Sorry to cause all the drama here - I was merely trying to figure out if my room guarantee really didn't show up in their system or not....and if not, why....

I did have a nice stay at the place once we got everything squared away.

BTW, I would like to add that the property, without asking, gave me 500 bonus points. This was in addition to the 500 point arrival gift. I guess they wanted to make sure I didn't post something on flyertalk about it or something.

500 bonus points?
That is a bit insulting considering that most FS properties require around 20k MR points a night now.
As insulting as the "new"platinum arrival gift at nonFS properties of 200 MR points.

Look, they didn't have to do it. I didn't even ask.

Better than my fight with Hilton at the Homewood Suites who tried to charge me $200.00 (or was it $250.00, I can't remember now) because my next-room neighbor had a dog that they accused of being mine. I won that one, but haven't stayed a paid night in a Hilton property since.

This does seem a little generous, even to me, and I give people a lot of slack -- unless they work for the TSA! And, just for the record, I have had similar experiences and hate them about as much as the bigguy does.

This employee reportedly stated that no king rooms were available. That turned out to be false, because the OP got a king room a few minutes later. But was the statement intentionally false -- a requirement for it to have been a lie? I see only two possibilities here:

1. The employee -- human, not chimp! -- lied. (By the way, I'm not sure if chimps can lie!) Lying is bad, mmmkay!
2. The employee didn't bother to look. She was too lazy to give the customer what he had reserved and told him that it wasn't available just to get rid of him. Also bad, but not exactly lying. (She might not have known that what she was saying was untrue.)

I agree with all who have stated the obvious: that the OP got what he had reserved eventually. But a less persistent customer would have been disserved by this employee. Marriott should be as unhappy about such bad service as some of us are.

Bruce