Hilton Best Price Guarantee

[fairbasa]

I also got fobbed off yesterday when submitting a claim. One worthless excuse after another, none of which were valid from my point-of-view:

• AMEX Travel - apparently a membership site requiring login (they sent me a screenshot of the amex account login screen) so invalid for claim - I replied with screenshots showing the flow all the way to payment/booking without requiring any login, including the prompt option which says "Continue without login".
  
• I then also found a slightly cheaper price on agoda.com and booking.com, so screenshots from there were also submitted. I was told that these prices didn't include tax so wouldn't be valid. I replied with cropped screenshots clearly showing "Final price including tax - no surprises!" messages from all three sites.
• Next reply stated "Unfortunately Hilton considers Travel American Express is a membership site and invalid for this program" again. They then said "Since your claim was submitted with this another website can't be given because your first option was denied. Only one claim is allowed per confirmation number."

As others have said, what a farce! I booked a non-refundable rate too, now the saving compared to AMEX Travel wouldn't have been much at just over CA$16 (however the 25% from Hilton would have been very welcome!), but it's the principle that bothers me. The "Honors" rate is advertised as discounted from the public rate, when in actual fact it's still more expensive. The promises that you'll always get the best rate booking directly on the Hilton website are blatantly false.

What a good way to piss off customers before they even arrive! But I suppose I'll just have to get over myself!

I would encourage you to stick with it. A site as big as Booking.com or Hotels.com are slam-dunks. I've had a pretty good strike-rate with Hilton.

But you do need to remember to cancel the flexible booking as soon as the first attempt is denied, re-book and try again with a different site.

Also, I've had on a couple of occasions now them incorrectly calculate the revised rate - so make sure you check it if they do approve your claim. I just write back with the correct figure and both times they've corrected it immediately.

 

[Dave G]

Hi - I agree completely with Fairbasa,
I ended up scoring a super deal for my trip to canada earlier this year - matched off the AMEX site. The Amex Site was waaay under the Hilton (1/2?) - and got the 25% to boot !
I also scored an excellent deal in New York - I think against Hotels.com. Price want hugely different (10% ?) and the additonal 25% was really nice in my pocket

 

[HeavyElectricity]

Hi - I agree completely with Fairbasa,
I ended up scoring a super deal for my trip to canada earlier this year - matched off the AMEX site. The Amex Site was waaay under the Hilton (1/2?) - and got the 25% to boot !
I also scored an excellent deal in New York - I think against Hotels.com. Price want hugely different (10% ?) and the additonal 25% was really nice in my pocket

Thanks - I've sent another follow up email, asking for clarification on the various misleading/vague reasons which I then had to reply with screenshots for, and more information on what is 'considered' a membership site. We'll see what happens!

 

[fairbasa]

Thanks - I've sent another follow up email, asking for clarification on the various misleading/vague reasons which I then had to reply with screenshots for, and more information on what is 'considered' a membership site. We'll see what happens!

My recommendation would be rather than challenging a previously denied claim, just move on, cancel the booking, re-book and re-submit the claim with a different OTA website quoted.

You will likely get a different assessor and therefore possibly a different outcome.

 

[HeavyElectricity]

My recommendation would be rather than challenging a previously denied claim, just move on, cancel the booking, re-book and re-submit the claim with a different OTA website quoted.

You will likely get a different assessor and therefore possibly a different outcome.

Thanks for the tip - good to know for the future, but I'm afraid I booked the non-refundable honors advanced rate.

The Best Price Guarantee page (which I did read before booking!) says it only applied to the lowest rate, and I interpreted this to mean the cheaper non-refunable rate. I was bolstered that my claim would be valid as I was actually directed to the Best Rate Guarantee page from the Hilton Garden Inn facebook chat (as I was querying why the price was cheaper via AMEX before I actually booked anything). I just wish that I'd read this thread beforehand!

To top it off, I see today that I've been demoted to Silver (I thought there was a v. slim chance I'd been comp'd Diamond for another year as my status hadn't changed since the end of March) - so no free breakfast for me !

It's a shame Accor don't have more properties in Canada (as I maintain Diamond status with them) - the Fairmont hotels are very expensive!

 

[HeavyElectricity]

Just an update for anyone keeping tabs on this thread - total silence from Hilton since my last email asking for clarification, so I guess their final excuse to not honour the best price guarantee is just to ignore me oh well, you live and learn!

 

[Dave G]

Jump on the hilton chat and see if they can do anything for you...

 

[liamsal]

Bit of a bump on this:

Booked through the Hilton app and then randomly checked the Hilton website a few minutes later and found they had a cheaper room which wasn't available in the app moments before. Super frustrating because I could've then price matched it to an even lower rate. Anyway sent the diamond desk an email and they've forwarded it directly to the hotel (BNE). Not holding my breath but hoping they can do something.

Has anyone had any recent success with price matching the Amex travel site? Previous posts seem to be hit and miss.

 

[Dave G]

Bit of a bump on this:

Booked through the Hilton app and then randomly checked the Hilton website a few minutes later and found they had a cheaper room which wasn't available in the app moments before. Super frustrating because I could've then price matched it to an even lower rate. Anyway sent the diamond desk an email and they've forwarded it directly to the hotel (BNE). Not holding my breath but hoping they can do something.

Has anyone had any recent success with price matching the Amex travel site? Previous posts seem to be hit and miss.

Yep- I matched Amex - but they were very clear I was lucky and this was a one off

 

[liamsal]

So I received an email from Hilton Brisbane asking for a screenshot of the third party website showing dates and the price. Sent it through and moments later they replied saying they've updated my booking with that price. I checked my booking in the app and it's showing the reduced price ($88 less). Fantastic customer service, very happy with the result!

 

[ozfe1]

Encouraging to hear about these positive experiences.

Mine has not been as such. I have been trying to book the Hilton London Hyde Park for 5 nights in October. Expedia is quoting roughly 25% less than all other sites. I spent about 50 minutes on the phone with the lady who kept saying that Expedia shows "no rooms are available" when she enters the same search.

That sounds ridiculous - I'm wondering if anyone has experienced this? Maybe Expedia blocks bookings from the Hilton office (to stop price matches), or their IP address is blacklisted due to excessive lookups? I doubt she'd be lying.

 

[Drew]

Success!

Good evening all. I got off the phone with Hilton Honours a few hours ago to take advantage of their BPG Policy. Reading comments here and others from various forums, here’s a list of suggested (and approved?) ‘OTA’ sites to use.

• muchoviaje.com
• expedia.co.uk
• Expedia.com
• Expedia.ca
• happyrooms.com
• hotelscombined.com
• priceline.com (standard booking, not a bid or express booking)
• prestigia.com
• orbitz.com
• prestigia.com

I’ve used orbitz.com in the past to secure accommodation and ran prices for the DoubleTree by Hilton in Taipei Zhongshan.

		Hilton	Orbitz
Room type	Promotion	$AUD	$AUD (converted from $USD)
King corner room with balcony	Advance purchase (no refund)	$1,286.35	$1,240.61
King one bedroom corner suite	Advance purchase (no refund)	$2,048.99	$2,019.20

I called Hilton reservations (1300 445 866) and spoke with 3 seperate people:

1. First guy logged onto Orbitz to compare rates and told that that Orbitz was showing both rooms as sold out.
2. The second guy checked the site, put me on hold and the call got ‘disconnected’
3. the final caller was female, found that the site was cheaper and put me on hold for about 3 minutes. I thought she was going to leave me hanging until I hung up but after a few minutes she came back and honoured their policy.

Ended up booking the suite for 4-nights. My recommendation is persistence. Happy hunting.

 

[albatross710]

Success!
Ended up booking the suite for 4-nights. My recommendation is persistence. Happy hunting.

Great to hear your persevered.

I was recently doing a booking for Doubletree in CaIrns. I did find it cheaper elsewhere but upon comparison one was a non-refundable deal and the direct HiIlton deal was refundable until the day before at which time it became un-refundable. Not honoured. For me they have devalued a good promotion.

 

[Must...Fly!]

Third time the charm for me this time around. Exasperated but got there in the end after a final 40 minute call.

The excuses varied, as they did last time I did a Hilton price match. A new one for me was that the agent was more than willing to accept the price, but couldn't get it to price in USD on the website (she was right, you couldn't force a different currency). A suggestion of a manual conversion may as well have been interpreted as a declaration of war. I had heard this could be a problem, but had also read on other forums that same currency wasn't required, as long as it could be readily converted. The T&C do mention local hotel currency, however.

So I went away and did some more searching and found the same rate on another website, in USD. Called back, and after a lot of back and forth (those 40 minutes dragged on...), eventually got the price match at exactly the price I expected. The main problem was the website wasn't being clear at what excluded and included taxes for the individual nightly rates, so it took a few goes for that to be understood. The agent was basically taking the lower price with tax, adding tax, then taking 25% off, though bless her efforts she listened to every word I was saying and really went the extra mile to understand.

In the end, a saving of about $270USD off the Hilton.com price. Having done a couple of these now, my best advice would be to stay patient, and utilise the HUACA method, particularly if the same agent answers the phone (maybe best to immediately use aforementioned method in that case...). And be aware that a VPN is sometimes a useful tool - regional pricing is definitely a thing on OTA sites.

 

[SteveLL]

Definitely a disgrace. Called up to price beat Expedia on the weekend. The first consultant was claiming he was seeing a completely different price on Expedia.NZ, Hotel.Com website. Hung up and tried the 2nd time, she was able to see the price but was told could not beat it due to that Expedia has tax as a seperate line item in the payment summary despite total price being lower. A few back and forth, she agreed to price beat, but she claimed there’s a system issue and can not be processed and no supervisor was available to escalate.

I then used the online chat. The chat agent is adamant that you can’t do it until a booking has been made. I provided the link to the policy’s on their website and pointed out the exact policy word by word but he refused to listen.

final attempt was made late in night and basically told her if she came back with any bushit exercises, I would go straight to the ACCC or equivalent US consumer agency. She still tried to argue Advance Rate wasn’t eligible but I read out the policy to her. After a few minutes checking with her manager, she went ahead to complete the booking for me unwillingly.

have to say this is the worst experience ever dealing with a sizeable company like Hilton. their price guarantee is a complete scam.

 

[Must...Fly!]

Yes the advance purchase is most definitely allowed, it must be the same conditions, like for like booking - but doesn't have to be flexible.

Last time I had a success with Hilton PMG, it also required 3 tries. You just have to be persistent. I understand why they don't really want to honour it, but I've found that if you can demonstrate the cheaper rate they won't willingly talk their way out of it. The whole purpose of the guarantee is to punish hotels for underselling Hilton through large agencies or aggregators.