You made the right call. If your cert had already been extended and you only had 3 months left, I'd say use the cert if you had no planned travel before expiration.

I had a similar decision, they took my cc 1-5 cert automatically for a 10,000 night that I did not catch. To my surprize, when I wrote them to "complain", they reversed the cert and took the points, yeah! But after the increase, this is going to be near impossible to use near NYC. Those 1-4 really have to suck now...

Be sure you can book a room you want with the cert before you decide to not use it this time. Actually book something, don't count on availability in July.

Even when a cat 4 hotel was a real hotel and not a unicorn, I would sometimes be squeezed by availability of award rooms if the expiration date wasn't way out.

Perhaps it's less of a consideration now, since the remaining Cat 4s always have award space?

It's not that they "always" have award space. They are probably a Cat. 1-4 because very few members are using awards there and thus they will more likely have award inventory available.

I really think that Marriott heavily uses category levels to control award night usages at hotels. And by limiting the hotels that cat. 1-4 or 5 certs can be used at, they are forcing those to be used at hotels where few people normally would use an award.

I think you are on to something here. Also the annual increase in categories. This is clearly a back end way to have capacity controls without just saying so!