Rewards Programs

Nothing happened newsworthy today either, so I'm going to have to make stuff up on the fly.

I'm complaining about rewards programs, and how they assign points for items. It seems totally random, and in this case just pissed off a customer.

I'm a member of Mariott reward and collect points when I travell. Points wise I've cashed in a couple of free nights. Not alot, but it has paid off.

Back in January I stay at a very nice Marriot hotel in Jacksonville. Sawgrass Marriot. As part of the conference its room rates was 3 times what I normally pay for my stays in Pittsburgh. For a weeks worth of stay in Pittsburgh I get about 4000 points. So when at first they didn't add my Marriott points for my stay I decided it would be worth commenting to them, asking to make sure the reward points were added. To do this, in Marriotts infinite wisdom you have to actually FAX (yeah I had to go find where our FAX was) a copy of my invoice to them. This seemed stupid since I they had sent me a nice electronic folio, which I could have sent right back via email.

So 2 months later, I check to see that my last stay got 'rewarded' and sure enough my Jacksonville points are on there. 5 days x 2.5 times the price night are worth 215 points.

Good thing I went to all that work to collect.

So anyone else a reward member of a different hotel chain?