18% back at Viator (save on activities) via Capital One

Capital One offers a public shopping portal (Capital One shopping) and also has non-public shopping offers that cardholders can find within their Capital One accounts called Capital One Offers. Confusingly, Capital One Offers also function like a shopping portal, but you need to be in your Capital One credit card account to find them. In the non-public offers you can find when logged in to your Capital One account, there is currently an offer for 18% cash back at activity-booking site Viator. That could be a fantastic offer if you’re looking to book activities.

The Deal

• Capital One is offering 18% cash back as a statement credit for purchases at Viator when logged in to your Capital One account, clicking through the link found under your card, and checking out with an eligible Capital One card.

Key Terms

• Earn 18% back when you make an eligible purchase at Viator.com.
• Not eligible for purchases made with coupon codes not found by Capital One Shopping.
• To earn 18% back, you must be a Capital One credit cardholder, logged in to your account on capitalone.com or the Capital One® Mobile app, and pay for a qualifying purchase using an eligible Capital One credit card.
• You will receive your rebate as a statement credit to your Capital One credit card account within 3 billing cycles.
• In no event will a statement credit be applied to a Capital One checking or savings account. Your credit card account must be open and in good standing at the time the rebate is awarded to receive your statement credit.
• In the event you have more than one Capital One credit card, we may apply the statement credit to any active credit card account that is open and in good standing.
• To make a qualifying purchase, you must click the button above, and then complete a purchase at the selected merchant’s site, in the window opened by the Capital One Offers tile, within 24 hours, using your eligible Capital One credit card. Offer is not valid by any other method.
• Use of other coupons, cash back, or promotional websites after selecting an offer and before making a purchase will invalidate your offer.
• Rebate is calculated using the subtotal amount of your eligible purchase, which excludes taxes, shipping, credits, and other fees. A
• statement credit earned through this offer is in addition to any rewards regularly earned with your card.
• See offer for full terms

Quick Thoughts

Keep in mind that the 18% cash back here is on top of credit card rewards. Assuming you’re booking with a Venture card, you’re looking at a return equivalent of 20%.

I recently wrote about booking activities and determined that booking via Viator (and paying yourself back by cashing out points at the grocery store or something like that) could yield a better value than booking through a credit card portal (See: Tours & activities with points: which deal is “best”?). I found that to be the case with an assumption of just 10% back at Viator – getting 18% back would far tip the balance to booking your activities with cash and paying yourself back later.

Keep in mind that Viator has a best price guarantee policy, so if you find a better price for the same activity / operator, they will refund the difference. I recently took that for a test drive and found it to be quick and painless: I found my chosen activity for 20% less than what Viator was charging and Viator promptly refunded 20% of my money. The problem with a low price guarantee is that I don’t know whether an agent making that modification may invalidate portal cash back (including the cash back from this offer), but I’ll probably give this a shot with a different activity booking.

Keep in mind that these Capital One Offers may take a long time to post (terms say 3 billing cycles). I’ve only made a couple of very small “test” purchases through these offers and I haven’t had success with the offers tracking, though I will take a swing at this one and see what happens.

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