Update 08/26/18: Just a friendly reminder to ask for refunds if your existing books have dropped in cost.
As you should know by now Marriott and SPG are combining in, earlier today the award categories of every property were released from August 1st onwards. 52% of properties will be decreasing in price, previously Marriott had indicated that if you have a booking where the property drops in price on August 1st they would automatically refund the points difference. Unfortunately it looks like that won’t be the case.
If a redemption stay is booked prior to when these new categories go into effect, a member would not automatically receive a points refund should the hotel require fewer points. Please contact us for assistance moving your reservation to new category pricing
— SPG Assist (@spgassist) June 28, 2018
Normally I wouldn’t trust a Twitter account, but this has also been confirmed directly. You’ll notice that at the end they do say ‘please contact us for assistance moving your reservation to new category pricing’. I think the issue is that automating the price difference is too difficult (read: expensive to refund points to everybody), but if you manually ask they’ll do it. In most cases I’d probably just recommend cancelling and rebooking but at some properties that isn’t an ideal situation due to the possibility of award rooms not being readily available.
Edit: wrong thread.
Called Aug 28 to request a refund on a reservation at the Sheraton Maui (was 60K, now 50K). The rep refused to refund because she no longer sees points availability for my upgraded room type (ocean view).
Now, post merger, has anyone successfully contacted Marriott about changing post merger award reservations that have gone up in price/points back to the pre-merger values at which they were booked? I have several reservations which I booked with points using the points advance feature which went up in price for which I need my reservations to be adjusted back to the lower points total at which they were booked. I have been waiting to see if it gets corrected but have a feeling I’m going to have to push it with Marriott to get anything done.
Even though the reservations went up in point prices, I doubt the extra points were deducted from your account. This used to happen all the time with SPG site after prices used to go up in march but reservations were made before. The confirmation would show you the “new price”, but points were not deducted for the difference. Check your account.
They have not been deducted from my account because I did the “points advance” feature. In other words, I made points reservations without having the points in my Marriott account at the time of the reservation, but obligating myself to come up with the points 14 days or whenever before the reservation date (or pay cash instead). The vast majority of my points were SPG points which I planned to use on these reservations once the merger took place and my SPG Points transferred. As I noted above, the required points on all of these reservations increased post-merger (which I knew they would – which is why I made them pre-merger) and now I just want to make sure that nightly award rate goes back to the pre-merger rate at the time I made my reservations (not the increased rates that are currently showing on all of these reservations). Just curious if anyone has successfully gotten Marriott to correct their reservations in similar circumstances and if so, how they did it.
Marriott has confirmed that it won’t increase the price for stays booked this way (The Points Guy has a post on this today). Sounds like reps are currently unable to make the necessary adjustments and are opening cases with IT support for customers who call in about this.
Just saw this. Thanks.
Unfortunately SPG is not yet refunding points at all even if you call and ask. The platinum phone line just keeps telling me to call back because their IT systems haven’t been updated yet. When pressed for when I should call back I’m told there is no ETA. Good luck if you have a reservation at an SPG property… you’ll need it!
People have been getting refunds now
As of this morning when I called the SPG line and as of a few minutes ago when I called the Marriott line, they were unable to assist in changing my Prince de Galles reservation from 360k Marriott points to 240k Marriott points.
Maybe I’m just having bad luck but based on flyertalk reports it seems to be a systemic issue with reservations at legacy Starwood properties.
Add p to droped in title. Just need to get that out there.
Done
Interestingly, I booked a 5 night stay at a Ritz a week prior to the merger. It was a Tier 5 (70K Points –> 85K in 2019) and I didn’t have the points in my account yet – a great feature of the old (and now) new program. The reservation automatically changed to 240K points (5th night free).
In the process of using 2 free night certs (up to 60K points) from the Ritz card and transferring 120K UR points. Won’t lie, a bit of a pain because I needed to call to apply at this point w/ the site not working and already spent 2+ hours dealing with folks.
That said, pretty good return for a last minute Ritz credit card sign up considering it’s Christmas week and the property is over $8K for 5 nights.
All these point scams (travel packages the biggest) are going to wipe a ton of points off Marriott’s books at the expense of customer loyalty. They’re more worried about getting The Book of Mormon in SPG rooms than getting happy customers into rooms. Hope their stock price takes a bath soon.
I’m doing this for booking the Lake Tahoe Ritz for this upcoming winter. It’s going down for now as it’s changing to a cat 8 so I want to ensure I can lock in the lower rate while it’s available. But at the same time almost all of the standard rooms are sold already so needed to lock it in.
I have a couple nights at Sheraton booked last week for early September. It will cost more points/night after the merge since it’s categorized up.
Anyone know if I need to pay more points when checking in or will I still pay the points I was charged when I booked the room(last week)?
Thanks.
You definitely won’t have to pay more than you did when you booked. That’s never the case. But you can’t sue me 🙂
This doesn’t surprise me; you can tell the whole rewards thing is a massive kludge for them already due to the whole e-certificates they have to issue prior to point stays.
I never understood that. What’s the deal with the e certificate? I thought it was something along the line of allowing you to book and reserve a stay prior to having all the points in your account. Is that right?