A Marriott Bonvoy bargain opens in Corfu – Domes Miramare

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• Danyal says:

  6 Mar6 March 05:58

  When are Qatar likely to release their 2-4-1 business companion offer?

  • filipino_chino says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:41

    it’s normally in based on their holidays:

    https://www.officeholidays.com/countries/qatar/index.php

• Holiday Guy says:

  6 Mar6 March 06:32

  Domes Miramare Corfu. My wife and I were thinking about booking this hotel for April but we put off by TripAdvisior comments about the location of the hotel.

  • Mr Dee says:

    6 Mar6 March 06:43

    Agree it’s in a dump of an area as stayed on the same road, would not bother with Corfu again.

• Mr Dee says:

  6 Mar6 March 06:41

  Would not bother with Corfu it’s rally run down outside the hotels, was going to visit here but the Marriott system wouldn’t let me book the place during the merger, so stayed elsewhere.

  The hotel does look nice but the location is not the best, not really anything within walking distance that isn’t run down, you will most definitely need a hire car as you’d be lucky to get a taxi for any short journey and don’t think about the bus as it would literally be a sardine can on their route.

  You will also have to put up with a ridiculous amount of wasps on the whole island. There is a problem with trash on the island and all the bins are over full, so your journey from the airport will not be very scenic looking at all the trash.

  If you do go expect to stay at the hotel for your entire stay, that said if the place is anything like Elounda then it should be worthwhile.

  • sayling says:

    6 Mar6 March 23:31

    Ikos Dassia on Corfu is astounding. Went into Corfu Town on the (free) bus from the hotel and it was a beautiful day out.

    BA often have holiday packages to Ikos hotels.

• TripRep says:

  6 Mar6 March 06:53

  This made me go look up one of my favourite haunts from inter-railing many moons ago. Palaiokastritsa is a great beach for a day trip for any of you folks that like Corfu.

• The Streets says:

  6 Mar6 March 06:56

  I am still waiting for my bonus Hilton points from the last Amex promo in December!

  • Whizz68 says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:14

    You should have received them by now, I’ve received mined a few weeks ago, maybe try emailing them.

    • The Streets says:

      6 Mar6 March 07:19

      Yeap emailed and called both Amex and Hilton

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:45

    From the 50% MR bonus?

    I transferred under this on 29/11 and points have not arrived. T&Cs said 8 weeks so once that passed I chased on chat so I had a written record. Four chats later after constantly being told that it would be resolved in 7-10 days I have cancelled my plat and raised an official complaint.

    I had a call from Amex Wednesday last week who had reviewed my complaint, agreed the service was shoddy, and offerred me £40. Told him I have no interest in discussing compensation until I have the points and the matter is closed. He said he would call Hilton (who Amex keep blaming) and call me back. A week later and I am still awaiting a call.

    I’m calling again today and my £40 will be going up somewhat. At this point I am tempted to buy the points and bill Amex on the grounds that availability is drying up at my chosen hotel.

    • Charlieface says:

      6 Mar6 March 09:57

      Had exactly the same thing last bonus about a year ago. Took me quite a few calls eventually they gave me double bonus as compo.

• Ian says:

  6 Mar6 March 07:32

  OT:

  A month or so ago I booked 3 nights accommodation via American Express Travel. The amount spent was over £200 so it triggered the £50 statement credit.

  If I were to change my booking to two nights and receive a refund for one of the nights, bringing my net spend to less than £200, does anyone know if Amex be likely to come after me for the £50 statement credit?

  • Louise says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:48

    Yes, i cancelled a hotel on the last offer and when the refund hit they subtracted the statement credit

  • Roberto says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:49

    Yes.. someone mentioned in the last few days that they had their bonus clawed back.

    • Matt says:

      6 Mar6 March 08:03

      Amex Related: I booked a BA flight via Amex. BA have cancelled the flight and moved me on to an earlier one. I can’t make that flight and want to be moved to another date. Who do I call?

      • Peter K says:

        6 Mar6 March 08:46

        Ghostbusters?

      • Rob says:

        6 Mar6 March 08:50

        Amex as your contract is with them.

      • Andrew says:

        6 Mar6 March 09:00

        It should be the travel agent.

      • Alex says:

        6 Mar6 March 09:21

        My first point of contact would be the travel agent (closely followed by the ghostbusters, as Peter has already pointed out).

  • TGLoyalty says:

    6 Mar6 March 12:48

    Yep the credit is connected and will be clawed back.

• Bonglim says:

  6 Mar6 March 07:40

  I was having a look and it looks like a reasonable redemption.
  At the same time I noticed the ‘customise rates’ button which I thought was great. Is it new? If not sorry for repeating old news.

  Anyway if you want 5 redemption nights as part of an 8 day stay, you can press that button and select cash for the cheapest days in a combined booking. The redemption days do not have to be consecutive and you will still get the 5th redemption day free.

• Shoestring says:

  6 Mar6 March 07:43

  O/T Did you get a new Virgin credit card last year? Virgin defaulted people to ‘minimum payment’ even if they wanted ‘payment in full at the end of the month’. They have admitted this ewrror their end. Some people ended up paying a lot of interest as money owing built up.

  Virgin Money have now said they will refund you any interest paid, if you really wanted ‘payment in full at the end of the month’. But you do need to contact them and request it. Plus switch to payment in full if you have not already done so.
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/cardsloans/article-6768365/Virgin-Money-customers-hit-credit-card-charges-refunded.html

  • Shoestring says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:47

    Looks like the Daily Mail Money pages got there first again – your essential daily read 🙂

    • EwanG says:

      6 Mar6 March 10:01

      “Looks like the Daily Mail Money pages got there first again – your essential daily read”

      This was in The Times on Saturday but they have a paywall which could explain why you didn’t see it there first!! 😉

      • Shoestring says:

        6 Mar6 March 10:06

        ha ha! https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/virgin-agrees-to-refund-customers-caught-out-by-credit-card-switch-swf7rzvmq

        second in this instance…

        Probably only decided to cave in after the Daily Mail started its campaign, though!

      • Shoestring says:

        6 Mar6 March 10:11

        https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cardsloans/article-6652443/Virgin-Money-credit-card-customers-hit-charges-thanks-minimum-payment-default.html

        Dated 1st Feb – so the Daily Mail got there first

      • EwanG says:

        6 Mar6 March 11:03

        Yup, The Mail first picking up the story but The Sunday Times first to report tat they are providing refunds to those affected!! (I know some here have a dislike of The Mail, let’s not get into that again!!)

  • Andrew says:

    6 Mar6 March 09:04

    The joys of one brand, many providers.

    It never fails to surprise me how clueless some people can be about their own financial affairs. I sometimes wonder how long some could go without noticing a salary payment hadn’t gone into their accounts.

    • Peter K says:

      6 Mar6 March 09:08

      Or that they are paying out a DD to insure a phone they no longer have, as some friends of mine were.

      • Alex Sm says:

        7 Mar7 March 11:11

        Or annual gym memberships which they attended a few times in January in a New Year resolutions delusion and then gave up

    • Rui N. says:

      6 Mar6 March 09:28

      About clueless people, you should also see the many news pieces coming out of the US about its tax season and people that have been paying less taxes during an entire year (after the new tax code was enacted, with new withholding tables), and now are are surprised their refund is smaller.

      • Rui N. says:

        6 Mar6 March 09:31

        Another example: I receive lots of credit cards ads on facebook (I wonder why!). Next time you see one, read the comments and amaze yourselves on people are completely clueless about how a CC works. From people saying that it’s outrageous that Amex can charge 56% APR on the Gold and not understanding why anyone would want a card with that rate, to others saying that to get the 30.000 MR in the Platinum is stupid because you have to get £2k in debt to get them (nevermind that the Plat is not even a credit card, but even if it was).

      • Charlieface says:

        6 Mar6 March 10:03

        Never mind it’s not actually 56% because that includes the annual fee.

      • RussellH says:

        6 Mar6 March 16:53

        And the many people throughout Europe who complained to their payroll offices that their pay had plummeted on the first payday after the introduction of the Euro in Jan 2002.

    • Shoestring says:

      6 Mar6 March 09:31

      But if you thought you’d asked for payment in full each month when you set up the account plus were not getting paper statements, you might not realise the mistake for a couple of months.

      Anyway, sounds like anybody who paid card interest can get it refunded as long as they say that they *intended* to pay everything off each month. Virgin’s IT won’t be able to check whether they actually ticked that box or not at a/c set-up.

      • Shoestring says:

        6 Mar6 March 10:28

        and I see now there was no box to tick, Virgin hid the fact that you needed to ring them up to switch from minimum payment to full payment.

        that *is* misleading, no wonder people felt a bit cheated

  • Alan says:

    6 Mar6 March 09:39

    This was mentioned in the comments on HfP a few weeks ago

    • Rui N. says:

      6 Mar6 March 10:20

      @Charlieface, for me (and I’m guessing for 99% of the readers of this website) it could be 5600% for all I/we’d care.

  • the_real_a says:

    6 Mar6 March 13:05

    Virgin Money are getting a rude awakening of the expectation of the more affluent customer, as well as their propensity to make Ombudsmen complaints (which get shoved in front the noses of executives)

  • Chas says:

    6 Mar6 March 14:37

    If you get an interest rate refund from Virgin be very wary of how they apply it to your account. When they charge you interest it appears below the line of your total purchase spend, so you (rightly) don’t earn any miles for it. However, when they refund it to you it (wrongly) gets processed above the line as a credit against your purchases total, and hence you lose the miles in the process.

    It took me 90 minutes over 3 phone calls and various escalations before the Customer Complaints representative finally saw the error in the way their systems process interest refunds. She manually added together all my spend for the relevant month on a calculator to demonstrate to me that I was wrong, but in doing so proved herself wrong.

    Their way of making me whole again was hilarious – it is apparently too complicated and time consuming for them to add the missing miles to my account, so they offered to refund me an amount to enable me to buy the necessary miles I’d lost out on (and a few more as compensation….). When I pointed out that crediting me this value on my credit card would lead to the same issue occurring again, she was happy to refund the money direct to my bank account.

    • SimonW says:

      6 Mar6 March 14:52

      Out of interest, how many miles did you lose from being credited the interest back ?

      • Chas says:

        6 Mar6 March 16:37

        It was just under 500 miles. I appreciate that many people wouldn’t have bothered chasing it up for this sort of amount, but I’m a bit of a pedant….. I got £50 back from Virgin, so it was time well spent as far as I’m concerned. Especially as most of the time on the phone to them was spent on hold whilst they spoke with colleagues who also couldn’t understand the issue I was trying to raise.

    • Genghis says:

      6 Mar6 March 15:52

      🙂 Nice story.

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