Citi Travel Portal Hotel Problem With OK Resolution

I booked a hotel in August for this past weekend Sept 12 -14 in order to use the Citi Strata Elite $300 portal credit. Everything looked good in the confirmation.

I arrived at the hotel Friday night to be informed they had no record of the reservation. We checked my name, the Booking ID and the reference ID from the confirmation with no success. So I called Citi Strata Elite support using the number on the back of my card and found there is no way to get to Citi Travel from there. This required I spend several minutes logging on to the travel portal on my phone in an area with terrible data service so I could search for the Citi Travel customer service number.

I spoke to a Citi Travel rep who eventually referred my issue to another agent I never spoke to while I stayed on the line with the original phone rep who answered my call. Apart from handing the problem off, the rep I spoke to was largely useless and inspired zero confidence. She offered no useful suggestions. Everything she suggested I had already done.

The other agent I never spoke with called the hotel directly and worked things out. For some reason that process took at least 20 minutes. About 45-60 minutes after arriving at the hotel I had a room of exactly the type I booked. We all were fortunate it was available. It wasn't the worst possible experience but it was not good either. Some notes and takeaways:

1. It's always a best practice as a consumer to call a hotel for confirmation after making a third party booking. Not doing so in this instance was my mistake. I've been preoccupied with other matters the last month but I still should have done it. Doing so would have avoided the problem at arrival.
2. Regardless, it's very troubling that my first use of the portal ended with a phantom reservation for which I had multiple email confirmations from Citi plus an entry in my Citi Travel portal account but no actual reservation at the hotel.
3. I have no idea who or what caused the problem: Citi? Booking.com? The hotel? Some software supplied by yet another party? Nobody seems to be investigating. If they are, they have not let me know that they are doing so.
4. Citi has not reached out by email or any other method since that night to explain or apologize. I suppose they could do so tomorrow, the first business day after the incident. The entry for this reservation on the portal simply says "Your case has been resolved and your booking status is as shown below." It's true as far as it goes. It also sounds like they consider the issue closed.
5. I think The Citi Strata Elite help line should have a phone menu item to be transferred to the Travel help line. I understand they cannot offer travel help directly. You also can't put every phone number on the card. But you should not have to search for the travel help number either. This is a somewhat high end travel card that pushes you to use its proprietary portal. Don't make it hard to find how to get help with the portal. Yes, I'm adding the travel number to my contacts, but that doesn't solve the problem generally.

That's it. I'm neither outraged nor happy. I suppose my baseline minimum expectations were met. There was a problem. It should not have happened but it did and problems sometimes happen. It was resolved reasonably well but not particularly well. Meh.