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This is a quick note about Marriott’s elite status buy back program. In past years Marriott has allowed people to use points to buy back their past year status level. As I reported recently, though, this buy back program will not be offered in 2018. In other words, you will not be able to preserve your 2017 status in 2018 by paying with points. See: Bye Bye Marriott Status Buy Back.
The reason I’m writing about this again is that Marriott’s Twitter team told people something very different. For example, check out this series of tweets:
This prompted me to go back to my original source (a Senior Director at Marriott) for clarification. He replied with this:
The promotion will not be continued in 2018. Thanks for bringing the discrepancy to our attention. We believe it’s been fixed so there shouldn’t be any confusion moving forward.
So there you have it. Now @NikoMetsPlus (and anyone else who wants to test this), Marriott’s front line support should have the unfortunately correct answer: there’s no buying back 2017 status.
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not only is this not cool, I hate the way they handled it. I”m actually all set for this year because of a last-minute stay, but if I hadn’t, I would’ve had to do a mattress run for 7,500 points. Not that silver status is that valuable, but I do like to have it to set myself aside from any regular member in case I have special requests.
Sounds like Marriott will be seeing an increase in meeting room bookings…
Gah!
Losing Hyatt Globalist, thought at least I could buyback Marriott Plat as a backstop.
Not enjoying this.
Well, lucky (or unlucky considering I spent hours of my time) for me I had confirmed emails from Marriott wrongly confirming the opposite. And, just like how Matthew from Live and Let’s Fly makes sure airlines follow up on their word, I made sure Marriott accommodated me after countless back and forth with Marriott brass. So I’m covered thru January 2019.
That being said, none of this should have happened. A little more clarification on the initial release, and it would have been a total non-issue.
Well played!
The more expensive option remains though: the Platinum challenge – 9 stays in 3 months.
True. 2018 may be my return to mattress running. See you there?