As you all may have known, Starwood Cash and Points rates have officially gone up as of today. I just received an e-mail from Awardwallet notifying that were changes to my current Starwood reservations that I booked months ago on cash and points. I booked the Sheraton Santiago Hotel and Convention Center when it was a category 3 hotel on 2,800 Starpoints and $45 cash. I logged onto my SPG account and found out that my cash and points rate silently went up to 4,000 Starpoints and $60 due to the recent Starwood devaluations. This is hard coded onto my current reservation as I clicked on “Stay Details”. This is a classic bait and switch and I urge every one of you to double check your current reservations even though you booked it months ago.
Hopefully, this is just an IT glitch as the SPG website clearly bumped up my rate to 4,000 Starpoints and $60, but in the bottom part of the “Cancellation Policy”, it gives the $45 forfeiture fee. I tweeted out to @spg and they think it might be a technical glitch since 2,800 Starpoints have already been deducted from my account. My worry is that the hotel will ask for the additional 1,200 Starpoints if this glitch remains in the system.
The hotel won’t even know how many points you’ve paid and won’t care. They get reimbursed by SPG. That happens even if you were charged zero Starpoints. Their reimbursement rate is between them and SPG and isn’t affected by the number of points you pay to SPG as long as an award is issued for the stay.
Exactly. No need to worry. SPG still knows the real price. If you cancel that res, the proper number of points will go back to your account. You have nothing to worry about.
Thanks for the insight Gary!
Looks to be a glitch on the Cash+Points reservations. My all points reservations are OK.
yup – same thing happened to me re: a stay I booked at Tyson’s Corner Sheraton for April. Jokes’ on them – I’m canceling the reservation anyway. Thanks for pointing this out.
I see the same glitch on my cash+points stay. My stay is on 3/29 so I hope to get it sorted by then.
the glitch still hasn’t been fixed but SPG rest assures us that the appropriate amount of Starpoints has already been deducted and we will not be charged the difference
Same thing happened to me, only mine went the other way. The glitch was is my favor. I chose the 4000 pt $60 option of cash and points, but was charged less than that, when I chose the 4 day stay. Told my friend about it, but he was not able to duplicate it.
wow! that’s awesome- glad to hear that