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News and notes from around the interweb:
- Chase is reducing the value of points spent at Amazon.com from 1 cent apiece to 0.8 cents. I view this as a tax on the poorly-informed since Chase Sapphire Preferred Card points are among the most valuable and no one should have been spending them at just a penny apiece to begin with!
- Pokémon No Go: A trainer’s tips to avoid arrest or injury at the airport
- Woman called in a bomb threat to Geneva airport to prevent her husband from flying
- Alitalia will let you earn miles in your own account for the flights your kids take
- Hyatt (and Marriott) honor elite benefits on stays booked through third party websites. The Andaz 5th Avenue refused to do this on a reader’s recent stay. I covered it, verified my understanding with Gold Passport that the reader was right and the hotel was wrong.
The hotel reached out to the reader and gave him 25,000 points for failing to honor complimentary breakfast. Not bad. He notes that they asked him to say what would make him feel taken care of. So he named a number, and they agreed. I always find those questions awkward.
Andaz 5th Avenue Room Service: Lemon Poppyseed Pancakes, Bagel and Lox - How La Compagnie Screwed Over One of Britain’s Best Bands and How the Band Still Made it to the Coldplay Tour
- Persistent inflight burper arrested on tarmac. Unsurprisingly, he was believed to be drunk.
A man has been arrested at the end of an international flight for persistent aggressive burping.
The burper is alleged to have “belched at another passenger” and then fallen onto a small child … A passenger on the flight told the paper the man was loud, disruptive “and he wouldn’t stop burping”.
Recently matched to Hilton Diamond and stayed at the St. Petersburg Bay Front Hilton. Our room air conditioner was broken spoke to the front desk twice, all they offered was to have maintenance come look at it. Then on a third call pushed for an alternate room, agent said they were all booked but would award me 80,000 points for my troubles and put me on an ugrade list for the next night. We decided to live with it because we were gone all the next day anyways. No follow up from anyone, didn’t think the points would post but sure enough 80,000 points were in my account the next day.
Bravo to Hyatt on the breakfast. I recently had an experience where I hosted a large family gathering and reserved them two 2-bedroom Residence Inn rooms. When my party of 8 showed up for breakfast more than a half hour before the buffet closed, there was no food and the staff was unable to prepare additional food because their supplies had run out. I had to go out and buy the group breakfast.
Despite being a Marriott Gold, the hotel offered me no compensation when I complained. My complaints to corporate similarly yielded no compensation: they weren’t going to force the hotel manager to do anything, and they weren’t going to do anything. So I guess you never know.
@iahphx Being gold in that situation seems irrelvant. You were a customer who didn’t receive what you purchased. 30 minutes before end of breakfast and no food is a fail.
@iahphx @Jill,
Agree with Jill because Residence Inn has free breakfast for every guest. There is no excuse on running out of foods 30 min before breakfast closing time. The hotel did not deliver what you had purchased as a guest. Being Gold is irrelevant in this situation. The product purchased was delivered with defect.
@iahphx – follow Trump’s lead and refuse to pay the bill!
I was at a Country Inn at Virginia Beach for a few nights on points / credit card certificate.. The microwave tripped the breaker 5 times when I was using it. They credited me for 44K points (one night stay). Not bad.
So this band has the most important job opportunity of its career, and the members decide to take almost the absolutely latest possible flight across the Atlantic to start the tour. With an airline that flies once a day. They cannot go a day or two in advance?
I do not have much sympathy for people who “think” like this.
@Jill @FLL @Jason — Yeah, I was very surprised to get NOTHING for this pretty egregious mistake. What particularly amazed me if that it was SO predictable. It was a weekday with a summer leisure crowd and breakfast ended at 9 am. Passing through the lobby the evening before, I had observed them getting slammed for the free evening snack they were offering. So my hunch was they’d get slammed for breakfast right before the 9 am deadline. So we showed up at 8:30. Still too late! They pretty much had nothing left but toast and some cold cereal. The manager HAD to know about the situation. So when my complaint was rejected the first time, I asked again. Rejected the second time. I asked again. Rejected the third time, I gave up. What can I do? Never stay at a Marriott again? They’re usually more than fine, especially as a Gold.