Embassy Suites New Orleans Conv. Ctr
8/29-9/2
Hilton.com: $119 (long weekender rate)
Priceline.com: $111.11
Final rate: $83.33
No problem whatsoever. It did take overnight this time, instead of getting a response in under an hour.
An advisory about using Priceline rates for this purpose: if you use Priceline regularly and have a profile, you'll get cookies on your computer that will bring up special rates even without your being logged into your Priceline profile. That's why sometimes Hilton will respond with "we can't find this rate." Now, you can still get them to honor it, by using screenshots, but you'll have to argue with them. Make sure your screenshots do NOT show you logged into your account (it'll say "Hello, Suzy Q" up at the top of the Priceline page). The Hilton team will see that and tell you it's not a publicly available rate. You'll also see notes by some rates saying, "Thank you for booking a rental car [or whatever] with Priceline." This is a clue that those cookies are affecting the rate. In this present case, I went to the trouble of finding another browser that had no cookies and looking up the Priceline rates there. This Embassy Suites had the same low rate; many other properties did not. Thus, the PMG people were able to find it and approve my claim easily. But if you find a fantastic deal, it might be worth trying to use the "special" Priceline rate to make a claim. I'm pretty sure that a couple of mine were based on this--in both cases I had to submit screenshots and argue. But I try to find the "accessible" rate first.
I'm now 5 for 5 on these PMG claims, all using Priceline.
Last edited by hotturnip; Feb 10, 2019 at 10:59 am
Reason: Clarify a point