Choice Privileges - Choice Hotels Everyday Guest Program?

I heard a pitch recently for the Choice Hotel Everyday Guest program that offered $40 in gas certificates, a $20 Choice Hotel gift card and 2 10% off certs for stays at participating hotels. The service also claimed 5% cash back on eligible bookings made through their preferred providers and other perks as well. This offer was for a 60 day trial for $1 including the gas certs, hotel gift card and 10% cash back certs with a recurring $119.99 annual charge. This was of no interest to me but may be more valuable to someone who spends enough annually to offset the fee with the 5% rebates. Anyone else familiar with this offer or have tried the service?

I would be careful about this. Curious from what you wrote I did some Googling and found references at http://www.consumeraffairs.com/scam_alerts/trilegiant_complaints.html and http://av123forum.com/showthread.php?t=40370 suggestive that this may be a scam.

I would be careful about this. Curious from what you wrote I did some Googling and found references at http://www.consumeraffairs.com/scam_alerts/trilegiant_complaints.html and http://av123forum.com/showthread.php?t=40370 suggestive that this may be a scam.

I did find some complaints also but was seeing if any FT'ers had any better experiences. From what I gather it's not necessarily a scam just a service that's hard to cancel. I can see how if you jumped through all their hoops and did get the rebates it could be valuable to someone who books more than $2400 a year with their agency, which would offset the annual membership fee.

I heard a pitch recently for the Choice Hotel Everyday Guest program that offered $40 in gas certificates, a $20 Choice Hotel gift card and 2 10% off certs for stays at participating hotels. The service also claimed 5% cash back on eligible bookings made through their preferred providers and other perks as well. This offer was for a 60 day trial for $1 including the gas certs, hotel gift card and 10% cash back certs with a recurring $119.99 annual charge. This was of no interest to me but may be more valuable to someone who spends enough annually to offset the fee with the 5% rebates.
What are the rates at the "preferred providers" sites?

If the 5% rebate isn't on top of an SOS-type rate, then wouldn't an SOS type rate (one flavor of which anyone with a real or feigned intertest in Little League Baseball is eligible for) trump 5% rebates?

Furthermore, are any of the bonuses that say they require booking at choicehotel.com or Choice 800 number valid if you book at these "preferred providers"? If not, what is the value (to a points/miles/credits collector) of 5% cashback but no 8000 points for every 2 stays??? :confused:

I don't see how this would be of interest to any FTers. It seems to me it's pitched at people who aren't into points/miles/credits programs, and don't know about SOS rates (which outside of FT I bet many people don't).

My experience with other "paid membership" programs of this sort is that they offer no stackable discounts/rebates, just a different (and more expensive) way of getting the same discount you could get other ways (with no "paid membership" requirement) if only you knew how...

Okay, here is the scoop on my hearing that 'pitch'. I was in my local pub recently waiting on my g/f to show up and was surfing FT on my Blackberry when a college-aged guy at the bar struck up a conversation with me. I described to him what FT is and about forums dedicated to miles and points. He tells me about a telemarketing job he has where they enroll callers in various services such as the Choice Hotel Everyday Guest program. He basically recited the pitch ver batum from memory and even answered some of my questions with his required 'scripted responses'. He also answers calls from Budget, Avis and Days Inn Travelers Advantage program, which I noticed to be the provider of the Everyday Guest program in fine print at the bottom of their website. Each program offers the caller a premium to try the service for a $1 trial period with an automatically recurring monthly or yearly fee.
According to him, his call center also handles calls for Haband, 1-800-Flowers.com, Wells Fargo, Miles Kimball and others with a similar rebate-type offer with a monthly or yearly recurring fee that is pitched as easy to cancel but in fact not so.
It appears to me that these companies are selling out their customers to these affiliate telemarketers with no regard for the customer. Makes me concerned about doing business with any of them as it appears they share all of your personal data with this third party, Triligent, which 'has a rap sheet a mile long' .
Btw, I originally posed this in the manner I did so as not to taint the question and gather your unbiased input.

It appears to me that these companies are selling out their customers to these affiliate telemarketers with no regard for the customer. Makes me concerned about doing business with any of them
OTOH, you can hardly make an online reservation for, say, a Super 8 (in the program WyhdhamRewards, formerly TripRewards, same as DaysInn) without getting an online pitch for this kind of thing, while I have been a steady customer of Choice for about 5 years now and only heard about this because you happened to run into someone at a bar. So I see no indication that Choice is using it "with no regards for their customers"; in fact, it seems to me that, unlike WyhdhamRewards (which at least used to be a part of Cendant, which in turn at least used to run Travelers Advantage), they realize that their Choice Privileges members are unlikely to be the ones interested in it. So if they're giving anyone customer names, I suspect it's only customers who don't sign up for Choice Privileges (say, infrequent customers who always seem to Priceline or Orbitz or whatever).

In a decade long ago and far away (when points programs were much less developed anyway), I belonged to Travelers Advantage for a few years. Then as I started booking online and using poitns programs, I realized that I was getting no more discount from TA than I could get on my own by "paying attention", and TA wanted an annual fee. So I dropped TA.

Of course, there are still people like that out there aplenty. They don't understand anything about points or miles (or think they understand that they are too hard to use), and they just want cashback or discounts. They also want "one stop info", they don't want to spend the time to troll the internet to find the best deals on their own.

They can get cashback easily in a credit card, but they don't see how to get that on travel without one of these "paid membership" programs. So TA and these others dangle "5% rebate" in front of them, and they think (at least until they try it :) ) that it's the best thing since sliced bread!