Interesting points reservation attempt via web, then VOA

[Fasttr]

I had an oddball points reservation issue that I just went through that I figured I would share. First let me say that I have owned Trust points (non calendar year) as well as rented Legacy points (calendar year) in my account. I was attempting to book 8 nights at Summit Watch in Park City for next summer via the online system, which was available. When I clicked on the desired ressie, the system says it has allocated the points it will use for me (it always goes for the earliest expiring points, regardless of Trust or Legacy), but I can click on a link to see how it is allocating, and from there I can re-allocate the points as I see fit (nothing new or exciting so far). Since my desire was to use the rented Legacy points as they can't be banked or borrowed, I clicked on the link to re-allocate, It gives me a listing of about 20 allocation options. I select the one for 0 Trust Points and all Legacy points. After clicking through to review and book my ressie, on the review screen, the system says it is taking all of the points from my Trust points (which is not what I just told it to do). I retry it several times to make sure I am not the moron I can sometimes be...but nope, its not me, its the system.

Now I know that I have run into ressies at times that require Trust points only, but in those cases, when I get to the allocation stage, I am pretty sure it doesn't offer me the ability to use Legacy points for my allocation, which has always clued me in that this was a Trust only ressie. Here, it did offer me the option, but overrode my desired allocation when getting to the review stage. I even tried different combinations (some Trust, some Legacy) but it always defaulted back to using all Trust points. Odd.

So I try to see if its a system wide/location wide event. I go to book an Aruba and then a St. Kitts ressie (as I know they are not in the Trust and can only be booked via the Exchange) and voila, both work perfectly, and will allow me to book using any combo of Trust or Legacy points I want. Hmmmm. Clearly this is looking more and more like its related to Trust inventory control issues specific to the Summit Watch ressie...at least at some level.

So I call a VOA, who looks and sees the same thing, but says she can easily override that on her end. She books it and asks me to look at my account to see if it was done correctly. I refresh my screen and everything is perfect....I have my ressie, and the points all came out of my Legacy bucket and my Trust bucket is untouched.

She did indicate that if I had booked it using my Trust points and called up, they could have reallocated for me. which is likely GregT's trick of calling and having them insert rented points into an existing ressie (which I have done in the past) but that has always required them to talk to IT to get it done, they have never in the past been able to do that "on the fly" on their own.

And last but not least....on my ressie confirm from Marriott, it says the ressie came from the Exchange...so I have no idea if what occurred was just a systems glitch that exists and fortunately the VOA have an override by booking it with Trust and then re-allocating the points on the fly, or if indeed it was a Trust only inventory issue that she was able to effectively pull over to the Exchange for me to confirm the ressie.

Was certainly a weird one.

 

[GregT]

Fasttr,

That's really strange, thank you for posting it. I'm glad it worked out and will be curious to see if we find more examples of VOAs being able to recycle the points for us. I rented some points recently and recycled them into an existing 2016 reservation, and they still needed to be done by the technical support group. I find it very odd that the system required the Trust Points only to make the reservation.

The Marriott system can be a little quirky and never quite sure what we are going to get.

Best,

Greg

 

[SueDonJ]

... I refresh my screen and everything is perfect....I have my ressie, and the points all came out of my Legacy bucket and my Trust bucket is untouched.

And oddly enough, when I look at my booked Summit Watch ressie online now, and click on the points to see where they came from, the system thinks they came from my Trust bucket, so clearly what she did was behind the scenes. ...

Hmmmm. Looking at your account in two different areas, the info is contradictory? In one place it says your reservation was booked using Exchange Points, and in the other it says Trust Points? If that's the case, I'd be concerned enough to keep asking questions until the contradiction is erased.

If I'm confused and that's not the case, I think I'd still want to at least send an inquiry through customer.care@vacationclub.com to try to get a definitive answer as to why the system didn't appear to work as it routinely does. An override is good, I suppose, if it gets you your desired result, but I'd want to mitigate any possibility of the system automatically rejecting/reversing it at any point in the future.

 

[Fasttr]

Hmmmm. Looking at your account in two different areas, the info is contradictory? In one place it says your reservation was booked using Exchange Points, and in the other it says Trust Points? If that's the case, I'd be concerned enough to keep asking questions until the contradiction is erased.

If I'm confused and that's not the case, I think I'd still want to at least send an inquiry through customer.care@vacationclub.com to try to get a definitive answer as to why the system didn't appear to work as it routinely does. An override is good, I suppose, if it gets you your desired result, but I'd want to mitigate any possibility of the system automatically reversing it at any point in the future.

Oddly enough, after posting the above, I went back in and now it is consistent, the history on the ressie now shows the points came from the rented Legacy points. Perhaps the system had not yet caught up or my screen needed to be refreshed after she did what she did. I edited my initial post to reflect the current facts.

As to your customer care email suggestion....good idea just from the perspective that it would be good to know why the VOA was able to do what I was not able to do, and why they system was defaulting back to using all Trust points in the first place.

 

[Fasttr]

New facts. I took Sue's advice and emailed Customer Care, and was surprised at how quickly they got back to me. I actually had 3 types of points in my account....my owned Trust points, some rented Legacy points and some rented Trust points. Because I had 3 buckets, the system was just confused, as it is set up to only show you allocation options between 2 buckets (a known "issue" apparently). Even though I had enough rented Legacy points to book the ressie, and that I had selected the "use only Legacy points" allocation choice, because of my 3 buckets, the system will just default back to what its original selection was...which is exactly what it did.

Good to know about the glitch...and that a quick call to a VOA is a current workaround.

Bottom line is that they are claiming the ressie was already in the Exchange, so it was not a Trust-only inventory issue, which is good as this would have been the first one I had seen inside the 12 month ressie window.

 

[Fasttr]

Even newer facts...after thinking about it more, I have to call BS on their 3 Bucket explanation, as if that were the case, then why could I select Legacy only for the 2 Caribbean weeks that I mentioned in my OP and have those attempts work just fine. Hmmmm. More emails to Customer Care in my future.

Smelling more like a Trust-only inventory issue again...one that that the VOA pulled into the Exchange to confirm for me. That said, even if that is the case, I would like to know if I had booked it with Trust points on my own as she said I could have, and if the Marriott reservation would have then said the ressie came from the MVC Trust rather than the Exchange, if I had called back could they have really re-allocated my Legacy points back into that ressie. So many questions.

 

[JIMinNC]

I had an allocation issue last week as well when I made a couple of 2016 reservations.

Prior to making the 2016 reservations I had 3500 Trust Points (1,750 banked from 2015 plus 1,750 from 2016), 3,250 total Legacy Points from our 2015 and 2016 Barony weeks (1,625 each), and 750 single use incentive points expiring on August 31, 2016. All of the Trust and Legacy points were calendar year. So total available points were 7,500. The 2BR OF at Maui Ocean Club would take 7,450 of those points.

Before making the Maui reservation, we decided to book four nights in HHI at Harbour Point for RBC Heritage Golf week in April, so I rented the 650 points needed for that reservation, giving us total available points of 8,150.

Last Tuesday I reserved Harbour Point, and since the One Time Use Incentive points were first to expire (8/31/16), the system pulled those 650 points for that reservation (instead of the rented points) leaving us with the following for the Maui reservation to be booked last Friday:

1750 Banked Trust points from 2015
1750 Trust points from 2016
100 One Time Use Points
650 Transferred Points (rented)
1625 Banked Legacy Points from 2015
1625 Legacy Points from 2016

For Maui, my plans were to use the Trust Points, One Time Use Points, Transferred points, the 2015 banked Legacy points, and 1575 of the 2016 Legacy points, leaving 50 of the 2016 Legacy Points left over to bank to 2017.

But when I made the Maui reservation, the system forced me to leave 200 of the 2016 Legacy Points untouched and instead forced me to borrow 150 Trust points from 2017. I tried to change that to my original plan, but the system would not allow that.

In the final analysis it doesn't matter that much because I can still bank the 200 Legacy points into 2017, giving me the same 1,800 I would have otherwise had with my preferred allocation. The only negative is instead of having 1,750 Trust Points from 2017 that can be banked to 2018, now I have only 1,600.

Why did the system force that allocation? My only theories were there might be a restriction that you cannot bank less than 200 points, or perhaps the minimum to bank or borrow is 100 points, so the system was simply forcing me to comply with that restriction. I'm not sure if that is the case, but does anyone know for sure why I was forced to borrow the 150 points from 2017 and leave 200 usable 2016 points intact?

 

[Fasttr]

Why did the system force that allocation? My only theories were there might be a restriction that you cannot bank less than 200 points, or perhaps the minimum to bank or borrow is 100 points, so the system was simply forcing me to comply with that restriction. I'm not sure if that is the case, but does anyone know for sure why I was forced to borrow the 150 points from 2017 and leave 200 usable 2016 points intact?

I don't think there are any restrictions as to minimums to bank or borrow. I am thinking your issue is similar to mine in that in both instances, at least part of the desired ressie was only available in the Trust.

My ressie was for longer than 7 nights (8 nights total) and was a checking in Friday and out the following Saturday. Because of that, it was not a simple clean week. Did yours have similar quirks (more or less than 7 nights, not a traditional week based ressie (ie checking in/out mid week or something). Just spit balling ideas.

 

[Bnov]

Thanks for passing along your experience, Fasttr and JiminNC. It sounds like the IT department is still figuring out how to handle the complex point configurations that can come up in the DC point system.

 

[SueDonJ]

Thanks for passing along your experience, Fasttr and JiminNC. It sounds like the IT department is still figuring out how to handle the complex point configurations that can come up in the DC point system.

If that's what's in play, I'm actually encouraged because doesn't it mean that there are safeguards in place to ensure that inventory is being allocated as it should be?

It's a pain in the neck trying to figure out all the nuances but still, maybe a silver lining to finding the oddities.

 

[Superchief]

I had an allocation issue last week as well when I made a couple of 2016 reservations.

But when I made the Maui reservation, the system forced me to leave 200 of the 2016 Legacy Points untouched and instead forced me to borrow 150 Trust points from 2017. I tried to change that to my original plan, but the system would not allow that.

In the final analysis it doesn't matter that much because I can still bank the 200 Legacy points into 2017, giving me the same 1,800 I would have otherwise had with my preferred allocation. The only negative is instead of having 1,750 Trust Points from 2017 that can be banked to 2018, now I have only 1,600.

Why did the system force that allocation? My only theories were there might be a restriction that you cannot bank less than 200 points, or perhaps the minimum to bank or borrow is 100 points, so the system was simply forcing me to comply with that restriction. I'm not sure if that is the case, but does anyone know for sure why I was forced to borrow the 150 points from 2017 and leave 200 usable 2016 points intact?

I think what may have happened is that your 200 legacy points weren't enough to 'pay for' one night. Each night has to be paid with either all trust points or all legacy points. They likely combined your 150 borrowed trust points with current year trust points for that last night. I have encountered similar problems with some of my reservations. The bad thing is that I end up with a few points of each type that are difficult to use or rent at the end of the year.

 

[JIMinNC]

I don't think there are any restrictions as to minimums to bank or borrow. I am thinking your issue is similar to mine in that in both instances, at least part of the desired ressie was only available in the Trust.

My ressie was for longer than 7 nights (8 nights total) and was a checking in Friday and out the following Saturday. Because of that, it was not a simple clean week. Did yours have similar quirks (more or less than 7 nights, not a traditional week based ressie (ie checking in/out mid week or something). Just spit balling ideas.

Nope. Nothing unusual. It was a standard Saturday to Saturday, seven day reservation.

 

[Fasttr]

Nope. Nothing unusual. It was a standard Saturday to Saturday, seven day reservation.

Sounds like Superchief likely has the answer for your situation.

Mine remains a mystery.

 

[GregT]

It sounds like the IT department is still figuring out how to handle the complex point configurations that can come up in the DC point system.

I did get confirmation that 3BR MOC reservations do not have to come from the same inventory unit -- and that it is possible (likely?) that a single points reservation can cross two separate units, requiring a room change.

This was also referenced as a programming issue, resulting from a points overlay on a fixed week system. Not clear how important it is to Marriott to resolve, however.

Bummer for me though....

Best,

Greg

 

[Fasttr]

As a final test, I booked an identical ressie, again telling the system to use my transferred/rented Elected (Legacy) points and again, the system defaulted back to saying it was going to use my owned Trust points. I actually went through and booked the duplicate ressie this way, and sure enough, it did use only my owned Trust points. And when the confirmation came from Marriott, it said it came from the Exchange....so it is clearly some other glitch in the system and not a situation where this inventory was only available in the Trust.

Very odd, that's for sure.

After a couple more back and forths with Customer Care, they really don't know why it was forcing me to use my owned Trust points when I was clearly telling the system to allocate my points otherwise.

I guess we'll have to chalk this one up to the unknown.

 

[jtdillian]

Are you saying if client A sees something available using trust points or a combination of both and then tells client B who is only enrolled (such as myself) that client B can call owner services and say "I know the availability is there" because client A told me so. In that case they will then move the inventory so that client B can get it with his elected vacation club points? And if this is true and client B never knew client A that client B would have never known that there was any availability in the first place. It sounds like there is inventory that only the trust points can see

 

[Fasttr]

Are you saying if client A sees something available using trust points or a combination of both and then tells client B who is only enrolled (such as myself) that client B can call owner services and say "I know the availability is there" because client A told me so. In that case they will then move the inventory so that client B can get it with his elected vacation club points? And if this is true and client B never knew client A that client B would have never known that there was any availability in the first place. It sounds like there is inventory that only the trust points can see

I don't think that was the case in this instance. I was initially suspect that my issues specific to this particular ressie were because at least part of the ressie was only available in the Trust, but my last test proved that the ressie was indeed in the Exchange (where anybody can book it) because even thought it forced me to use my Trust points to book it on my own via the online system... on the confirmation, it still said it came from the Exchange. If it would have said it came from the Trust (which it didn't), then your sad/angry face would have been warranted.

 

[SMB1]

Fasttr,

That's really strange, thank you for posting it. I'm glad it worked out and will be curious to see if we find more examples of VOAs being able to recycle the points for us. I rented some points recently and recycled them into an existing 2016 reservation, and they still needed to be done by the technical support group. I find it very odd that the system required the Trust Points only to make the reservation.

The Marriott system can be a little quirky and never quite sure what we are going to get.

Best,

Greg

Fasttr/Greg
Could you please give me the name of a VOA who was willing to request that the technical support team reallocate the points. I have only 2016 transferred points available and want to make a couple short 2015 reservations. I've spoken with 2 VOAs who told me this couldn't be done.

Did you reallocate the points to have them in your account so you could search yourself? Or did you request a reservation and they reallocated the points during this transaction? I asked them to reallocate the points from an existing 2016 reservation for which I used elected 2016, use the 2016 transferred points I currently have available, and make the elected 2016 points available to make reservations with. I've been unsuccessful. Usually I just say okay thank you and try another VOA, but I have been unsuccessful twice now.

 

[dioxide45]

---Deleted---

 

[SMB1]

---Deleted---

Never mind. The third time is the charm. VOA Dale was very helpful. Success in reallocating the points.

 

[Fasttr]

Never mind. The third time is the charm. VOA Dale was very helpful. Success in reallocating the points.

Glad you finally found a VOA that could make it happen for you. I have never really had a problem with VOA's not knowing how to do it in the past, nor could I have given you a name as I just call the generic number and get who I get, but like anything else, until they have seen it/done it before, its easy to give you the "can't be done" answer.

Having the ability to re-allocate into an existing ressie is a great tool for point renters.