Taking action against MR2009 changes
 

Anyone interested in sitting face2face with Mr Marriott, and or joining a group to fight for our Rights as MR members?



Email [email protected]



In your email---Please rate new MR09 from 0-10 (0=poor, 10=excellent), please rate MR08 also, and share the number of nites spent in 08 with Marriott and your current level.



Include your expected change in stay-behavior based on actions taken by MR management. Thx----

I am curious what "rights" you think you have re: MR that aren't given to you by the MR TOS? And there should be little doubt that the changes they made are within the terms of their TOS.

Now, feeling that the changes are a bad business decision is one thing. But claiming that some right that you have has somehow been violated is a bit much.

I travel 50+ nights per year. I get a kick out of people here (I am not suggesting that you are one of them) that think they are somehow entitled to special treatment because of where they decide to sleep at night. There are 10's of millions of people that do the same thing as them and do so much quieter and without expectation of others bowing at their feet.

Changes like those to MR are (in most cases) well calculated business decisions. Very seldom do companies retract these changes because they miscalculated the response. There will always be the noisy few who are high maintenance. Certainly Marriott has taken them into account in their business decision. To them I say - go ahead and move to Hilton. That just opens up more capacity for the rest of us. Rest assured that at some point Hilton will make a similar change that they deem is in their best business interest. After all, this is a business, not a charity.

Go take a peek in the Delta forum...:eek:

Well aware of that. I said seldom, not never.

and why did that happen (over at dl)?

Try the NW forum, even better!:(

Surely it was because everyone kept quiet and accepted whatever Delta decides to do as a fait accompli.

Their customers knew the changes were something that they could do nothing about recognizing it was Delta's perogative and besides, everyone else is doing it, so why fight it. ;)

I like the suggestion someone mentioned in a previous thread (re: one of the airlines) about sending in receipts of your 2009 stays at competitors with the total $ amount spent. Basically shows how much money MR lost due to the changes (obviously other factors play a part as well). Give out MR's fax number and coordinate a day for everyone to send it in.

I have personally shifted 95% of my stays so far to Starwood and will continue this throughout the year. I'm not making a big stink about it, but it's my prerogative. Marriott has only gotten 2 nights out of me this year and the only other nights they will get are award stays.

Marriott has every right to change their program and people have every right to take their business elsewhere if they don't like the changes. Marriott's program may still be better for some people depending on their travel habits and preferences, but for me, I think Starwood fits my needs better given the "enhancements" as well as the end of Premium Pounds.

Hey---

Not sure about your logic---

Marriott misled consumers by posting the changes as "enhancements" and "inclusive of no-blackouts', and the reality was that when the changes took effect everyones banked points (ie. money equivalents) were devalued from 30-50%).

If they had announced that changes were to happen were your points (money) are devalued by up to 50%---it would have allowed all customers to cash in their rewards prior to the change.

I don't understand your 'charity' concept--- and btw I was instrumental in having DL change their program on "choice seats" and roll-it-back to how it used to be...

In the meantime I have been matched by Sheraton and Hilton with Platinum status and will give them a try---

In the meantime, consider not being a pushover---

Did I say do nothing about it? Did I say not to express your opinion? No. What I said was that there is a big difference between doing that and stating that your RIGHTS have been violated as the OP specifically said.

Completely wrong.

Misleading consumers borders on illegal. Marketing sometimes requires consumers to read between the lines. There is a big difference. The same big difference between Marriott changing a business practice that you find disfavorable and you saying that your rights have been violated.

Whether points were devalued 50% heavily depends on how you use them. To say that everyone's points were devalued is nonsense. I've got somewhere around 600,000 points sitting there after two weeks already booked this year. My dream tracker that previously used all of my points now requires another 50,000. Far from 50%.

My point is this....You can't watch hotel rates go up, consumer costs in general go up and not expect "points costs" to go up as well. You can complain about it, that is your right. You can work to change it. That is your right. But the OP indicated that they had a right that was violated by these changes and that is nonsense.

There is a big difference between being a push over and realizing that I there is no right to a free hotel room for 10,000 points for life unless Marriott's TOS says there is (unless they've broken a law).

Bravo on your Delta work. That is how the system is supposed to work. But did you claim a right to the seats you were fighting for then?

In the history of loyalty and affinity programs, how many changes have there been versus how many retracted changes?

They did, as discussed here on FT since October 20, 2008. Many of us did cash in most of our points.

BTW, 50% devaluation is an exaggeration as also discussed here on FT about 3 months ago in the same thread. I think the devaluation ranged from 0-29% depending on what type of reward one was cashing in.

See the thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...-bad-ugly.html for extensive discussion of this topic.

Mod - perhaps this thread should be merged with http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...-bad-ugly.html since this is just a continuation of the same topic.

In general, I agree that the devaluation has been discussed quite a bit. But I do believe at the high end, the devaluation goes over 60%. Take a London property that was a Cat. 7, but is now a Cat. 8. Before Jan. 15, 7 nights would have been 150K points, now it is 240K points. That is more than a 30% increase in points. (And yes, I know that is more the extreme, but it shows that the upper end is somewhere more than 29%.)

I'll also admit that there are some awards that went down in cost as well (i.e. StayAnytime awards), but most of us here probably didn't make a habit of ordering those awards.