first, I am a HUGE marriott fan and have bought into their destinations program big time. Recently, we visited Ko Olina beach club and attended the normal presentation to see what we could learn and/or maybe being missing out on. We didn't purchase any more destination points because the timing wasn't right but I am thinking that another "chunk" could be useful. After the presentation, the Encore sales rep came out and gave her pitch talking repeatedly how we could buy two weeks for the price one and apply the $$ paid for the weeks toward the purchase of the future points. It was also discussed that these two weeks (14 days) would jump my gold elite status to platinum. It seemed like a good deal AT THE TIME!
I Now find out that the 14 days will not count toward my advanced reward status and that the two week deal was not the truth (it's 8 days/7 nights). I know that I should have paid more attention before signing the paper - that's my fault.
I have called the rep only to not have my calls returned and seem to hit dead ends when I go elsewhere. In short, I WAS DUPPED! This experience has left a bad taste in my mouth towards a program that I am very fond of. Probably, the kicker is not that I didn't buy two weeks of time it is that those days do not count as days toward my advanced reward status. Fool me once, shame on me! It will be an interesting discussion when we attend our point retrieval meeting.