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- Jun 6, 2005
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Somewhat long story I'll try to truncate. Last June 5th I secured 2 reservations for same resort, same date and room view. I received the emails with the unique reservation numbers so I thought I'm golden. Maybe a week or so later I realize only one is showing up in my reservations in MVCI so I get on with Owners Services to try to figure out what the problem was. Well for some reason one of the reservations cancelled without me knowing until I saw it missing. It was a system error so OS said they would find me that same week through other channels. I didn't hold out much hope but surprisingly they called in Sept and said they in fact did secure my week so I was ecstatic. Here's where the trouble started and Marriott dropped the ball and almost created a nightmare for me and my guest. It was actually first OS that screwed up but then the resort had an oversight that would've put my guest in a stressful situation.
The trouble began when OW secured the replacement week. They actually gave me a Bonvoy week apparently not a replacement to my timeshare week in MVCI so I no longer had the ability to submit a name change form. As a result they had to manually do it. I gave them all the info but somehow they grabbed the other duplicate reservation and overrode the name that I had already placed on it, so now I had 1 reservation with a name and the other in my name and had no way of knowing because they just added my name but not Bonvoy so it was invisible to me. I did miss that when they sent the reservation for second guest it had same reservation# as first but I didn't have them memorized and assumed it was correct.
So my guest calls the resort a week before check-in looking to confirm reservation and was told it didn't exist. Luckily it was a repeat customer that knew I wasn't a scammer and called me to ask me to figure it out and that is when this unfolded. I had a week so I thought no problem I'll just get the name changed and went about doing so but again had to get someone to do it for me for this unique situation. I did have to explain the situation a few times and the first person said sorry we cant change so I escalated and got a manager to do it and they did.
So disaster averted, so I thought, but it turned out to be just one of the potential disasters. When I got word the reservation was changed I happened to look at the reservation yesterday and it referenced a rack rate totaling $8000/week that my guest would've have been expected to pay!! I immediately tried to get with OS but yesterday for whatever reason MVCI phones were offline "problems beyond our control". Check-in a few days aways so now I'm concerned. I assume it could all get sorted out but only had a few days to try and the phones were down and i assumed would be mad busy when they resumed working. So I called the resort and they said yes in fact if it wasn't straighten out my guest would expect to pay the $8000.
Luckily although the phone system was down, chat was operational so I waited and worked for someone on the chat team to sort it out and it turns out MCVI did the right thing and sent to the resort what is called a direct bill authorization to bill MVCI for the $8000 but the resort misapplied it so if I hadn't had found that second problem by accident, since the resort never saw the authorization that would've been a stressful situation for my guest. Resort confirmed they have now applied the authorization and my guest will not be billed.
So "all's well that ends well" but its a convoluted tale I thought worth sharing.
The trouble began when OW secured the replacement week. They actually gave me a Bonvoy week apparently not a replacement to my timeshare week in MVCI so I no longer had the ability to submit a name change form. As a result they had to manually do it. I gave them all the info but somehow they grabbed the other duplicate reservation and overrode the name that I had already placed on it, so now I had 1 reservation with a name and the other in my name and had no way of knowing because they just added my name but not Bonvoy so it was invisible to me. I did miss that when they sent the reservation for second guest it had same reservation# as first but I didn't have them memorized and assumed it was correct.
So my guest calls the resort a week before check-in looking to confirm reservation and was told it didn't exist. Luckily it was a repeat customer that knew I wasn't a scammer and called me to ask me to figure it out and that is when this unfolded. I had a week so I thought no problem I'll just get the name changed and went about doing so but again had to get someone to do it for me for this unique situation. I did have to explain the situation a few times and the first person said sorry we cant change so I escalated and got a manager to do it and they did.
So disaster averted, so I thought, but it turned out to be just one of the potential disasters. When I got word the reservation was changed I happened to look at the reservation yesterday and it referenced a rack rate totaling $8000/week that my guest would've have been expected to pay!! I immediately tried to get with OS but yesterday for whatever reason MVCI phones were offline "problems beyond our control". Check-in a few days aways so now I'm concerned. I assume it could all get sorted out but only had a few days to try and the phones were down and i assumed would be mad busy when they resumed working. So I called the resort and they said yes in fact if it wasn't straighten out my guest would expect to pay the $8000.
Luckily although the phone system was down, chat was operational so I waited and worked for someone on the chat team to sort it out and it turns out MCVI did the right thing and sent to the resort what is called a direct bill authorization to bill MVCI for the $8000 but the resort misapplied it so if I hadn't had found that second problem by accident, since the resort never saw the authorization that would've been a stressful situation for my guest. Resort confirmed they have now applied the authorization and my guest will not be billed.
So "all's well that ends well" but its a convoluted tale I thought worth sharing.
