Yesterday, I was researching accommodation options for Padangbai in Bali for the night. Checked TripAdvisor and decided to book one hotel on Expedia. The property descriptions are usually far better on Booking.com and decided to check it to see if the hotel has property wide wifi. Found that the hotel on Booking.com was 22 cents lower, when all the taxes/fees were factored in.
I have used Expedia quite a lot, but mainly for airline tickets. As the hotel reservations booked on Expedia are not eligible for night/stay credits and points, I tend to book hotels on their own websites. As there are no chains hotels in Padangbai. I could well use Expedia and put their Best Price Guarantee to test.
Comparing Expedia’s Price To Booking.com’s Price
Expedia displays their prices without taxes/fees and you have to click few times before you get all inclusive pricing.
Booking.com displays all inclusive pricing on their front page.
The Expedia’s price is 22 cents higher than Booking.com’s. This may well could be for differences in foreign exchange conversions between Booking.com and Expedia from IDR to USD.
Expedia Best Price Guarantee Terms
Normally, the terms and conditions of these Best Price Guarantees are really long and confusing. You rarely qualify for the guarantee after reading the small print.
Normally, the terms and conditions of these Best Price Guarantees are really long and confusing. You rarely qualify for the guarantee after reading the small print.
I was surprised that Expedia didn’t have requirement for booking at least 24 or 48 hours of your intended stay to be eligible for the guarantee and that there was no minimum how much the difference would have to be. I was booking for arrival in less than 6 hours and the difference was only 22 cents.
Expedia Best Price Guarantee Application
So, when you make the reservation Expedia, the Best Price Guarantee is prominently displayed on the right bar. Once you confirm your reservation, it is no longer there (or anywhere) and you have to use Google to find it.
First, you need to plug in your date of purchase, click that the other website is in English, the price on other website is displayed in USD, and your Expedia itinerary number. If you miss something, you won’t get past this screen.
On the second step, you need to fill out more information. Basic personal information, the price that you paid on Expedia, the price on the competing website, and the name of the competing website.
Once you click submit, you get another screen that your claim has been submitted and it may take up to 48 hours for someone to get back to you.
Expedia also sends you an email confirming the submission of you claim.
Quite frankly, I was sure at this point that they would not process these claims promptly. Of course, if they check the price of the hotel 24 hours after my reservation, it wouldn’t be there, as it would be the day after the check in date.
To my surprise, I received an email confirmation from Expedia seven hours later that the Best Price Guarantee had been processed; Expedia had lowered the price by 22 cents and issued a $50 Expedia coupon.
Expedia Best Price Guarantee Coupon
The coupon was deposited to my Expedia account with May 31, 2014 expiry date.
This coupon can be used for Expedia Special Rate hotel. Essentially, these hotels that you book and pay to Expedia. It is likely that the mark up is the highest for Expedia on these type of hotels.
You can access Expedia’s web page for their guarantees here and the terms and conditions of the Best Price Guarantee coupon here.
Conclusion
I would have booked this specific hotel anyway, so I didn’t have anything to lose by applying for the Expedia Best Price Guarantee being sure that it wouldn’t come through.
$50 coupon may sound as a great deal, but you have to bear in mind that you need to book a hotel at Expedia’s displayed price that I rarely do. It is likely that they just break even considering the mark up on my original booking and the mark up on booking that I will apply the coupon for sometime in the future.
All this proves is that Expedia is a reliable site that keeps its word even if the diffrence is so minimal. That has also been my experience. A couple of months ago I reserved two flight tickets on Expedia and was told I had 24 hours to complete the payment but that in the meantime the flights were reserved. This suited me fine as I wanted to book other arrangements as well. When I got back to Expedia well within the 24 hours it seems the airline had cancelled the bookings and would only re-book at another $200+ per ticket. Expedia stood by their word and only charged me the original agreed price even though the supervisor told me they would have to pay the airline the new higher price. The whole situation was handled very pleasantly and efficiently by Expedia employee Joshua #AA5.
Interesting. Sometimes the fare is guaranteed for 24 hours and sometimes it is not. Of course with the US site, you can always book and cancel within 24 hours for free.
Expedia is comparatively more reliable than other webs and they did honoured all tickets issued with unreasonable low fare prices mistakenly loaded by either the airline or certain agents everytime in the past. i almost booked all airtickets through it in the past couple of years.
There has been exceptions when they have not honored couple of mistakes. These are in cases, where the airline has cancelled the ticket. Has happened to me twice. But I have bought many (too many in fact) very low priced international business class tickets via them.
Expedia.de canceled an flight ticket 5 days after purchase because a mistake… they are not reliable since this issue…
They have canceled some “mistake” fare tickets. What was yours?
I checked Expedia’s french website. They also refund the difference … but no travel coupon !
You can always use the US site as well even if you have a French credit card. They accept them all.
This is fairly ironic is it not? Is my recollection correct, that Expedia actually owns booking.com? And the 22c is low enough to just be a small calculation difference?
In my e/perienve also, I would agree with posters here that experience with Expedia has been better than with some other hotel booking sites eg hotels.com.
Booking.com is owned by Priceline.
And there you go… Hotels.com is actually owned by Expedia… 😉
I don’t know about this…I got approved for a BRG very quickly the first time I tried, was happy. Turns out the hotel hasn’t been open in months (taxi and I got there and it was literally half demolished). Expedia did not reply to emails and I got hung up on twice when I called. Finally got to talking to someone and they told me it’s not their fault the hotel closed and didn’t tell them…they are “investigating”.
At least 3 other times I never heard back either way on a obviously valid BRG. No emails ever responded to there, I didn’t have time to wait more than 30 minutes or so, so hung up and cancelled the rooms. Also had a problem with a hotel I booked not being available when I showed up- on NYE no less! Luckily the hotel manager helped me find something, and it was in Sultanahmet area of Istanbul where there are tons of places, but I didn’t have the place I booked, I had a crappier one, and had to pay more.
Just looked this post up again since I am in the middle of applying for BRG and still haven’t heard anything. If this one doesn’t go through, I’m done with expedia.