Marriott Bonvoy has an assortment of co-brand credit cards. One of the benefits of keeping these cards for the long term is a free night certificate issued after each anniversary date. Depending on the card, you can use the free night at hotels costing anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 points a night.
Many people hold more than one Marriott card because you can combine the 15-night boost from a personal and business card to help meet the yearly requirement to keep status. If you’re like me, you might have free night certificates with different point values in your account.
Marriott Bonvoy recently made changes to its program, allowing you to add up to 15,000 points to a free night certificate. This happened right around the time that Marriott also did away with award charts and moved to a dynamic pricing model. Based on my experience, you’ll need to top-off award certificates, as rooms are now priced just above prior levels.
I needed to book a Courtyard by Marriott priced at 37,000 points a night. Considering that the non-refundable rate was $194, I’m getting a good value for my $95 annual fee.
I wanted to use my 35K free night certificate and add 2,000 extra points to book the room. There was one problem. Marriott’s website wouldn’t let me do that. It told me I needed to use my 25K certificate and add 12,000 points.
Unlike what the website says, I have three free night awards I could use for the stay. However, there was no option to use the 35K or 50K awards. The only thing I could do was use the 25K free night or pay for the entire stay with points. I did a quick search and found out this is a known problem after the top-up feature was added. You can’t even call in to have a rep book it on the phone, as their system has the same limitations.
There is a quick and messy fix for the problem. You need to book a room costing less than 25K points (or whatever is the lower-priced free night award.) I found a room for 23K points with no cancellation penalties.
Then I went back to book the original 37K point room. However, I still didn’t get the option to use the 35K award and the only choice was to use the 50K certificate (I was so frustrated at this point I forgot to grab a screenshot).
I was done fighting with Marriott’s horrible IT at this point and went to our other account that only has one 35K free night. It was simple to use the free night plus 2K points to book the room.
There’s only one thing to say at this point. 
(Like the shirt? We found it online! Click here for more info!)
Knowing Marriott’s IT department, who knows if or when this problem will get fixed. As for why the 35K free night didn’t work, I thought the free night from the Marriott Premier Plus Business Card (which is no longer available from Chase) might not be upgradable. However, the Chase website for that card says it’s eligible for the top-up award.
I have a feeling this will be a problem for a while.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.