It’s a new year and Marriott has found a new way to resuscitate its reputation for Bonvoying members.
Marriott Bonvoy members who earn Titanium status by earning 75 elite night credits in a calendar year get a second Choice benefit selection. One of those options is a 40,000 point free night certificate which, in past years, had a quirk.
The certificate would be valid through the end of the year after the year in which it was selected. Seeing as you could select Choice benefits until early in the new year, this meant you could wait until January 1 and then get a certificate that was valid until December 31 the year after that new year, effectively giving you two full years in which to redeem it.
Marriott announced that policy would be changing this year, but they neglected to implement it correctly. As a result, people who waited to select that benefit until on or after January 1, 2025 received a certificate valid through December 31, 2026.
In true #Bonvoyed fashion though, Marriott has retroactively changed the expiry dates on those certificates without letting any members know that they’d slashed their certificates’ validity dates in half.
I was one of the people affected by this. I’ve earned Titanium status with Marriott for the last few years and each time I’ve waited until January 1 to make my 75 night Choice benefit in order to have a certificate that’s valid for two years. Despite knowing that Marriott didn’t intend for this to be possible again going forward, I waited until the start of 2025 to make my selection just in case Marriott didn’t implement things correctly.
Sure enough, on January 1 I made my selection and my Bonvoy account was credited with a certificate that was valid through December 31, 2026 – two years after the year in which I earned it. That was particularly useful for me as my wife and I are soon not going to be living in hotels anymore, so we’ll have fewer opportunities to make use of the certificate.
I didn’t think anything more of this until we received an email from reader Julian today. He gave us a heads up that despite certificates initially being issued with an expiry date of December 31, 2026, Marriott had silently brought forward their expiry dates to December 31, 2025.
This is a disappointing development, particularly because Marriott hasn’t – as of yet anyway – reached out to affected members to advise that they’ve been Bonvoyed. I imagine that there’ll be a greater than zero number of Titanium members who saw the expiry date when initially selecting the certificate as their Choice benefit and will subsequently not notice the changed expiry date, mentally assigning its redemption to 2026, perhaps to use in conjunction with a 40k certificate they earn in the 2025 elite status qualifying year.
If Marriott does decide to email affected members, I imagine that this will be dressed up as a positive development – an enhancement to the customer experience based on feedback from their loyalty program members. To reduce the time it takes them to put together that email, I’ve crafted the following message on their behalf:
Be overjoyed
O Bonvoy members
No way is this a negative change
Verily I say unto thee – this is a certificate enhancement
Once upon a time you might have delayed redemption gratification
Yet now you will get to enjoy your certificate sooner
Enhancement we say – ENHANCEMENT
Do not reply to this email
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Why is this an issue? You have a whole year to use it. Just use it, Karen.
User experience.
We LITERALLY live in the computer age. When you click something online it should tell you right then and there what the terms are and those should be set in stone. It’s the same like when you walk in McDonald’s and it says $4.99 for the BigMac combo meal – yes they COULD tell you “Your total is going to be $11.99” at the end and you COULD still pay it or refuse based on the false information printed on the menu board. But, why are you putting the burden on the little guy? Companies always get their way, we are very much beholden to their behaviors. They should take that power seriously. Instead you diminish what is a fair criticism and increase the large companies’ power to abuse by mocking anyone who fights against it.
I am one of the ones affected by this and am not happy. I hope Marriott honors this mistake. I would have waited until January 30th to make this selection in order to have an extra month to use it.
A+ poem
I might be with Marriott on this one. Why do you say “The certificate would be valid through the end of the year after the year in which it was selected.”? If you look at the Bonvoy T&Cs, it says the FNC from the 75-night Choice Award would expire on 12/31 of the year following the year in which it was earned. So even if you made your selection in 2025, the certificate should expire 12/31/2025.
Now perhaps Marriott wasn’t applying the rule correctly in previous years. But now they are.
Ummmm, I am pretty sure you are looking at the new terms as noted in the post. Previous years had different terms. I would agree that it would be hard to argue that the new terms should not apply, but if they change the expiry, they need to at least send out an”oops, we sent the wrong expiry” email.
These terms were definitely in effect in December because I was looking at getting my 2023 Choice Award extended. It was issued in Feb 2024 and expired in Dec 2024. I made the argument that it should of at least been valid for a year, with no success.
If you made your Choice Award selection in 2025, these terms should apply.
I certainly don’t begrudge Marriott issuing certificates with an expiry date of December 31, 2025. As mentioned in the post, that’s the date I expected to be on my certificate, but I delayed my selection until the new year just in case they didn’t process that correctly.
My issue therefore isn’t with them giving certificates that expire at the end of the year after in which they’re earned elite night qualifying-wise – it’s that they issued certificates with an expiration date of December 31, 2026 mistakenly, then they changed that without notifying the members affected.
I love the poem lol!
I especially love the punchline. Bravo