Marriott International review: no credit for 3rd party bookings, surprise 7

Never call the customer service at Marriott Rewards. They will call cuss at you!
It is just hilarious how they treat their customers. I am cashing my points and saying good bye forever.

Wow. As someone who works for Marriott, and is just a few desks away from the Marriott Rewards teams, I must say that you would have to be probably the worst customer on earth...and you still wouldn't hear them cuss at you. After all, we do have mute button on our phones.

Now, if you are one of the sexually explict sickos that we get from time to time, yeah, we get to say something like "You're ###ing disgusting" and hang up on you. I mean we shouldn't, it's unprofessional, but it's not like the guy who's saying "I want to **** your **** so hard that you'll bleed" really gets to complain about our customer service. I just have a really hard time believing that they would actually cuss you out, mostly because our managers work alongside us and our calls are recorded AND corporate listens into our calls at least once a day. We would get fired if we actually cussed. Customer Service though--they can cuss and get away with it. Not Marriott rewards.

bellamie is a shill

There is a number out there pretending to be Marriott reservations. [protected] is something that Marriott admits to being affiliated with, and I swear I got if off a Marriott webpage. You won't find out you booked through expedia until you checkout, and there are no rewards points earned. I asked when I checked in if they had my rewards number, and the Marriott desk clerk said yes. If she had explained at that time that I had booked through expedia (unknowingly), I would have corrected the issue before checking in, and maybe not checked in at all.

I have just lost thousands of dollars in Marriott Reward points do to the manipulation of reward categories, which have diluted the value of Marriott Points. Marriott Customer Service people are aware of this. We cancelled out our rewards program and have gone to cash reward points of another credit card supplier

If you are not paying the hotel then why should the hotel reward you? Hotels have to pay 3rd parties a commission. So while you are getting a cheaper rate, the hotel is losing money to Expedia, Priceline, Hotwire, Hotel Tonight...
It's a loyalty program. LOYALTY. If you maintain your loyalty with them then you can usually call and get rates better or matched with 3rd party rates. And even if you aren't a loyal Marriott member you can usually call their reservations line or the hotel directly and most of the time they will match that 3rd party rate (as long as it's for the same room type, dates, etc). They would rather take the cut on the room rate then to take the cut AND pay a commission.

I was fine (maybe a little disappointed) not receiving the points for a booking that my husband made as a part of an event (I didn't realize it was not a direct reservation at the time), but I was pretty torqued that I didn't get credit for the 3 nights towards keeping my Gold Elite status...especially since the check-in clerk specifically called out that info and I hadn't even asked the question. I'm wondering if this has changed because I'm almost positive I did receive credit for the nights for the same event the previous year.

My other disappointment was finding out that when I have two rooms on one reservation - one for my kids - that
I both booked and paid for - I only got per-night credit for one room. A couple of years ago I got per-night credit for 3 rooms. I have been loyal to Marriott, but i'm feeling nickle-and-dimed. Most of my travel is leisure, so I have zero chance of keeping my Gold Elite status with these rules. It's kind of sad because for more than 10 years I have absolutely refused to stay anywhere other than a Marriott property...that's loyalty. Maybe I will find a rewards plan that is more directed to leisure travelers, maybe I won't, but I'm going to look.