

Excellent rant - totally agree, I wouldn't be particularly surprised if it was intentional to try to get as much of that liability off the books as possible... I ended up getting a response from Marriott telling me to call in when I have the points available and they will honor the originally booked points requirement. I definitely agree though this should be fixed and a phone call shouldn't be necessary. Certainly seems a bit shady...

I believe the issue is they do not carry the actual rate in the rez but a rate code that is deciphered when time to display. I have seen reports that even if the correct points were taken at time of reservation, a future lookup showed the higher rate but was never taken. A caution here, any changes to the rez may cause the new rate to come into play!

This just drives home the point to keep any confirmations and screen prints until after the stay has posted so you have proof what was supposed to be.