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Platinum Guarantee - Walked from Hotel & Unable to Get New Booking - Slept in Car

Platinum Guarantee - Walked from Hotel & Unable to Get New Booking - Slept in Car

 
Old Jul 31, 2018, 12:40 am
  #121  
 
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It happened and you slept in your car. All other advice is moot at this point, the event happened. Full disclosure : I am not a lawyer but come from a family full of lawyers ( US based)

I assume you have the confirmation page with the reservation etc, guaranteed preferably with money or a credit card.
I assume also you can pull up Marriotts terms and conditions regarding guarantee etc.

And understandably, since you had to sleep in your car there were losses involved, i.e loss of work, billable hours etc, since you did not have the amenities of room, a desk to work on, a telephone ( call me old fashioned) and wired internet? Add all these up. If this was me the losses would be in the low thousands if it was a business trip, due to inability to work remotely.

Enough with the hotel blaming Marriott and Marriott blaming the hotel.

Go to the small claims court in appropriate jurisdiction
Sue both the hotel and Marriott, for losses due to their "negligence". Sue for the amount of your losses.
Name both the hotel and Marriott as defendants.

The room guarantee thing will fall into place later.At best you will walk away from that and some $.
They can't give you a room on the night you wanted it. That ship sailed.

Note this strategy won't work for the airlines, in the US, those are covered by the airline deregulation act. A whole other can of worms You may want to consult a CA lawyer, if you know of one.

I would also find out who regulates Hotels in California (if any) and file a complaint re: this incident also.

DO BOTH.
These folks need to learn a lesson. Speaking as someone who has personally been walked before.

Last edited by OpenSky; Jul 31, 2018 at 12:49 am
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 8:02 am
  #122  
 
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Originally Posted by OpenSky
It happened and you slept in your car. All other advice is moot at this point, the event happened. Full disclosure : I am not a lawyer but come from a family full of lawyers ( US based)

I assume you have the confirmation page with the reservation etc, guaranteed preferably with money or a credit card.
I assume also you can pull up Marriotts terms and conditions regarding guarantee etc.

And understandably, since you had to sleep in your car there were losses involved, i.e loss of work, billable hours etc, since you did not have the amenities of room, a desk to work on, a telephone ( call me old fashioned) and wired internet? Add all these up. If this was me the losses would be in the low thousands if it was a business trip, due to inability to work remotely.

Enough with the hotel blaming Marriott and Marriott blaming the hotel.

Go to the small claims court in appropriate jurisdiction
Sue both the hotel and Marriott, for losses due to their "negligence". Sue for the amount of your losses.
Name both the hotel and Marriott as defendants.

The room guarantee thing will fall into place later.At best you will walk away from that and some $.
They can't give you a room on the night you wanted it. That ship sailed.

Note this strategy won't work for the airlines, in the US, those are covered by the airline deregulation act. A whole other can of worms You may want to consult a CA lawyer, if you know of one.

I would also find out who regulates Hotels in California (if any) and file a complaint re: this incident also.

DO BOTH.
These folks need to learn a lesson. Speaking as someone who has personally been walked before.
I support this 100%.... though for the Platinum member(s) impacted, I would recommend working directly through marriott for the $100 + 90,000 points compensation, as I believe this is far superior than any judgement that will be awarded through the court system. All others, I would contact Marriott for some sort of compensation first prior to taking legal action, as many times, they will compensate well, especially since this was a fairly high profile instance of an IT issue resulting in blatant oversale of the property.

Regardless of who is at fault, Marriott needs to compensate all of those that were impacted, as this was HUGELY disruptive to those people. I know how much it stinks to be without a hotel with no option for 50 miles (due to ice storm / power outages in the midwest on another occasion)... and to have that be the fault of the hotel that couldn't accommodate me, I would be seeking my compensation through whatever means legally possible.
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 10:55 am
  #123  
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Originally Posted by pdx1M
You should definitely book in any manner that you prefer. But you should also understand how the system works. The point of the booking system isn't to give the chain central pricing control. For the most part the individual hotel manangements (their revenue manager) owns that responsibility. The central booking system is really much more just a bookkeeper. The hotels load rates (including all sorts of special deals for corporations etc.). There are some national contracts that may be applied on those by the chain (again think big corporations and associations). What you are seeing when you talk to a hotel person directly is that they may well have limited authority from their local management to override pricing in some cases. This is no different from when I check into my favorite place in Hawaii and since they know me, they waive the resort fee for me. So, yes, you can definitely benefit in some cases by working with an agent. But this thread started out with the issue that the hotel and the central booking system weren't in agreement about the existence or validity of a reservation. That could have just as easily happened had the OP called the hotel directly a few hours earlier and had the hotel "make" the reservation. OP would have arrived to find the same problem - if the reservation wasn't entered correctly or some other human error about it made, that could have been just as easily made by the FDA as by some call center person. In fact, probably the least error prone booking path is actually the on-line one where you get to see immediately the confirmation number and results of the booking and can even immediately pull it back up to double check it - all with no other human in the loop to make an error. My point is quite simply that it doesn't make a difference who you book with if the reservation itself gets corrupted. And in any case, it isn't up to the customer to stand in the middle of a finger pointing exercise between Marriott corporate and a local hotel.
Yes, but the point is pdx1M, the OP did find himself in the middle of a finger pointing exercise. The only way to have eliminated that was by booking directly with the hotel. Whether there is as much chance of the FDA getting it wrong or not would then not have mattered. There would still be only 1 person to deal with, the FDA. It is booking with the Central Reservation system that allowed the possibility of being ping ponged between two people to exist.

So it does make a difference who you book with if the reservation gets corrupted. One allows them to ping pong and the other does not. There is no point in saying "it isn't up to the customer to stand in the middle of a finger pointing exercise". The fact is, that is where the OP found himself and that possibility only existed because he booked with Central Reservations.
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 10:59 am
  #124  
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Originally Posted by jjmoore
Just checked back into the Tracy Fairfield Inn a bit ago... had an informative conversation with the receptionist, who was the same person that dealt with the situation last Tuesday. Apparently, there were approximately 10 people turned away that night in addition to @pooker ... interestingly, the receptionist told me that even though the hotel was full, the Marriott website continued to show unlimited availability, and there was nobody on the Marriott corporate end at that hour to answer the line and rectify the issue in the Marriott booking system. The receptionist told me that calls were made quickly to those that were booking that evening warning them to not show up to the hotel because there were no rooms actually available.

I was at the hotel the night this happened, but checked in early and had no idea what was going on.

With all the IT issues Marriott has had throughout the years, this wouldn't surprise me one bit... though I take this with a grain of salt because this is strictly the hotel's side of the story. But the fact that they had to physically deny several others at the desk leads me to believe that this was a Marriott IT issue...... this is my gut speaking here.

I hope MR compensates all those that were impacted. There were people that likely drove a long way to get to Tracy for a hotel since literally everything within a 40 mile radius was sold out.
Well that should put paid to anyone still trying to say it was the hotel's fault. It should also indicate to anyone that at the end of the day, the only one who knows if a room is available or not, is the hotel. Grain of salt notwithstanding, having to walk multiple people certainly points the finger at Marriott IT as you suggest.
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 11:17 am
  #125  
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Originally Posted by catocony
Dulci, don't be condescending. When you call a hotel to "negotiate", they're probably just giving you a rate that's available on-line, like a LNF or Rewards rate, or a long-term rate (even if it's just for a few nights). A lot of us know how to play the game. Try a variety of corporate rates (the front desk never verifies them beyond some government rates), booking for 7 nights when you only plan for 2 then checking out early (they never increase your rate). Things like that. For people who stay in hotels all the time, there are far easier ways to get a better rate than spending time calling a hotel and being difficult with the desk staff.
I read nothing wrong with your comment catocony until I got to the words 'being difficult'. There is no reason for you to assume I am 'being difficult' when I call a hotel. Why did you feel it necessary to add that?

I call and negotiate, do you really think that I would expect that to go well if I were 'being difficult' with the FDA? The exact opposite is in what I do. I want the FDA to become personally engaged in helping me.

As for there being 'far easier ways' to gt a better rate than spending time calling a hotel, that is an opinion, not a statement of fact. You may believe there are easier ways, I believe it is easy to simply make a phone call rather than adopting practices like booking a week to get a lower rate and then checking out after 2 days. There are several words that might be used to describe such behaviour and none of them are flattering catocony.

A lot of you 'know how to play the game' in a certain way, using methods you describe. Some of us know of other ways which do not require, 'gaming the system' which is a very different thing than 'playing the game'. I don't try to game the system catocony, I try to 'change the rules' which is different again. If you change the rules, it then becomes 'your' game rather than 'their' game you are playing.
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 11:49 am
  #126  
 
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Originally Posted by jjmoore
I support this 100%.... though for the Platinum member(s) impacted, I would recommend working directly through marriott for the $100 + 90,000 points compensation, as I believe this is far superior than any judgement that will be awarded through the court system. All others, I would contact Marriott for some sort of compensation first prior to taking legal action, as many times, they will compensate well, especially since this was a fairly high profile instance of an IT issue resulting in blatant oversale of the property.

Regardless of who is at fault, Marriott needs to compensate all of those that were impacted, as this was HUGELY disruptive to those people. I know how much it stinks to be without a hotel with no option for 50 miles (due to ice storm / power outages in the midwest on another occasion)... and to have that be the fault of the hotel that couldn't accommodate me, I would be seeking my compensation through whatever means legally possible.
Frankly I believe that there is more to this story Meg posted than meets the eye. She has had questionable post before IMO
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 12:40 pm
  #127  
 
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Dulci, keep in mind, the front desk at any hotel is not paid on commission. They don't care how much anyone pays, or quite frankly, if any particular person stays at the hotel or not. They don't keep separate ledgers, everything is done via the accounting system which is part of the master reservation system. After your call to the front desk, if you make a reservation via them, you can go on-line immediately and see the reservation. There isn't a separate system. It's not done on paper, in a ledger. It's all done using the exact same reservation system you use when you call in or login via the website.

I'm not sure you understand this.
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 1:41 pm
  #128  
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Just as an update the hotel told me they can give me 90000, but the 100 dollars is difficult since it has to go back to the hotel owners and could take 6 weeks. She offered me an extra 10k points for a total of 100k
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 2:14 pm
  #129  
 
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Originally Posted by catocony
Dulci, keep in mind, the front desk at any hotel is not paid on commission. They don't care how much anyone pays, or quite frankly, if any particular person stays at the hotel or not. They don't keep separate ledgers, everything is done via the accounting system which is part of the master reservation system. After your call to the front desk, if you make a reservation via them, you can go on-line immediately and see the reservation. There isn't a separate system. It's not done on paper, in a ledger. It's all done using the exact same reservation system you use when you call in or login via the website.

I'm not sure you understand this.

you are totally wrong about this, one time during the college world series 5-10 years ago, omaha, nebraska, it is in june when the rooms downtown can be more than new york city or moscow, or some other big major world city, i was at the courtyard in la vista suburb about 20 miles outside of town it is attached to an embassy suites, both john q. hammons properties, i was going down to pay for my night or change credit cards or something at the front desk and the girl said your rate is $59.00 dollars that is not enough, etc... i then got into an argument with her and said my rate is none of her business, the manager was called etc...etc.....
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 2:18 pm
  #130  
 
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also anytime i call a hotel directly almost anytime to book a room, they almost always 99.0% of the time try to transfer me to a central booking person, and i tell them just pretend like i just walked in and try to help me, they are mostly never willing to help me.

i think the op should get his or her 90,000 points plus a whole lot more points plus the 100 dollars, they should receive enough points for a 1 night stay at any marriott, in the system....

also ,it is not so bad to sleep in the car, i do it all of the time, heheheh, the bad part is one's safety in the car, but the op should receive about 200,000 points or so, they would charge one if they did not show up,
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 2:31 pm
  #131  
 
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I'm totally wrong because one time 5-10 years ago (quite a range for something not that long ago), you somehow had a billing issue at a Courtyard and someone thought your rate was incorrect?
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 5:26 pm
  #132  
 
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Originally Posted by pooker
Just as an update the hotel told me they can give me 90000, but the 100 dollars is difficult since it has to go back to the hotel owners and could take 6 weeks. She offered me an extra 10k points for a total of 100k
I think that's a great outcome to a pretty adverse situation... I would be fine with the extra 10,000 points.... take it and run.
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 7:58 pm
  #133  
 
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Originally Posted by dulciusexasperis
Yes, but the point is pdx1M, the OP did find himself in the middle of a finger pointing exercise. The only way to have eliminated that was by booking directly with the hotel. Whether there is as much chance of the FDA getting it wrong or not would then not have mattered. There would still be only 1 person to deal with, the FDA. It is booking with the Central Reservation system that allowed the possibility of being ping ponged between two people to exist.
Originally Posted by dulciusexasperis

So it does make a difference who you book with if the reservation gets corrupted. One allows them to ping pong and the other does not. There is no point in saying "it isn't up to the customer to stand in the middle of a finger pointing exercise". The fact is, that is where the OP found himself and that possibility only existed because he booked with Central Reservations.


One more time - you are acting like there is one person at the front desk who answered the call to make the reservation and that they would have remembered the OP or whoever was at question. You call the hotel and you talk to someone in the front desk or front office and they take your reservation and all they do is enter it into the system. (Actually in a lot of cases you call and the answerer says "sure - let me transfer you to our reservations clerk" and just guess where that clerk actually is. Often they are in central reservations with a transfer code on the phone system that identifies the property from which the transfer is coming so that they can act local and avoid asking you where you want to stay). You show up hours or days later and the FDA says "I don't see a valid reservation". At that point it makes no difference who put the reservation in the system, and if, in fact, the reservation isn't showing then they won't even know (I'm assuming that like most such systems, Marriott's actually records the id of the agent). You are in the same spot either way and the fact that you got their via one route or the other isn't going to matter much at that point. Compare the other case referenced earlier regarding a Hilton FDA who took reservation and just wrote them down. Were those guests in a better place because of who they had called? I understand, truly, that you feel better talking to a local hotel agent to make a reservation. But you are kidding yourself if you think that it will make any difference if the proverbial *#&$ hits the rotating ventilation device. But enough - I certainly hope nothing like this ever bites you and indeed it is very rare that stuff gets screwed up.

Last edited by pdx1M; Aug 1, 2018 at 9:11 am Reason: Grabbed wrong quote
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Old Jul 31, 2018, 10:36 pm
  #134  
 
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Originally Posted by pooker
Just as an update the hotel told me they can give me 90000, but the 100 dollars is difficult since it has to go back to the hotel owners and could take 6 weeks. She offered me an extra 10k points for a total of 100k
Pooker, I think you should your ground on the $100.00. Points are soon to be devalued quite a bit. 15k would be a decent deal, or a Cat 1-4 certificate. If getting the cash is such a hassle, then making them go through the process will reinforce the fact that they screwed up and ruined your night. Giving away points is like Monopoly money to a lot of hotels. Real money makes them reflect a bit on their mistake.
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Old Aug 1, 2018, 12:32 am
  #135  
 
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Blame Marriott!!!!

Just my 2 cents. As an owner of an IHG hotel in silicon valley, I can believe that there were no hotel rooms available during the Op's date. There have been plenty of days like this in the Bay Area.
That said, Its unfortunate and unacceptable the OP had to sleep in the car.
I put the blame on Marriott and the hotel here. 80% Marriott, 20% hotel. Why u ask? Well, Marriott like other brands are similar when it comes to res systems and all the channels that are fed thru their systems. ( 3rd party websites, corporate websites, apps...etc.) Rates and inventory have to be synchronized all the time. I have seen this happen alot. The hotel may have been sold out but the sync didn't take place, or a walk in cane in at the same time the OP made the resi, or simply Marriott dropped the ball completely
#1 - they should have walked the guest with a guarantee reservation at the hotels cost. With the perks.
#2 - Marriott customer service should have given ANY option. (70 miles, 80 miles?) OK didn't mention any details about what customer service was looking at during the call. Did they acknowledge the reservation?

#3- if the hotel did receive the reservation on their end after it was made. Then they should have contacted the guest right away and inform them that there aren't rooms available and ask the OP to contact Marriott directly. (20% blame)

#4 - the next time OP is in Silicon Valley, we would be more than happy to rent them a room at my IHG hotel. Lol...with a 25% discount. ( PM for info)

hope all works out in the end. Ultimately, the hotel will get dinged any money or points credit you receive from Marriott anyway, always happens..
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