If you have (or had) the Club Carlson Visa credit card from US Bank, you will fondly remember a great perk of times past – get two award nights for the price of one award night. When that benefit was terminated, to lessen the pain, Club Carlson bestowed upon each of its Visa credit card holders an e-certificate for one free night.
Dear Kathy,
In appreciation of your continued loyalty and for being a Club CarlsonSM Visa®cardholder, we are pleased to provide you with an E-Certificate for one night in a standard room at any Carlson Rezidor hotel worldwide.*
To redeem your exclusive E-Certificate:
- Visit www.clubcarlson.com/reservation and select your destination and stay dates
- Enter your unique E-Cert Code: xxx
- Enter the Promotional Code: xxxx
- Click “Go” to find available hotels and make your booking
We appreciate your business, and look forward to your continued loyalty toward the Club Carlson Visa Card
I chose to use that e-certificate for one night in Madrid, Spain this coming summer.
The confirmation email looked like this:
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Total Rate: 0.00 EUR Plus applicable Fees and Taxes * |
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1 King bed, Non-smoking, Standard Guest Room |
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Today, I decided to look at my reservations on the Club Carlson website, and my Madrid reservation now indicates the room cost is €180.00 EUR. No mention is made anywhere of the free night or the e-certificate that was used.
Is this just a bookkeeping matter, or has the free night e-certificate disappeared from my reservation? I don’t know the answer because the Club Carlson customer service is not open yet.
But, there is a lesson here:
When you make hotel or flight or car rental reservations months in advance, save the initial email confirmations and also, go back and look at the reservations online from time-to-time.
By doing so, you can clear up any problems or snafus now rather than later, when they could escalate to even larger problems. You might even want to check rates, because a drop in hotel or car rental rates might work in your favor.
A New York frequent flyer who elegantly combines her passions for worldwide travel, running a gazillion marathons all over the globe and staying fit ... without sacrificing her fancy for good wine and food.
That is strange! I also had to contact them recently because my night disappeared (I had not booked yet but the e-cert was gone). When I asked them about it, they asked if I had another Club Carlson number. It turns out at some point, they changed and assigned me a different number and the e-cert was under another one? Found it, but it was strange that they had given me a different number and that e-cert was not under the account I had originally received the correspondence for.
Hopefully you get it worked out! Maybe they will refer you to the “Office of the President” again! I had that a few times. 🙂
Thanks for the heads up. Called customer service, they confirmed the cert was still valid for my upcoming reservation. They still needed to follow-up with the hotel to affirm the free night cert, so a call to customer service may be warranted if you have this situation happen to you.
I used my free e-cert at the Radisson Martinique in Manhattan last weekend, and a similar thing happened. Online, it showed my e-cert only providing a discount, and I would still owe $135. Both Club Carlson and the hotel assured me that this was only an unfortunate computer programming error. At the hotel, I had no problems.
@brteacher how did you reserved Radisson Martinique in Manhattan with e-cert. I am trying to do so for this Friday the 29th and it showing no availability with e-cert. Did you had to call Club Carlson?
I had the same issue happen several months ago. I contacted Club Carlson and was assured it was internal book keeping on the part of the hotel and Club Carlson. The reservation was updated back to show the zero amount and I also received a confirmation for that directly from the hotel.
Bizarre. I just saw the same thing for one of my upcoming reservations. Will wait a few days to see if it fixes itself. If not, an email to customer service is in order, but that’s not a good thing to people who thought they have their reservations set.
It’s funny – I hesitated to write this as I didn’t want to write about an issue only I had experienced. Now I’m glad I’ve written about this because it seems so many others are in the same predicament.
I am in the same situation with Hyatt. Booked FREE award night and now it showing $255 per night rate (regular charge for that night is about $650). Called customer service and was assured that my award night is absolutely free and system showing an amount that hotel will get for my stay. Not sure if I buy this explanation, but will deal with it after the stay with credit card and customer service if needed.