I recently wrote about a silly IT problem I encountered when trying to transfer points from my boyfriend’s Starwood Preferred Guest account to my own. It wasn’t a big deal and all I had to do was call and get them to do it manually. However, now I’m having another issue and I think the apostrophe in my last name may be to blame again!
I needed to book a night at STRAF Milan for next summer. This was my first award booking through Starwood and I was excited to spend my points! After filling in my information, I kept getting an error message saying either my Starwood number was incorrect or the name associated with the account was incorrect.

Since both are auto-populated with no option to change them, I knew they were correct. I called SPG’s customer service and they thought this was strange since the name and account number I was seeing were correct on their end as well. They thought maybe the award night was actually not available, but this proved incorrect since they were able to complete the booking for me. The reservation immediately showed up in my account. As long as I can still book free nights, I guess having to call is just a minor inconvenience. I’m just glad that Starwood’s customer service line makes it easy to get connected with a representative. I haven’t tried transferring points to one of their travel partners yet so we’ll see if that poses an issue as well.
Anyone else having issues using a Starwood Preferred Guest account online?