This is a quick note about Marriott’s elite status buy back program. In past years Marriott has allowed people to use points to buy back their past year status level. As I reported recently, though, this buy back program will not be offered in 2018. In other words, you will not be able to preserve your 2017 status in 2018 by paying with points. See: Bye Bye Marriott Status Buy Back.
The reason I’m writing about this again is that Marriott’s Twitter team told people something very different. For example, check out this series of tweets:
This prompted me to go back to my original source (a Senior Director at Marriott) for clarification. He replied with this:
The promotion will not be continued in 2018. Thanks for bringing the discrepancy to our attention. We believe it’s been fixed so there shouldn’t be any confusion moving forward.
So there you have it. Now @NikoMetsPlus (and anyone else who wants to test this), Marriott’s front line support should have the unfortunately correct answer: there’s no buying back 2017 status.