Best Price Guarantee – Best Excuses

[Aston100]

Thought I’d see if anyone else has had some odd excuses given to them by hotel companies for refusing to honour their BPG.
I know @Davefl had a couple recently.

Here’s one I received from Hilton the other day:
Hello Aston,
I was unable to approve your claim at the <hotel name redacted> on June 11-25, 2025 because it did not meet the criteria to qualify since the confirmation policies are not the same.
• <OTA name redacted> does not automatically confirm a booking as their terms state it can take 24 -48 hours to provide a confirmation of the booking. Hilton direct confirms your booking and provides a confirmation number when you complete your booking

The OTA was £50pn cheaper (£700 overall difference) so was worth trying the BPG.

Lets see the excuses you’ve been given. I know IHG in particular are pretty ruthless

[redethernet1]

Dont have the email to copy and paste, but essentially there was a difference in the ‘cancel booking by date’

[davefl]

“Your claim was not eligible for the Guarantee only because you failed to book the Best Available Rate in IHG. If you only book the Best available rate in IHG your claim might have been eligible since the Best Available Rate in IHG was USD 208.62 per night plus tax while the rate posted on http://www.gosplitty.com is USD 141.00 per night plus tax at the time of our verification”

The BAR didn’t match the rate type on gosplitty. The BAR was non-ref, go splittys rate was refundable.

In each reply I was quoted from the Ts&Cs, each time I was quoted from a different version and I found 4 versions publicly available on the internet.

I ultimately gave up because if I’d booked the non-ref rate they admitted they would still decline the match (Note the word “might” in the quoted reply) because go-splitty’s rate was refundable and the type didn’t match. Totally a catch 22 and completely unethical.

I surmised that this team actually got bonused/paid on rejections.