Do you think Sheraton should honor this mistake? UPDATE!

[Charade]

I went online to book a hotel at the Sheraton Safari in Orlando from 4-21 to 4-29 using Starwood points. The following happened twice. I went through the steps to make the reservation and the first screen told me the correct dates and it would cost 20,000 points. The next page told me the same thing. When I hit the "complete redemption" button, it came up with an error page. Here's the problem. The reservation was made but the dates were changed to the 24th to 29th and it dumped my account to zero points. There should have been 15000 left. Calling customer service straighten that part of the problem out but they also told me it should have been 29,000 points, not 20,000.

So here's the question, do you think that Sheraton, SPG (Starwood) should honor the 20,000 point mistake?

I think they should. IMO this is like ordering a 100 page book from Amazon using Amazon points and them sending you only 67 pages. Obviously there was a mistake in the web page but in my experience most times an etailer will honor web page mistakes and then correct the problem for future customers.


ETA:

I received an email today from the Director of Revenue Managment at the hotel and they were able to convince SPG to honor their website mistake and credit my account 9000 points. I was willing to accept that they didn't need to but it's nice to see a company go the extra mile to satisfy a customer's concern.

 

[lsyorke]

Do you have any proof that it said 20,000?

 

[Charade]

Do you have any proof that it said 20,000?

Yep. On the second attempt I printed out each page along the way. I have two pages that say it would "cost" me 20,000 points for the dates I picked. 8 nights.

 

[Honu]

I've had similar things happen in trying to redeem Starwood Points. I eventually transferred all my SPG points to Hawaiian Air to use them.

 

[WonderfulDreamer2]

Yep. On the second attempt I printed out each page along the way. I have two pages that say it would "cost" me 20,000 points for the dates I picked. 8 nights.

Yes, I think they should honor it, but they probably won't. We had Hilton Honor Points that we used over Christmas and they royally screwed us and we didn't find out until check-out. These reward points aren't giving customers much reason to stay "loyal" customers IMHO.

 

[Anewman]

in my experience most times an etailer will honor web page mistakes and then correct the problem for future customers.

Yes most do, but they all reserve the right not to.

If you know it is an "error" since you refer to it as such, I would not expect them to honor it. But it would be a bonus if they did.

 

[lsyorke]

Since you have the proof..I would go higher up in the chain to get the deal. I believe that this is bait and switch. I'm sure if you didn't have the 29000 in the account they sure wouldn't let "You" get away with this!! So you shouldn't let them get away with it!!

 

[katerkat]

Since you have the print out, I would pursue it. I got a $22 a day for two days from National back in December - only by the time it got to my email confirmation, it was $44 for one day instead of two. I don't know when the computer system screwed up, but I only had a print-out of the email, not any of the beforehand steps, so National refused to honor it. They said I needed proof (which you have) in order to honor it.

 

[bicker]

It can't hurt to ask, but I wouldn't expect them to honor anything that is much different from what folks typically can expect to see offered, in the absence of technical errors.

In this case, the reality is that you were owed 6,000 points back. You should definitely get that. If they give you any of the other 9,000 points back as well, consider it a bonus.

 

[Charade]

bump.