Stephen recently covered a terrific targeted Capital One Shopping deal for TripAdvisor purchases. While Stephen reported the deal at 65% back, I actually got targeted for 70% back. I made a couple of bookings, all of which initially tracked as “ineligible”. However, as per Capital One Shopping terms, the purchase went from “ineligible” to “pending” after the activity was completed.
Capital One Shopping handles travel purchases inconsistently. Sometimes, travel purchases track properly right away, with the amount you are due to receive back showing up as “pending” within a few days of making a booking. For instance, whenever I book a TripAdvisor activity through Capital One Shopping, it shows up as “pending” even before the activity occurs.
However, Capital One Shopping terms indicate that travel purchases may initially track as “ineligible” but then change to “pending” after travel is complete. You can find this mentioned in the “Returns, exchanges, and exclusions” section:
At times, certain travel purchases may show as ineligible until the stay / rental is complete
This is a highly imperfect system because it makes it impossible to know whether a travel purchase is actually ineligible to receive cash back or whether it will simply change after travel is complete. That leaves a lot of uncertainty.
I’ve been on the wrong end of that before. For instance, none of my Avis rental car purchases have ever tracked. I think that’s because the terms indicate that you can’t use a coupon or the Avis Worldwide discount. Unfortunately, I can’t find any way to remove the pre-loaded coupons in my account without triggering the worldwide discount, and neither is eligible for cash back. When an Avis purchase tracks as “ineligible”, in my experience, that means that it is actually ineligible to earn cash back.
However, I had a couple of Hilton Garden Inn stays this year that initially tracked as “ineligible” only to change to “pending” and eventually “credited” after travel was complete.
The same thing happened last week with TripAdvisor: I booked a private airport transfer from Bora Bora airport to the St. Regis Bora Bora, which came to $255.64 for my family of four. I first clicked through from the email button with the 70% back offer in the browser where I have the Capital One Shopping extension installed. After clicking through from the email in that browser, I was able to verify the 70% back showed up via the extension in that browser window after clicking through the email.
About two days later, my TripAdvisor bookings showed up in my Capital One Shopping account under “Rewards”. However, they initially tracked as “ineligible”. Many readers reported the same to me and feared that their purchases would not process correctly with the big 65% or 70% back.
We took that transfer last weekend, completing the activity. A few days after we got to the St. Regis, my Capital One Shopping account updated to reflect that $180 in rewards were “pending”.
You may notice that the cost of the activity appears to have doubled — instead of $255.62, it shows up as $511.28 for the purchase price. This seems to be a quirk of elevated Capital One Shopping awards — both my Hilton and TripAdvisor purchases have shown a doubled purchase amount after the activity is completed, but the correct amount of rewards based on the actual (non-doubled) purchase price. So, in this case, I got $180.04 in rewards, which works out to ~70% back on $255.64. I assume that the $511 purchase amount is some sort of behind-the-scenes accounting that Capital One does to account for the increased rewards.
For those curious, the date when this purchase will go from “pending” to “credited” is just over two months after the activity was completed. You can find that date by clicking the down arrow to the right of the pending amount or going to the “help” section on the desktop version of the Capital One Shopping site.
Bottom line
Yes, the 70% back offer for TripAdvisor was real. And yes, it still tracked properly despite initially showing up as “ineligible”. I am happy to report that my TripAdvisor purchase of $255 showed up as “ineligible” prior to the activity and became “pending” within a couple of days of completing the activity, and it should be credited about a month after activity completion. This was a phenomenal deal that saved us a bundle over booking this airport transfer via the hotel. I ended up booking a couple more airport transfers with 50% back via Viator a few days later. Oddly, even though Viator is also owned by TripAdvisor, my Viator purchases show up as “pending” immediately, while the TripAdvisor purchases show up as “ineligible” before completion. That’s certainly a quirky little oddity, but I’ll take a little bit of oddity for $180 back on my $255 transfer!
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I have done several Enterprise bookings through Capital One Shopping and they have stayed pending forever. None have ever posted. I can’t think of anything in my Enterprise profile that would cause an issue and everything else I have ever done through Capital One Shopping has posted.
My purchase is not even showing up. They said it would after the event ended 45-70 days. That doesn’t seem right. I’m bummed I did everything correct but I made a big mistake and didn’t screen print.