I have tried using Qantas hotels but always I can get a better price thru trivago. For me, the points don’t compensate a room rate sometimes $25 more per night.
Agreed
I think there's a couple of important issues to point out.
Most of the comparison sites are brands owned by the same corps (Expedia own a string of brands including Trivago) and in effect operate like Code shares. Of course they then work out your price point. All roads lead to Rome....
On that note;
Qantas hotels 'appears' to be a shop-front fro the Expedia booking site. On a search sometime back, on my mobile phone, Expedia appeared in the URL link during the processing of the qantas request.... and I'd on limited searching never found a cheaper price on QF than Expedia or the actual hotel booking site...
Either way, price promise isn't designed to be broadly taken up. It's more like insurance It's a classic negotiation tactic, offer something of no value to yourself that's considered high value to the buyer, which will be rarely utilised, and in any event, you still get the sale either way.
free cancellations operates in a similar way. With how Expedia Handle them, I've no faith. The simple part was cancelling online. From there, what a nightmare because Expedia send the hotel a token givIng them a short time window to bill you, days before the end of the cancellation period so despite their offer to not bill me until I arrived, they did. On their website, they basically push the refund problem to the hotel (and don't allow formal complaints unless you've rung them up (no 1-800 number) and you can't informally complain by email),
The hotel push it back to Expedia (they Expedia didn't advise us you canceled..). And worse, in this last case, I was Charged more than the advertised price - looked like s 2% credit charge surcharge of which I was completely unaware.
The run-around is annoying. And the ACCC probably have an interest in the mess that was.
Solution a debit credit card like qantas cash with $5 on it, to make a reservation to avoid incorrect billing
So price promise or cancellation promise, I got no faith in em. And I'm not chasing every last point seeing it's hard to actually use what I've already accumulated !