Starwood Lurker

edited

RogerD408

Note to self: NEVER book 25th stay before March 1st.

Not very likely anyway, plus only 14 nights to LTP as it is.

E1A

William,

I take no issue with how SPG chooses to do this however it wishes. Indeed it is your program and you run it as you see fit. It is a great program regardless.

*But* can we at least agree or find common ground that the way it is currently implemented isn't at all what the T&C state. T&C make absolutely no mention of a March 1 inflection date and no mention of an intent to give minimum 12 month/1 year of status. Infact they establish Jan 1 - Dec 31st as a qualifying period, then state that status earned in said qualifying period (with no exception for pre-March) is valid in said qualifying period, next qualifying period and Jan and Feb of the one after that.

Once again, its your program and you can do what you feel with it but we cannot be told that this is indeed what the T&C mean because they quite clearly indicate something else in their current written form.

Supatight's example is a very stark example of what the current implementation can lead to:

He stays 25 times in 2014, his status validity is thus till Feb 2016
He stays 25 times in Jan/Feb 2015, his status validity is still only till Feb 2016.
He does not stay past Feb 2015 in the belief the T&C have him covered, he loses status next year.

His 25 stays in Jan/Feb 2015 counted for essentially nothing then...He had the Feb 2016 expiry covered by this stays from 2014 anyway. What did staying an extra Platinum worth give him in terms of status validity?
According to the terms, he qualified in the next qualifying period (Jan 1 - Dec 31 2015) thereby effectively he should have status not only throughout 2016 but till Feb 2017.

But he did renew it in the current 'calendar year' of 2015. Calendar year is Jan-Dec, he stayed in Jan-Feb thereby in the calendar year, this however did not move his needle from the current expiration date. He had his elite status for a complete year from his 2014 stays but you entirely wiped his record of his 2015 stays! It increasingly seems SPG's own interpretation of calendar year is March-December. There is an inconsistency here in the things being told to Supatight

Starwood Lurker

No worries. I wanted to check my understanding as I have always known it to be as posted in 2012 and I was told this today:

"If someone earns status in 2015- they keep for the year earned and the next year. So expiration should be 2017. If they are downgraded or given under other circumstances it would be different."

So, I don't know if the programming was updated to account for this and that is when the T&C's were changed to match or if I just did not have a clear handle on it from the beginning, but I apologize for any misunderstanding this has created. I've gone back and edited my posts accordingly.

As such, I guess now we know that the T&C's do not require any adjustment, but I should probably do better at getting things right the first time. And, if it takes a little longer to get the answer, so be it.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

RogerD408

William, thank you for doing the follow-up and letting us know. Any chance since this has been brought up with some Plat agents that they will be "reminded" of this as well? It gets frustrating if you have to keep calling back in to find someone that actually knows the rules and is not relying upon old knowledge or just plain making rules.

Maybe do like the airlines do and have different check points so we can ask if they have info Juliet knowing they are up to date?

E1A

Ok wow, we really moved forward.
Now for some housekeeping.

William,

What in your opinion is the best way to proceed with this since I just spoke to someone at corporate today (I'm guessing I'm now 4 levels up) and there is still confusion amongst the ranks. If memory serves me right, the T&C have been this way for the better part of at least half a decade (I could very well be wrong).

E1A

Tell me more about this. Tell me EVERYTHING about this. Sounds like some verification system to check how recent their understanding of amendments and revisions is

Starwood Lurker

There was a different version in 2012. But, the point is well-taken and the situation is being reviewed by the SPG corporate office and they will decide if anything needs to augmented going forward.

Again, my apologies for adding anything misleading to the discussion.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

RogerD408

Pilots use this scheme to make sure they have the latest airport info. If you listen to ATC they will say "Information Romeo is current" or the pilots will say they have Info Charlie to indicate the last report they've received. Everytime they update the airport info recording, they update the level.

It's tough dealing with people that aren't as up to date as customers. I once had a call into a rep about a missing posting and I was told quite confidently that they would have never implemented a program such as I was requesting. Knowing I was right, I asked for a supervisor to which she responded she WAS a supervisor. I then asked for her supervisor. She went away for about five minutes and came back saying she just returned from maternity leave and hadn't caught up with her emails and found what I was requesting. Being the nice guy I am, I let it drop there. But there was no way she should have been put on the phones without being current!

Starwood Lurker

Well, for my part, I've asked that this scenario be added to our intranet training document on the subject of expiration dates so that this example is added to it.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

E1A

Fantastic, this is what will bring about the broad change in awareness I believe. Glad to see you guys move this fast.

jibi

Just for our records, here are the T&Cs from [at least] 2008 (likely 2006 based on the example) through March 2012:

stargold

Wow, I didn't expect there to be such an extensive discussion after I posted.

To me, at least qualifying the hard way, there is no doubt that status earned at any point in 2015 should be valid through Feb 2017. This is consistent with the T&Cs. If they were to tell me that I have to stay another 50 nights between March and December 2015 in order to requalify for 2016, I would not have been very happy.

Status challenges are something else and I concede that SPG can do anything they want with that, i.e. make it only valid through an extra calendar year if qualifying after a certain point within the year.

LIH Prem

we'd have to go back to the original discussion for the apology.

don't really want to go there, but what I got out of it was that if you qualified in Jan/Feb, initially your status would only reflect the 1 year/12 months thing showing an expiration date at the end of the following Feb, however at the end of the year (or some point during the year), the program would notice you requalified with 50 nights or 25 stays during the calendar year (your stay and night count isn't reset at the end of Feb/beginning of March) and consider that requalification met and extend your status for another year.

It was very odd the way you were explaining it, but it was probably the way it was implemented IIRC.

At the end of the day (if you ignore the weird implementation bits) I believe it always worked the way from an end user perspective, but there might have been a period of time where your online status showed an earlier end date than it should have if you (re)qualified in Jan/Feb, but that ended up being adjusted later.

-David

stargold

^^ Makes sense, and sounds perfectly plausible.