Are "Direct Bill" stays not eligible for night credit/points?
 

Stayed at a Marriott property on a job interview. Hotel was covered by company I was interviewing with. Still had to provide my on CC for incidentals and the gift shop purchases I made.

Marriott Customer Care is saying I can't get credit for this since I "didn't pay for the room". Almost 100% of my rooms aren't paid for by me since my employer picks up the tab with their CC. Trying to understand this logic.

Logic - You didn't pay for the room, you don't get points. The company paying likely has a deal to get some level of benefits/discount/rebates. They don't want to double the benefits they give.

Pretty standard policy on direct-bill rooms for hotel programs.

So every business traveler in the country who's paying for their rooms via their corporate travel agent, or corporate CC shouldn't get points?

My corporate card has my name on it, so I am paying for it. But my employer pays the CC bill.


As far as corporate travel agent (which I don't have experience with)... If the room is paid for by means of direct billing - then no.
We do have a department that will make reservations but it is up to me to present my corp CC and pay for it.

That's the key, does the card have your name on it.

Actually...
 

From: http://www.marriott.com/rewards/terms/earning.mi

So the question is was it actually a direct-bill or a master-bill? Since both can be billed to the company, my guess is IF it was arranged for a single person, that's a direct bill. If it was part of a group that would be billed as a block of rooms, then it's a master bill.

It was directly billed...according to the CSR I spoke with.

I would suggest calling back and quote them their terms stating that direct billing should earn credit. However, even master bills are directly billed to the company in question and the CSR may have misspoke (don't suggest that to them). Unfortunately, there have been many reports of CSRs taking the easy approach and say no to requests so they don't have to do any extra work.

In theory, and some companies do this, when the company reimburses you for the stay, they become the owner of the points and you are required to use them for future business stays.

Most companies don't bother with the effort, and allow them as an employee perk as compensation for the travel burden.

So yes, by the logic it should happen that way. But MR isn't involved in those mechanics, so all they can do is step 1 - award benefits to whoever pays.

Quoting from part of Roger's quoting Marriott's T&Cs (bolding mine):

"If the Member attends a convention or group meeting and individually pays the hotel directly for the room, he/she will be eligible to receive Points and elite night credits for the stay. However, contract rooms, rooms reserved by corporations on an ongoing basis, master-billed rooms are not eligible to earn points or elite night credit."

Not saying that's why you didn't get the credit, but might be - ie, if the company has a deal w/ the property due to employees or interviewees staying there on a regular basis.

I'm assuming you're talking about stay credit, since you would get points for your incidental spend since you used an individual card.

I can understand why you want credit, but guess my personal take is that if the company I was interviewing w/ paid directly for the room & the only thing I had to pick up was incidentals then I wouldn't fight the no stay credit. If they hire you, you can continue to stay w/ Marriott and pick up a stay credit along the way ;)

Something you might want to try if the incidental spend didn't post is fax in the folio showing the incidentals & ask for the points to be credited, since those did get paid for by your c.c. Don't mention the direct bill issue. Sometimes (not always), the posting of incidentals will trigger a stay credit.

Cheers.

Once a year, I attend a conference that typically uses a Marriott. I make the reservation with my cc number, and a reference number for billing. The cost of the room is rolled into a master account and the host pays the cost. I get points for incidentals but no credit for nights stayed. I think I have done this at least 5 times, probably more.

No points to OP. Either the points go to somebody at the prospective employer or are useable by the prospective employer or they've cut a deal for lower rate and no points.

Two pieces of advice:

1. I would not touch this without talking with the prospective employer
2. I would not in a million years call a prospective employer about such a thing.

Who knows, you could get a couple of points and no job. Some companies actually care about this stuff.

This. When my company has group meetings they usually try to put it under one master bill at first but upon check-in pretty much everyone will use their own corporate CC and MR #. The people organizing it know this but don't care (we've asked to make sure it was okay).

Even if OP was able to get the points, I'm assuming it would take away the points from whoever earned them in the first place and chances are they would notice. Probably not an ideal situation for a job interview.

Convention shenanigans
 

"If the Member attends a convention or group meeting and individually pays the hotel directly for the room, he/she will be eligible to receive Points and elite night credits for the stay. However, contract rooms, rooms reserved by corporations on an ongoing basis, master-billed rooms are not eligible to earn points or elite night credit."


For the second time in the last year, it's taking me a bunch of phone calls and emails to get MR to follow its own clear terms and conditions on a convention stay. Apparently the properties involved are treating rooms in the convention block as master billed even though they're individually paid by convention attendees. Running into the same issue twice at properties in two different states, both involving large conventions, makes it look like a systemic problem that MR needs to clean up. It isn't exactly loyalty-enhancing to have to jump through hoops to get the program to honor its stated terms and conditions.

FWIW - I stay at Marriotts w/ large conventions (& haven't had a problem with points posting/night credit. I'm not negating your experience, but it's never been an issue at any of the conventions I've attended/stayed at Marriott. I do sympathize with your having to jump through hoops; not fun.

Cheers.