I’m very happy a lot of Points Guy followers got to take advantage of the generous Expedia.ca promotion that ran this weekend. I helped 10 hardworking coworkers use this coupon to take a well deserved trip to Vegas and have a ton of friends who are beyond excited to make their first trip to Vegas. This coupon provided real value and I hope people return the favor to Expedia and book some future trips through them to throw them a bone.
While the dust is far from settling, I feel like these trips will be honored. Expedia ended up changing the terms and conditions of the coupons on Saturday afternoon and then pulling the promo all together early Sunday AM (about 18 hours before it was scheduled to end). They knew about it when the “run on the bank” was happening and decided not to pull the promo at that point, so I almost wonder if they didn’t mind so many poeple taking advantage of the promotion. While leisure travel has been making a slow comeback, its still down and December is a slow month (in Vegas at least), so I could imagine Expedia and tourism councils splitting the coupon costs in order to drive tourism. If it was a mistake all together, I imagine Expedia would have pulled it right away instead of letting it be active for almost 48 hours.
My advice going forward:
1) Make sure your credit cards get refunded correctly. The way they charge for these trips is a direct bill for the airfare from the airline and then a refund from Expedia that settles up for the final cost of the package. Make sure that happens by the end of this week (I know American Express is very quick with these pending debits and some people have already seen their accounts settle up). Do not waste your time calling Expedia unless it doesn’t even out by the end of this week
2) Don’t cancel your hotel or flight- even if you don’t plan on using them. Expedia changed the term on the coupon to say that if the hotel and/or flight are changed after booking, the coupon may be invalid. They may be setting something up with the hotels to get notified if their packages are cancelled, so its a risk and you may see a future charge of $300 added to your card.
3) Keep all receipts/ confirmations. It’s also a best practice to take screen shots of the final price and a screen shot of the coupon T&Cs at the time of your purchase. If you don’t do this, you may not realize what terms were actually in effect when you purchased. See The original email offer for details. I’ll also paste below, but see my bolded points. The key things they messed up (and later corrected) was that it only needed to be a Canadian booking (i.e. done through expedia.ca) and one coupon per booking (not per customer).
My gut is that anyone who used the coupon will have it honored, but we will have to wait and see. I imagine Expedia will move quickly if they decide to cancel some/all of the bookings since people have already started to travel on these deals. I’ll certainly keep you all updated as I have a trip coming up (that cost me a whopping $32!)
Were you able to take advantage of this deal of the year?
Manhattan at an Expedia Special Rate hotel.*
Beginning Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 12:00:01AM PT and ending on Sunday, November 21, 2010 at 11:59:59 PM PT, book a flight+ hotel package at participating hotels in Las Vegas, Cancun, Riviera Maya or Manhattan and receive C$300 off the
then-current Expedia.ca advertised price.
Valid for travel completed by December 31, 2010.
Note: Book now to take advantage of this special offer. Offer does not apply to saved itineraries. Offer available for Expedia Special Rate hotels only.
1. Search for your flight+hotel package to Las Vegas, Cancun, Riviera Maya and Manhattan at an Expedia Special Rate hotel.
2. Enter coupon code SAVE300 on the Billing & Delivery page during checkout.
Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuer. Opinions expressed here are author.s alone, not those of the credit card issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuer. This site may be compensated through the credit card issuer Affiliate Program.
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