Marriott offering refunded service charge on award stays at 3 properties

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Some readers who completed award stays at 3 select properties have reported receiving an email from Marriott letting them know that service charges were collected in error on award stays. In order to get a refund, affected members will need to click the link in their email to initiate the process. The subject line of the email is, “Redemption Stay Service Charge Error”.

a screenshot of a hotel service

As you can see above, the three effected properties were:

  • JW Marriott Los Cabos Beach Resort & Spa
  • Courtyard Nassau Downtown / Junkanoo Beach
  • The Westin Cozumel

The daily service charge is a gratuity distributed to staff members and that shouldn’t have been added on an award stay as the email notes.

In my opinion, Marriott’s email is essentially saying you were errantly charged and you have to take the initiative to ask for your money back. I know it is a tough time in the hospitality industry and that staff don’t deserve to be punished for Marriott’s mistake, but Marriott could just soak up that loss and refund people out of their own coffers or better yet make the properties take the “loss” so that they don’t make the same mistake again. That type of solution would have been more proactive in my opinion.

Still, getting notified at all rather than needing to have caught the mistake yourself is certainly better than nothing. It’s worth keeping an eye out for the email if you stayed at one of the listed properties sometime up to April 1, 2021.

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Boonie

Not directly related to this but received an email from them that they had not credited my account some points that were owed. I’m glad they are catching these issues but seems like errors are happening.

BigTex

Uh, guys, is this actually legit? Looks more like a phishing attempt rather than a legit email from Marriott.

The sender is marriottbonvoy@email-marriott.com

Ricky

Legit. I’m in in cybersecurity

Tonei Glavinic

email-marriott.com is registered to Marriott International Inc and redirects to Marriott.com https://www.whois.com/whois/email-marriott.com

Pam

My e-gift cards were emailed to me today. I successfully registered them at
http://gifts.marriott.com/

R C

I received this email also. Just checking – would this statement warrant any reason not to accept the refund? “By accepting this eGift Card refund, you hereby fully release Marriott, its affiliates and Marriott-branded hotels from all liability in connection with the Service Charge error described in this Member Credit Portal. After you click confirm, you will not be able to make any further changes.”

Steve S

So done being #Bonvoyed

Tonei Glavinic

Not only do you have to ask for your money back, but it’s returned as a Marriott gift card…

SNew34

I received the email for a stay from 2018. Nice surprise, as I hadn’t realized it was charged in error. I won’t have a problem spending the credit, but sure would’ve been nice to have straight up cash instead.