Reader Question: Orbitz Price Guarantee $50 Orbucks Credits?

A LoyaltyLobby reader sent me an email about the Orbitz’ Price Guarantee where the company promises to math lower price and throw in $50 in Orbucks (Orbitz’ rewards currency). You can read about my recent Orbitz Price Guarantee case here where competitor (their sister company) price was 3 cents less.

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You can access Orbitz here.

Here’s the email from the reader:

I’m wondering if you know the answer to this: For the Orbitz best price guarantee’s limit of three successful claims per month, is it based on the time of claim approval or time of the Orbucks posting date?

I am big proponent taking advantage of the Best Price Guarantee programs that Expedia owned companies such as Travelocity, Orbitz and CheapTickets offer. Expedia recently watered down its own program, however, (read more here) rendering it borderline worthless.

Back to the reader’s question. Actually none of the options that the reader suggested that is problematic for those that purchase tickets from Orbitz and make Price Guarantee claims. There is no limit on the number of claims one can file per month. There is, however, limit of how many $50 Orbucks credits one can receive. These are limited to thee per month.

Orbitz usually processes the Price Guarantee refunds 2 to 4 weeks after the trip is completed. At this time, Orbitz also issues the $50 Orbuck to member account. So, if one does thee claims per month, there is no guarantee that there wouldn’t be a month when Orbitz processes more than three and you lose on number of Orbucks earned.

One option would be to use CheapTickets (access here) that has similar Price Guarantee to Orbitz. You just need to be careful with their fees that are sometimes included on the purchase price (see the price breakdown) but excluded for Price Guarantee purposes.

Conclusion

Just had claims maxed out this month and may lose another $50 or two before the June rolls in. It is unfortunately that there is no way to ensure that you don’t exceed the three per month rule due to having no say when they are processed after the travel has been completed.

It is no difficult to get these claims approved and I have done numerous claims over the past 24 months with all the companies named above.