Noticed this change on the new look site today:-

If you have not ordered e-certificate(s) 7 days prior to your stay, e-certificate(s) will be auto-ordered for you.

Clicking on the link brings up the following help box

Auto-ordered E-certificates
Which is wonderful - aside from I have a paper certificate for one stay and really, really don't want anything auto ordered! Am I missing something or is it call time...

T

Pretty sure there's a spot during reservation to indicate you have a paper cert.

Call Marriott Rewards Guest Services and let them know you have a paper certificate for your stay and they will note it in your reservation. Also for anybody like myself, who orders certificates well after the point in time they made their reservation, you should call Marriott Rewards Guest Services and have any outstanding electronic reward certficiates connected to appropriate pending reward reservations. I just got through doing that for my 3 weeks at Vail next year.

This new enhancement now connects ordered certificates with the stay for which it was ordered. A big improvement IMO. I was always fearful that the wrong reward certificate might be used for a reservation. Now that they are, or will be, connected to a specific reservation there is no worry.

Is this thing still a problem? Have two upcoming gifted MR stays with paper certificates, both booked on the phone at different times explaining exactly what I wanted to do, both times I gave MR the reservation number, and they are the ones who ordered me the paper certs on the phone. Both times e-certs were then "auto-ordered" for me exactly 7 days out and the points deducted again.

Solvable with a quick phone call, but what is the blinkin' problem here? VERY frustrating and annoying. Two out of two incidents with two different agents (well, four agents if you count the fact that you have to talk to reservations AND MR each time), tells me that this is not a fluke.

SIDE NOTE: If e-certs can be AUTO-ordered for gift reservations against your will, why can't they just be done this way ALL THE TIME instead of messing with the stupid paper cert process in the first place? Seems a bit absurd the way it is working now as this can only be done without your consent ... but if you do consent, it's not allowed .

This makes my head swim too. I booked a few stays almost a year out and as each got down to a week out, the points were deducted and a certificate issued.

However, I made a 1 night Cat 7 reservation for a month from now in NYC (no mention of advance cancellation policy) and the 35,000 points were deducted IMMEDIATELY. Is this new? No real impact but I guess it prevents folks from going reservations crazy if they don't have the points.

Reminds me of the scam most banks are playing now with regards to "Free" online banking. You need to schedule a payment 5 business days in advance, the money is deducted immediately and it might be 10 days to 2 weeks before that payment might normally clear w/o online payment. Nothing is "Free"!

It is a good thing. I just made a reservation for a 2 weeks in Hawaii. I didn't have enough points to for both certificates, but the confirmation e-mail said that if I had not ordered a certificate at 7 days before, they would order it or somebody would contact me to make other arrangements.

It beats having to wait for the points to be there before being able to make the reservation. Kinda like buying on margin... but in a good way.

Not sure why this feature is considered the improvement here... what you're doing has always been possible.

I guess though it's an improvement in that those who are gaming the system now no longer need to call in as it will accomodate this automatically for them; while those who are doing things by the book with paper certs do need to call in to fix the errors. I suppose it's all in how one defines 'improvement' .

Did your email confirmation have a reward certificate number on it? I had one that did and one that did not. I only had an e-cert auto-ordered on the latter, so I think that's one way to tell if the paper cert is properly linked(?) to the reservation.

They're working on e-certs for gift reservations http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=797025