£50 back from £200 Amex spend

Hi JM,

Should work OK.

People seem to have success calling the hotel and begging to be charged if it doesn’t happen automatically.

Well this is Hilton not IHG. And if a hotel refused to take my money I’d refuse to stay there.

Two notes.

I used it in Italy at a Doubletree over the Jubilee. My Amex statement issued the refund as “double three”. I thought it was hilarious.

In the meantime I stayed at DT Stratford-upon-Avon that charged my card as “Victoria” hotel. I assumed they may have joined the chain recently and kept their old credit card machines, not sure. But I felt that may not have triggered the cash back.

aso40 wrote:

Yes, I have made three advance purchase bookings at different hotels for July and all credited. This seems to be more reliable in the app now since PSD II and the additional authentication required – it seems to automatically charge right away, rather than wait for the hotel to process it.

What was automatically charging right away? Were these non-cancellable bookings or cancellable and then contact hotel to take payment?

can wrote:

In the meantime I stayed at DT Stratford-upon-Avon that charged my card as “Victoria” hotel. I assumed they may have joined the chain recently and kept their old credit card machines, not sure. But I felt that may not have triggered the cash back.

It hasn’t been called the Stratford Victoria since 2008 when it became just Stratford Hotel. Came under Hilton in 2018.

Mine did last year, x2.

Paid in advanced (non refundable pre paid rate) and triggered.

aso40 wrote:

Yes, I have made three advance purchase bookings at different hotels for July and all credited. This seems to be more reliable in the app now since PSD II and the additional authentication required – it seems to automatically charge right away, rather than wait for the hotel to process it.

Still only a minority of hotels in Europe which have implemented charging via the Hilton website. If this happens it just indicates they don’t trust guests to make bookings with valid information

This could be annoying if the preauth would take you over your credit limit even though you would have paid it off by the time of the stay

The cashback isn’t implemented via the hotel’s merchant name, it will credit as long as you stayed there even if under an old name.

Very pleased with my results this time round – managed to spend only £830 for £200 back, and had there been no offer I would still have paid around £800, so it’s a real profit of £170 (if I tried a bit harder I could have called up and split some of the prepayments over two cards and got it very close to £800)

TeamPlat wrote:

I tried ringing up Doubletree Chester to charge my card now in advance of a Semi-Flex booking in August. They said they were unable to charge my card on file so have sent me a secure payment link beginning https://s[dot]360[dot]com.

Upon clicking the link it takes me to a site where I can input my card details and billing address. The amount is pre-populated. Has anyone else had this experience? I’m guessing paying via this payment link probably won’t track to qualify for the Amex offer but would love if someone has experience to prove otherwise.

Hotels often use such secure sites to collect your payment details. They should then charge as normal via the hotel’s own system, the website merely playing the role of a secure means to gather your card details and authorisation for them to use it.

Not Hilton, but Hyatt. Using the payment link that they emailed me, worked to trigger the Amex offer.

Thanks for the encouraging responses guys. Paid using the link and is currently pending on my statement as “DT Chester”. Will feed back with an update.