I get it! You try and combine two complicated systems and you’re going to run into problems. Launching Abound, by Marriott “hit a climax of problems” the first week of August when Marriott tried to rollout the Abound program the FIRST time. I remember that week well, as the MVC website was down for DAYS. When the website finally became available, nothing appeared to have changed — and I was told that the launch failed and they were going to regroup and try again months later.
Fast forward to November 30th, and Abound, by Marriott officially went live for both Marriott and Vistana Owners. Yes, there were some down times on the website, but owners were able to make reservations, check availabilities and do other maneuvering on the websites. Overall, owners were able to do what they needed to do.
That was 6 weeks ago. It is a different story now and again owners don’t have access to the website consistently, and haven’t for DAYS!! Both the Vistana and MVC website have been down, with a few sporadic episodes of “now it’s working, now it’s not”. Just logging in hasn’t been an option most of the time. What makes this latest event so critical and painful is that owners are trying to pay their maintenance fees and club dues, which isn’t fun on a good day — the deadlines are looming!!
I’ve been trying for 3 days to pay my fees online, and after repeatedly going onto the website and receiving errors and freezing multiple times, I finally was able to make my payments. But I’m one of the few as I am reading all over social media about the many owners who are waiting hours to talk to a real person because of the website fiascos. Promised call backs are not happening. Answers to basic questions are not being given. Needless to say, owners are angry.
I wish I had an answer or solution. . . . . I’ve been told by Marriott that the issue in the software is accepting online payments of Vistana Owners for their Club Dues. In any event, some communication to owners would be appreciated.
What worked for me was accessing the website late at night when there wasn’t a lot of activity on the site. I got a few errors, but hit “refresh” a few times, and it finally loaded my maintenance fee information. I didn’t have any problems after that. You may want to try early in the morning or late at night and see if that helps you. They open for phone calls at 7:00 am EST — if you want to talk to a live person, I suggest you are on the phone at that time.
If you have success with the website/fees payment doing something different than me, please reach out and let me know so we can let other owners know (as it doesn’t seem Marriott has been able to do that for them).
Last but not least, contact Marriott and tell them how your experience as an owner has significantly been dampered by the continued technical difficulties, underscored by the lack of proactive communication to owners about issues which are stressful during periods with strict deadlines. You can contact the Marriott Customer Advocacy Group at 1-800-860-9384 or email them at customer.advocacy@mvwc.com.
Hi Shanna! I really appreciate hearing from you that others are having Marriott issues and it’s “not just me”. I sent an email to customer advocacy like you suggested, but I am totally expecting a canned response from them. It keeps getting more and more frustrating dealing with Marriott and the fact that the collective “we” have spend soooooo much money with MVC and in return we get this lousy service.
Anyway, I really do appreciate having you as an advocate and I’m sure others do as well. Thank you for keeping us updated!
Thanks for your kind words.
Good morning, Shanna! I feel the same as Roni, as I have invested a LOT of money in MVCI over the years. I tried to get into the system, unsuccessfully, a few days in a row. Finally tried to call, but was on hold for over an hour before I was transferred, only to be cut off! No phone call back from them. When I tried the next time, it was about the same length of time on hold, but was able to get thru to a person. Just frustrating how much time I waste trying to do things that Marriott keeps saying should be “easy” and “fast.”
Having just retired from a forty year career writing software, I can honestly say that in all that time I’ve never experience any of my companies rolling out a software change that was not ready for prime time. There had been times when a deployment resulted in a function or two not working correctly, but those changes were rolled back and the system remained up at all times. This was a herculean task for Marriott, but testing should have uncovered these issues long before they decided to go forward with deployment.
Yes, I just received a generic email asking me to call their head office. I’m in the UK!
i asked them to call me … we’ll see what happens!
This has been going on for a long time as I tried to reserve weeks last May and it was impossible … so unhappy with them …I’ve told so many people not to ‘touch them’. I’d rather rent and pay a little more without all the hassle…
I have been trying to pay my maintenance fees online for a week now with no success. I even called and talked to an advisor and they were unable to process my payment. This is ridiculous and MVC is a joke.
Unfortunately, I feel the jokes on US because Marriott already has our money. What recourse would we have, if any at all?
Our recourse is going to be selling our points and never using Marriott again.
First tried to make payment on App then tried the website using was using Safari tried a few times it wouldn’t even let me sign into our account then I went on a computer opened up Chrome and was able to sign in through the website and make our payment with no issues. I keep hearing people can’t login still and I don’t understand how some people can login and others can. I’ve been logging in a few times a week since Dec looking for available dates with no problems and I’ve made a few reservations.
DONT USE APP!
We appreciate this site. We have been having trouble with paying our annual maintenance fee and software issues on their end. We have the top of the line point system and paid our fee online only to find out it was never processed. We then paid again via our bank online payment. It was received but then they tagged on a late fee. Never notified us and froze our account over $72. Unreal. We have been on the phone with them trying to get it removed but instead have been insulted and made to feel like low lifes.
After we take our vacations we already booked we plan to sell our program. Done with Marriott after this.
How would you go about selling? My husband and I are considering the same, but don’t know how to do it without loosing a ton of our initial investment. Thanks for any thoughts.
I am not an expert in selling. I know some owners sell it through RedWeek. I would go to RedWeek’s website and research what you can there. Marriott typically offers lower prices than what you can get through RedWeek. Good luck!!