Originally Posted by
Simon Schus
Submitted a claim this morning. The form didn't work and kept coming up with a "sorry" webpage. I sent an email to the bestrate email address with a photograph of the third-party website, and also created a .pdf of the online claim form (including all the details). Hopefully a reasonable response time on what should be a simple claim (room types and cancellation terms are identical). First time I've touched the claim process in a few months so I'll be interested to see how efficiently it works, and if there is any justifiable rejection of the claim.
My claim was approved with happyrooms.com within around 16 hours of my submission. I received a new hotel confirmation email and then a separate email from the claim team confirming the approval. I've added it to this thread's wiki and encourage others to do so so we know which of the named websites are being approved/rejected.
I'm unsure why the online form didn't work, but hopefully it was intermittent or temporary. I could fill in the form but the submission kept coming back with an error (not a validation error but the form validated and would forward the standard "Sorry" webpage like an Error 404). Nonetheless, I immediately saved the completed form as a .pdf and emailed it across to the BRG team (alongside screenshots) which they accepted
If the form was working, then this process in this instance would have been the Big working exactly as advertised.
Saying that, I did read something odd that I've not had before in a BRG claim with Hilton. I emailed screenshots along with my claim just for evidence in case the claim took longer than 24 hours to process (this has been a problem in the past, so I tried to mitigate against it!). The hotel is in the UK though so is paid in UK£. However, the third-party website was Hilton in US$ because that is where I am at the moment and the website defaults to US$. I didn't think about asking the third-party website to convert the amount because 1) I hadn't been asked to do this before by the Hilton BRG; and 2) I didn't think that screenshots were part of the formal process anyway, and I was only submitting screenshots to be an extra help! However, on this instance, I go the following message back:
Finally I wanted to take this opportunity to advise you for future reference to always select the local currency on the third party website when sending us a screenshot. Otherwise we would advise you to select USD, only if the currency of the hotel is not available on the third party website.
This decision is covered by our terms and conditions:
The same accommodations must be available for booking at a qualifying lower price in the currency of the hotel when we validate your claim. Price comparisons will be made net of taxes, gratuities, service charges, early departure fees, or other fees and incidental charges, and will exclude changes in currency exchange rates.
I don't think I've ever seen that mentioned before. Has this always been in the terms and conditions? If so, I must have missed it in the past!