Deal has expired, view more Best Buy deals by clicking here.
Update 7/25/19: Back in stock
The Offer
Direct link to offer (our affiliate link)
- Best Buy is offering a $100 Hotels.com gift card for $90
The Fine Print
- Valid until July 27th, 2019
- Limit of 3
Our Verdict
If you purchase 3 this would also trigger the spend $250+, get $25 AmEx offer as well. Hotels.com deals can be stacked for further discounts as well, our full guide to that here.
I’m not seeing the discount
Deal was gone for me but appears to be back
Be wary of the fact that the majority of hotels listed on hotels.com can’t be booked using hotels.com gift cards. (If you’d like to use your CC instead of the GC that can’t be used, hotels.com would gladly take it though, so it has nothing todo with availability from the hotel’s side)
The majority? Not even close! I use them very frequently with few issues of running into hotels not accepting.
I just randomly selected 10 Cat 3 hotels in Boise and all 10 accepted Hotels.com gcs. 100% in this example.
“majority” is an overstatement for sure
Cannon Beach, Oregon, area (one of the places with little big chain presence thus best for OTAs) Aug 2nd to 4th. 6 hotels available but shows up as ‘This property differs from what you’ve asked for.’ (i.e. can’t use GC, only CC), 8 available and accept GC.
While a 6/14 rejection rate might not be the majority, it certainly is much greater than the 10% discount on the GC. (For example, for every $100 paid by your CC, you can also pay $90 for a $100 face value GC, and with a 57% success rate of using it, you have to pay another $43 out of your CC, so at the end of the day it is $133 out of pocket for you, with “another $43 left on GC” which can’t be used).
I’m sure in certain markets (such as a state capital) with presence of each and every major chain’s top to bottom brands can force hotels.com to re-adjust the aggressiveness of this kind of “differs from what you’ve asked for” practice, but there’s little point in considering OTA if you are gonna stay in such a location.
TL; DR: The more suitable a location is for OTAs like hotels.com, the more hotels there that don’t accept hotels.com GC.
I don’t know about majority, but there definitely are a good number of hotels where it can’t be accepted on. I learned this the hard way last year.
It is one thing for a store to put restrictions like a gift card can’t be used to buy other gift cards, but I find it ridiculous to just start restricting certain hotels when that is all that you sell. I mean imagine if Krogers just started banning a quarter of their groceries from being able to be used with their gift cards.
I find it depends on the region – in some countries cash only payments seem to be the norm even for online bookings, so gift cards can’t be used.
Is this dead now or just not working for me?
Appears dead for me as well.
Shows full price for me too
FYI, Samsung Pay giftcard store usually has 15% off on $50 Hotels.com GC. Limit 2 per day tho.
It’s a shame that the sale is so modest: at $85 a card, this would be a decent deal stacked with the AMEX offer.
There’s also an AMEX offer on my Everyday card for 2x pts at Best Buy. Just another way to stack… John 3:16