I recently booked a 6 night stay at the Marriott in Aruba for July 08. The website had a room for 200,000 points with no upgrade fee so that's the one I booked. I don't have quite enough points yet so I called the Rewards line to transfer some points from my husband's account to mine. The cs representative said that she would get the ecertificate mailed to the Marriott and I said but don't I have to have all of the points first and she said that it would only be 140,000 points and I had that many in my account. My confirmation that was sent to my email address says that it is 140,000 points. I am worried that I will owe the difference at check in or have to pay cash for the difference. The CS rep assured me that it is only the 140,000 that was already transferred and the reservation has been paid for. Has this happened to anyone else and what should I do to try to confirm this? I called back the next day and another CS rep told me the same thing.

Sounds odd to me, especially with all the problems the new site has been having - but, if they have emailed you a confirmation that makes no reference to additional points being needed, I would:

1) print a copy of the confirmation email

2) write down the names of the CS agents you talked to, the number you reached them at, and the times at which you called.

3) call the hotel directly and confirm they have the reservation. write down THAT person's name, number, date, time of call, etc. (and I know I sound paranoid - but I would not use the 800 number so that it showed on my phone bill :>) ) ask them to send you another copy of the confirmation and print it.

4) I would continue to check every 6 weeks or so (closer as June arrives) to insure the res doesn't disappear!

60K is a LOT of points for an error - but the new elite gold materials have a pretty big typo on them....so better to be safe than sorry.

good luck and I hope you got it for 140!

I would call the Reservations line and ask them if you need to order any upgrade awards. Those are normally 5K each and some upgrades take two of those (i.e. 10K per night). A 6 night stay at a Cat. 7 hotel that requires 2 upgrade certs per night would cost a total of 200K points. That may be where the online tool came up with the point total. The Reservation agent may have only looked at the base hotel award cert which would be 140K and forgot to check any needed upgrade awards.