I have booked a trip to Hawaii and am also staying in LA overnight. In Hawaii I am using points and in LA I am using the e-certificate I received for signing up for Premier Visa Signature Card. My points award confirmation states both "The hotel reward e-certificate(s) will be accessible at your hotel upon check-in. You will not receive a certificate by mail. All you have to do is arrive for your stay" but down lower it says when you check-in "Please be prepared to turn in your incentive stay certifcate"? Similar message when I used the Free Night E-Certificate it states that a paper certificate will not be issued. A little stressed that I'll get all the way there and they'll ask for some kind of paper copy!!!

When you made your reward reservation did you check the box next to the statement:
I already have a reward certificate valid for this hotel category and length of stay. Do NOT order an e-certificate or deduct points from my account.

By default the box is not selected and an e-certificate is issued. In the case of your free night certificate you should have selected this box when making your free night reward reservation since you already have paper certificate.

If you are now wondering if you checked the box, then go to the Change/Cancel Reservations link to look up your reservations. Next to the reservation click on view details. If you did NOT order a reward e-certificate then the following will be displayed in red up near the top of the page:
Please note that you have not yet ordered an e-certificate for this reservation.

Your Hawaii reservation should not have the above notice IF YOU REQUESTED THE REWARD E-CERTIFICATE WHEN YOU BOOKED THE RESERVATION. If you called MR after booking the reservation and they issued the reward e-certificate, then that message will still be displayed. Don't fret, that is normal.

To check to see what e-certificates have been issued click on Marriott Rewards, then click on Account Activity >>, then about half way down the page click on view a list of currently ordered certificates.

If a reward e-certificate has not been issued for your Hawaii stay then call MR and have them issue one.

If you did get an e-certificate for the one night stays (it will have points associated with it) by mistake and want it removed and the points for it redeposited then call MR and explain the situation to them and have the points redeposited. Note that you may see a free night Cat 4/5 certificate listed in your account which documents the paper certificate for the free stay. You still need to take that paper certificate with you and DO NOT have MR remove the electronic documentation of that cert.

Thanks for the info!!! Very interesting turn of events, I hit the confirm e-certificate for my Free Category 4 stay and it docked 20,000 points from my account instead of using the VISA cert. So I called Marriott and they told me that I couldn't use my cert because it was outside the 6-months. The card was issued on the 12th of March and my stay is the 20th of September, off by 8-days. Since one of my motivations for signing up was to use it on my trip I called VISA who promptly said tough luck, very rude folks there. As a result I told them to go ahead and cancel the card then, which she promptly said OK and cancelled. Didn't even try and work with me at all or apologize for the confusion.

Since the Premier card comes with a $65/yr annual fee, did you get them to refund that? If not, I would suggest at least trying to get them to do so.

If you are not successful in getting the annual fee refunded, I would then suggest reinstating the card. I know that you wanted to use the free night cert, but I'm not sure that "cutting off your nose to spite your face" will do much for you here. If you have already paid for a year's usage of the card, then you might as well get the use (i.e. points for Marriott stays) out of it.

Just a thought.

Good call!!! I called VISA and they told me I wasn't charged the annual fee. Very perplexing, they spend all this time and effort sending me marketing material to sign-up, they get my business and then turn it away over a disagreement of a week on the issuance date. They were giving me anything beyond what they were planning on giving me anyway. Basically if my hotel stay was a week earlier I would still be a customer.

FWIW, the general consensus is that those cert�s T&C are enforced as stated. So, you were not treated differently than anyone else. That said, I understand that you are not satisfied with the situation.

The only reason I went Premier is for the cert at signup and anniversary. If one is looking at this card think seriously about your vacation availability over the likely timeframe you�ll get the anniversary cert�s and the probable rewards availability of properties you�re interested in to time the application/anniversary. However, as in the OP�s situation, even the best laid plans may be off by a week, tho.

You would think to make it easier on everybody it would be a month to month, such as your 6-month window would be March through September as opposed to a day to day March 12 to September 12.

One more suggestion.

It sounds like you have cancelled the card and didn't get charged the annual fee. Good for you. Now, wait about a month or two, and then reapply. You should get another free night cert, but this one should be usable during your scheduled trip.