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In addition to the Happy gift card Amex Offer, another Amex Offer that’s giving a discount on gift cards is one for Hotels.com. As with the Happy deal, there are two versions of this offer – one giving $10 back and another giving 1,000 Membership Rewards.
The Deal
- Buy $50 Hotels.com gift card and get $10 back, or
- Buy $50 Hotels.com gift card and get 1,000 Membership Rewards.
Key Terms
- Expires December 31, 2019.
- Offer valid only on gift cards purchased through hotels.com/giftcards.
- Offer valid on one or more transactions.
- Not valid on international site.
- Purchase must be in USD.
- Excludes Gift Registry, Corporate/Bulk gift cards and all other purchases on hotels.com.
Quick Thoughts
These somewhat frequent Hotels.com gift card Amex Offers are, in theory, a decent deal. They’re a little inconvenient though due to how their gift cards work.
You can only redeem one of their gift cards at a time, so using a $50 card for a more expensive stay won’t get you very far if you have several cards from previous deals. If you book cheap one night stays though, redeeming these $50 gift cards will be less of a problem.
This was never much of an issue in the past as you could combine Hotels.com gift card balances online. Back when you could load the same Amex Offer to all your cards, I purchased a ton of $50 cards and combined them into two larger gift card balances of $550 each which made it far easier to redeem.
About a year or two ago though, their online balance transfer system stopped working. Their site gives a phone number you can call, but that’s obviously more hassle; I tried calling it last night to combine some of my existing cards just to see what it was like, but I was placed in a queue for a long time and gave up. I’d been hoping they’d have an automated service where you could combine balances, but the choices they give you suggests you have to speak to an agent.
In the past you could also earn 2% cashback through some shopping portals when buying Hotels.com gift cards, but I’m not aware of any portals that offer that anymore.
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It took me under 10 minutes to combine 11 gift cards a couple of days ago. The overseas rep was remarkably efficient. I assume that calling is some sort of fraud prevention measure so I am fine with it. I did ask if my gift card could be registered somehow to my account or email address but was told no.
I just book one for every nite What if something gets messed up ..Time & $$$$$$$
CHEERs
I have recently combined Hotels.com gift cards with the help of a phone agent and despite it being an extra step and hassle there was no problem.
That’s good to know – thank you. I was calling fairly late at night, so they probably had fewer agents working.
Same here. I called a few months back to combine 5 or 6 cards (ugh) and despite having to repeat numbers a couple of times it went through no issue. I got 2 of the cards from this offer I’ll have to combine. BUT, I wish/hope the functionality returns to the site.