Never booked a room online before. Do you recommend it?

[jodifla]

I've used the availability tool but have not booked online. I've always done it over the phone.

Can you make sure your banked points are used when booking online? Any drawbacks to online room booking?

 

[erionm]

I book almost exclusively on-line. The process will show you how your points are going to be used for the reservation.

If you have a single contract, any banked or previously borrowed points will be used first.

If you have multiple contracts under the same membership, you can tell the system the order you want the contracts used.

If you have more than one contract with banked points, you have to call MS to get all of the banked points used first.

 

[jodifla]

Sounds like online booking won't work for me then! Thanks for the heads up.

 

[erionm]

Sounds like online booking won't work for me then! Thanks for the heads up.

If at some point in time you don't have to worry about banked or borrowed points, you should give it a try. It's pretty straight forward to use.

 

[lions1995]

The advantage is you can book online earlier than calling MS. So if you think it is a high demand time, room type or booking at 7 month window, it can certainly help. If you need to use various contracts, you may want to consider booking the first few days on line and then calling to add the rest later. Again, only really useful if you are worried it wont be available when you actually reach MS on the phone.

 

[thepops]

The last time I booked online I had borrowed points from 2 contracts (due to cancelling a different reservation) and the system used the borrowed points on both before the current ones just as expected. Easy Peasy!

 

[supersnoop]

I've used the availability tool but have not booked online. I've always done it over the phone.

Can you make sure your banked points are used when booking online? Any drawbacks to online room booking?

Sounds like online booking won't work for me then! Thanks for the heads up.

You get an hour head start when you book online. If that's important to you, then you should use it. You can always call up afterwards to have points reallocated if the wrong points were used for a reservation.

 

[WilsonFlyer]

I haven't called (for a reservation) since the system came online. No reason to anymore.

 

[jodifla]

I did use the online system. Worked great!

 

[AnnaS]

Have used it plenty of times!

 

[DenLo]

I book almost exclusively on-line. The process will show you how your points are going to be used for the reservation.

If you have a single contract, any banked or previously borrowed points will be used first.

If you have multiple contracts under the same membership, you can tell the system the order you want the contracts used.

If you have more than one contract with banked points, you have to call MS to get all of the banked points used first.

We have done it all online and the banked points of the contracts selected were used first. I am pretty sure the system asked.

 

[Granny]

The advantage is you can book online earlier than calling MS.

The other advantage is you don't have to wait 30-45 minutes to get through to MS. Those were the wait times for my last two calls there, and I even waited until late morning to avoid the "rope drop" crush of people booking reservations.

I did use the online system. Worked great!

Glad you gave it a try. I was impressed with the programming for online booking even though it seems to have some glitches from time to time (see other threads on the topic). Now if they would only add a write-in area for requests, that would make it a one-stop shopping experience.

 

[El&Asmom]

We booked a reservation that had banked points from 2 contracts and they were both used first. There were also borrowed points from a reservation I had cancelled and they were used as well. I chatted during the transaction, and the person said the system uses the most "at risk" points first.