Today’s Deal of the Day for Capital One Shopping is on purchases at Viator. While these offers are targeted, you should see an elevated offer from Viator if you get a Capital One Shopping email today. My offer is for 50% back, though it is possible that you may see a slightly higher or lower offer (for instance, when Stephen posted about the TripAdvisor offer last week, his offer was for 65% back, and mine was for 70% back). Alternatively, I see 20x miles via my credit card offer, though there may be higher targeted offers available.
The Deal
- Capital One Shopping has launched a targeted increased rewards rate for Viator as today’s “Deal of the Day”. The email offer I received today was 50% back, though it is possible you may see something different (clicking around at Viator without making a purchase might help trigger the increased offer — see more detail below)
Key Terms
- Rewards offer ends November 10, 2025 at 11:59pm PST.
- Not eligible for rentals, hotels, restaurants, theme parks, flights, virtual tours, and/or cancelled bookings.
- Not eligible for canceled and/or refunded tours.
- Not eligible for app sales.
- Not eligible for any tours or experiences tracked to the Viator Travel Agent Program.
- Reserve Now-Pay Later must be paid for at least 24 hours to receive payout.
- Additional terms apply.
Quick Thoughts
The best Capital One Shopping “Deal of the Day” offers come via email. I’ve noticed that while the desktop site does show an elevated offer for the Deal of the Day merchant, I usually get a better offer in the email. It is also worth noting that I sometimes get two emails in the same day, and one has a better offer. That happened to me today. I’m abroad right now, so don’t pay close attention to the timestamps but rather note that I got two emails almost four hours apart — the first one headlined 27% back at Viator and the second email headlined 50% back at Viator.
Last week, when Stephen reported 65% back at TripAdvisor, I did not receive that email. Around 4pm Eastern time, I browsed around the TripAdvisor site in the browser where I have the Capital One Shopping extension installed. Shortly after 7pm Eastern time, I received an offer for 70% back. If you don’t receive this Viator offer and you want it, I advise you to click around for a bit in the browser where you have the extension installed and then leave without making a purchase.
It is worth noting that Capital One Shopping doesn’t handle tracking nearly as well as some other portals, with high variance in terms of tracking time and accuracy. Travel offers sometimes track as “ineligible” initially and then change to tracked after the trip is completed, other times they show up with tracked amounts. For instance, I made some bookings via the TripAdvisor deal last week, and they all tracked as “ineligible” (and I heard the same from a number of readers), though I had made the same bookings through Viator a week before and those had tracked with dollar amounts. I had a couple of Hilton Garden Inn stays this year where the stays showed up as “ineligible” prior to travel, but they all tracked properly (at 30% back based on the offer I had used) after the stays were completed. I’m hoping the same happens with TripAvisor (my first booking with the 70% back offer will take place tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to report whether or not it eventually tracks).
Since most Viator bookings can be cancelled up until 24 hours prior to the activity (check the terms of anything you book carefully), I might make a couple of speculative bookings and see whether they track as my previous Viator purchases have. I have made quite a few Viator bookings over the past few years due to high Capital One Shopping offers, and all of my Viator bookings have tracked and paid out (in some cases for hundreds of dollars on a single purchase).
On that note, remember that Capital One Shopping has recently adjusted the maximums for some of the email offers. While they had previously limited rewards to a maximum of $250 per transaction when clicking through email offers (and I now see that restriction on many of the desktop offers), many of the emails I receive (including this Viator offer) now show a maximum of $5,000 back. That should make this far more useful for those looking to make big bookings.
I have a love/hate relationship with Viator because they don’t seem to have much of any consumer protection against vendor cancellations, but there are certainly instances where they can be useful, particularly when you’re getting this much back. However, at 50% back, it is hard to ignore.
Finally, I should note that there are some card-linked offers out good for Viator, so be sure to check your cards. And if you have a Capital One credit card, the credit card portal (the one you see when logged in to your Capital One account) is offering 20x Capital One miles at Viator, which might be of interest to some who prefer miles over cash back. It is possible that some cardholders may have a better offer as we have seen some variance in the past few cardholder offers.
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I find Cap One Shopping hugely confusing. I understand that a Viator purchase will net me a gift card, but I just don’t find the process very user friendly at all. Thanks for breaking this offer down for me!
Agreed!
How do you get a deal to show up before you click “pay”? I got 45% but Viator charged me full price. The discount simoply disappeared.
This is a shopping portal deal – it’s not a discount on purchase, but rather a return you earn after the fact. You click through from the email (preferably in the browser where you have the extension installed) and then book/pay.
When you use an email offer do you still click “activate” on your browser extension (after getting to the site from clicking on the email)? I notice that even when I have a great offer the extension “activate” button will still show the standard low rate (often only 1%). I don’t know whether to activate or not. Recently thought to use a different browser without the extension installed. What’s your advice?
In my experience, when I click through from the email in the browser where I have the extension installed, the activate button shows the increased rate. I’ve only one or two times in years of Capital One Shopping had the extension offer not match after clicking through from the email. Once I click through from the email, the “activate” button matches for me.
Thanks. That happened, but then it’s back to ViatorWorld. My shopping dashboard hasn’t updated yet. This is the antithesis of shopping on e.g. Amazon. Clunky, imprecise, unguaranteed, Christ knows how I would prove that I did not get an offer I clicked through on and saw the popup “Activate” if Capital One (C1) denied it. They do not even have a chat bot, as far as I can see. Viator just throws the whole thing back on C1.
That used to be true for me too, but for at least a few months now the activate button doesn’t show the increased rate from the email, only the standard rate. Seems so buggy and strange how it functions differently for different people. Maybe you can loan me your computer when I do my shopping?
Thanks for clarifying the “ineligible” status Nick. The tripadvisor 70% got me worried since all my bookings showed that way but feeling much better now. Cap 1 Shopping has been giving me insane deals the last few days: Spend $250 @ Stubhub, get $150 (pairing with my CSR credit), $100/$100 @ Staples, $50/$50 @ Nike, and several others.
I got 50% for Viator and it’s really tempting as some of my pending tours don’t seem to have tracked via Rakuten BUT I don’t see any decent gift card options for redemption in Cap1 shopping at this time 🙁
No decent gift card options? Right now, I see:
-Marriott
-Hotels.com
-Lowes
-DoorDash
-BestBuy
-BestWestern
-Version
-Ebay
-StubHub
-Holland America
And many more. Are you not seeing any of those, or are none of them useful for you? That covers a wide range of purchase types….
For the card-linked offer (20X), there is a fine print in the Capital One T&C pdf link within the offer that you cannot earn more than $1000 or equivalent in Rewards in any 3 consecutive billing periods. So a tour costing $5000 or less should be able to maximize, but anything above seems like you would be capped out.
Ah, right – the credit card offers have that cap!
I got an offer for 27% today.
Like I said in the post, I also got that offer. If you try clicking around at Viator, you may trigger the second email. I got both.
Yeah, Nick, I listened to the podcast after I used the Cap One link for Viator today. Very helpful! I love the podcasts to reinforce the learning from your emails. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us.
Not having used Capital One Shopping in the past, how do you get the 50% back? It appears it is not discounted when initially paying. Thanks!
No, there’s no discount when paying – that’s not how shopping portals work. Shopping portals offer a return after purchase (typically 30-90 days after purchase, or in this case completed activity). Capital One Shopping only allows redemption for gift cards, and the gift card selection varies all the time, though it has recently seemed to have improved considerably.
Found a couple of Chase offers on my cards to go along with this. 8% up to
$10 back.
I have some Citi offers too – 6% with a max of $15 back.