All good advice. As you can see it depends on your pattern.

I book a few hundred room nights a year, but rarely for myself.

I've been with hotels.com for a few years and like the program, buy 10, get 1 and like the flexibility it gives me.

(Even got in before they came to their senses at the beginning and used to let you book ANY free night up to $400 for every 10 stayed...that was fun and led to some great lark stays. But I digress...)

I do have to say that the quality of training and competence of the humans on the phone even as a five-star super duper whatever I am has dropped seriously over the last couple of years.

Used to be that they were smart, competent, empowered customer service people.

Now it's no better than calling Expedia (which it is, actually).