Plat room type guarantee question
 

Hi all,

I'm a LT MR Plat. I checked in to a Courtyard in an Arizona desert town tonight - dropped off my stuff in the room, went to dinner, came back and unpacked everything when I noticed the room was on the warm side, enough that I was sweating and knew I'd have problems sleeping if I didn't cool it down. I set the thermostat to "Cool" and turned down the set point several degrees. After 10-15 minutes, nothing happens. Called the front desk and they said they have no maintenance guy on staff in the evenings, offered me a fan. I said that wouldn't do it - I wouldn't be able to sleep with the room as warm as it was, even with a fan. They told me the best they could do was move me to another room with working AC. However, I had reserved a king room and they had none of those left - only rooms with two queens.

I took the room with two queens so I could sleep. What I am wondering is, does my situation qualify for the $50 payment for not providing the reserved room/bed type? From my point of view, the room type I reserved was a King room with working AC. But I'm imagining they might say that they offered me a King room and I turned it down for a 2 Queen room (that happened to have working AC).

FWIW, the "Room Details" description for the King room on Marriott's website does say "Air Conditioned,' so I think it's fair for me to say that was supposed to be part of my "room type."

Anyone have experience trying to get a Marriott property to pay the benefit in a similar situation?

Thanks.

Since they did offer you a room with a king bed (which unfortunately had some maintenance issues), I'm doubtful you will be able to successfully invoke the Plat room type guarantee. You can try though and see if the hotel management will give you the money, but I'm guessing it will be an uphill battle (and one you probably won't win.)

If you do go down the path of trying, the best approach I can think of is that they most likely knew the A/C is out in that room (unless it just now broke or AZ has been very cool recently with no one using their A/C) and they still gave it to you, one of Marriott's "best" customers knowing you very likely wouldn't like it. Of course it may also depend on what the room temp really is (i.e. sitting at 65 but you are trying to get it down to 60 or sitting at 80 and it won't go down any...)

Pretty sad, likely self inflicted situation. Hotels are notorious for installing these overly complicated thermostats that can locked down to limit a range of temps although the display appears to be functioning correctly and no one knows how to correct or override them.

Stick it to them if you can...

I personally would try for a compromise of points (somewhere in the 5-10K range) for your inconvenience. Those should be worth roughly (at least) $50 to you, and hotels are much more inclined to give points than cash.

I'm sorry, but this sentence stuns me. It needed to be isolated and spotlighted.

And the people who are telling you this is not something that would fall under the guaranty and you should expect points are likely correct. You should get however many points it would cost to get that room for one night so you can use them elsewhere.

Classic Courtyard response. Stunning how consistent they are...

Sounds like it's kind of a Grey area, as I suspected.

Would there be any benefit to calling the MR Plat desk prior to talking with hotel management about the $50 to get clarification from them as to whether they think this should qualify? Would be nice to know in advance if they'll have my back if the hotel argues with me.

Your best bet is probably to go after the inconvenience of having to change rooms, and then being stuck with 2 queens when you specifically booked a king. I wouldn't try to go for the room type guarantee explicitly, but focus on the AC maintenance issue and being put in a different room than you wanted. You're probably more likely to get some points than the cash.

Agree.

Cheers.

Just wanted to report back here on how things turned out, in case anyone else runs into a similar situation in the future.. Yesterday, I called The MR Plat customer service number to ask about the room type / bed type guarantee and how it applied to my situation. I told them I wanted to know prior to going into the conversation with the local hotel management whether the corporate office would back me up in my assertion that the guarantee had not been met because the only King room (what I reserved) available had no climate control, thus forcing me to move to a different room type. The CS rep wasn't sure and said she need to ask "higher ups". She came back after a long hold and told me that the guarantee would not apply because the hotel had initially put me in a king room. For clarification, I asked her "so as long as the room they initially put me in had a king bed in it, it doesn't matter whether there was climate control, running water, or any of the other things described in the details for the room type I selected?" and she said that was correct. I told her that made the Plat room type guarantee a pretty hollow benefit, especially if the hotel happened to know a room was not functional aside from having the right size bed. She just reiterated that the only thing the guarantee covered was the bed type.

When I checked out of the hotel this morning, I figured I'd bring up the issue anyway - nothing to lose, and having been in a different bed type room my whole stay, I still felt the spirit of the guarantee had not been met. The front desk person checking me out seemed a bit clueless about the Plat guarantee benefit - she said she'd make a note of it and the $50 would be credited to me. I told her my understanding was that claims for this benefit had to be settled before checkout, and that the few times I had needed to use it before, the hotel had just given me cash on the spot. She called over the manager on duty. I explained that I had reserved a King room but no functioning King rooms were available on the night I checked in, so I wanted to invoke my $50 benefit. She reacted positively and without hesitation, asking me "would you like the $50 cash, or would you like me to credit you with bonus points?" I asked how many points, and she said she could give me 15,000. I said that was really generous of her and I'd gladly accept the points. She said "we want to keep our lifetime platinums happy, and I'm really sorry we didn't have a king room for you". At my request, she gave me her business card and wrote the point amount on it in case there was any question about it later.

So, bottom line, this hotel (the CY in Tempe, AZ) has definitely earned my loyalty for return visits with outstanding customer service. The MR corporate office not so much.

We just stayed at a Residence Inn in Savannah. Reported that the air was not working properly, someone came checked on on and changed filters. This did not work. Luckily, it was cool in the evening and we could open the windows. When we checked out, they credited our account for the bill. Since they could not correct the situation!

Thanks for the update. Much appreciated.

Cheers.