Book hotel rooms with Agoda and if you find the same hotel room cheaper in another booking site for the same stay dates and promotion, file a refund claim under the Best Price Guarantee offer.
It’s awesome to know that you are getting the best deals on hotel bookings with Agoda. This is my actual experience of Agoda not only matching the lower rate offered by Expedia, but they beat Expedia’s price after I contacted them about the price match guarantee.
Best Rate Guarantee With Agoda
Here’s what happened…
We were looking at hotels in Japan, checking out rates, reading reviews, making sure that free breakfast for 2 is included plus the hotel must be near or at least walking distance from subway and train stations. The hotels we’ve checked were concentrated in Akihabara, Shinjuku, Shibuya areas.
After comparing lots of hotels and assessing the respective offers, Titus and I finally decided to go with APA Hotel Kanda Ekimae. We feel this hotel fits our accommodation need for our upcoming Japan vacation. The next step was to decide which hotel booking site to book with.
We compared the prices of APA Hotel Kanda Ekimae for travel dates October 5 to 11, 2018 in several booking sites, namely Booking.com, Expedia, and Agoda. We were after a non-smoking room with a double bed, good for two, and comes with free breakfast.
The 6-nights rate in Booking.com was about P44K, while for Expedia around P42K, and the rate for Agoda was P43K.
We finalized our hotel booking with Agoda even though their total price was higher versus Expedia, mainly because we are very familiar with Agoda’s platform, having booked more than 20 times already thru them. Plus, we have good experiences with the hotels booked thru this platform.
Need a hotel room? Check out the current offers in Agoda.
Now, when we got to the payment page, we noticed the statement that Agoda will either match or beat the price if we find the same property for the same stay dates and inclusions at a cheaper rate anywhere else. Jackpot!
‘I’ll make sure to file a claim for the Best Price Guarantee’, was running on my head after we paid for the booking at Agoda. I love freebies, discounts, and savings, so yes, hindi ko papalampasin ang opportunity to bring down our Japan hotel expense.
Important: Screenshot the page where you found the property to be available at a lower price. You will need to submit this as evidence to file for the Best Rate Guarantee offer.
Contact Agoda and File a Claim for Best Price Guarantee
Login first to your agoda account before you access the contact page link. If you are not logged-in, the page will not load.
Once we got the hotel booking confirmation email from Agoda, I searched for a way to contact them. I found their Contact Page where customers can call, send an email or chat with a customer service representative.
This is the Contact Us page. Choose from the drop-down menu and then when the “show more options” link will appear, click it.
Ways to Contact Agoda – Call, Chat, Email
Check here to see the sample EMAIL form.
*We took a screenshot of the Expedia site that shows APA Hotel Kanda Ekimae non-smoking room with double bed plus free breakfast was offered at lower price for the same stay dates, October 5 to 11, 2018.
Here is the email message we sent to Agoda:
Hi,
This is regarding the PRICE MATCH assurance of Agoda.
I have booked a hotel with Agoda with total price of P43,615.44. I have found the same hotel for total price of only P42,074.43 via Expedia.
Please see this link for the Expedia booking of same hotel room for the same dates with the same free breakfast for 2 offer: https://www.screencast.com/t/0VVvaWDqV
Agoda Booking Number: 312xxxxxx
Apa Hotel Kanda Ekimae
1 Room, 6 Nights
Check-in October 5, 2018
Check-out October 10, 2018
Double Bed, Non-Smoking
Looking forward to Agoda’s Price Match fulfillment.
Thanks,
Cille
*I thought the term was ‘price match’, it turns out the correct term is Best Price Guarantee hehe.
I sent the message above via Agoda contact page at 10:26 PM. I received a reply from a Best Rate Guarantee agent at 11:25 PM. Just an hour of sending the inquiry/claim! Their response was positive!
Part of Agoda’s reply reads:
We received your email in regards of Best Price Guarantee that you found cheaper price on the other site.
We are very glad to inform that we already process your request. And we refunded you with the amount of USD 31.03.
Awesome! Agoda Price Guarantee works!!!
Of course, sigurista ako, so I checked the rate on our Agoda booking. From the original booked price of P43,615.44 (Exhibit A), the updated price as reflected on my Agoda account dashboard is now at P41,943.64!!! (Exhibit B).
The total price for our hotel booking was reduced by 1,671.80 pesos. That’s savings right there!
Agoda was true to its promise that they will either match the price or beat the price offered by their competitor. If you recall, Expedia’s rate was P42,074.43, it is now higher by P130.79 versus the updated rate of Agoda under the Best Price Guarantee!
Oh, by the way, it may take up to 10 business days before the refunded amount gets credited back to our credit card, this is per Agoda’s message. It’s okay, we can wait. 🙂
Submitting a Claim via Online Form
You can send an email with the details of the claim OR you can also use the online BPG form. Login first to your Agoda account if you will use the online form.
We did not use the claim form, we only emailed Agoda customer service with the details.
Agoda customers must collect the following information before completing the Best Price Guarantee Claim Form.
• The Agoda Booking ID.
• The address of the website where the better rate is found. You can find the website url at the top of the browser, the address usually starts with “http://” or https://.
• The name of the hotel, city and country.
• You can attach up to three screenshots of the competitor site in which the Room availability, Room Type, Promotion type and Room Rate for the required dates of your stay are clearly indicated.
In case these questions will cross your mind regarding our own experience in requesting refund under Agoda Best Guarantee:
I don’t have a screencast account; how can I send a screenshot of the competitor’s site?
You can upload the screenshot on Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. and include the link in your email/message.
If you don’t have any of those cloud storage facility, you can file for a claim via Agoda’s BPG online form. There is a section on the form where you can upload photos, screenshots, file.
Did we also book the same Japan hotel via Expedia?
No, we only took a screenshot of their booking page.
*There is no need to complete the booking in the competitor’s site, just do the booking process up to the point where it can be established that the same room with same travel date and inclusions are available at cheaper rate.
Did we pay the Agoda booking right away?
Yes, we paid it in full via credit card.
Is there Free Cancellation offer for our booking?
Yes, it’s a risk-free booking. We can cancel it anytime before October 3, 2018 if we want to, without incurring penalties.
If you are booking, make sure to check the terms and conditions of the hotel you want to reserve and book.
Discounted Hotel Rooms Available via Agoda
Start searching for discounted hotel rooms in Agoda. There are lots of properties which offer Free Cancellation. There are also some hotels which allows the customer to pay for the booking upon arrival and at check-in.
Look also for the “Daily Deal” featured hotel to enjoy bigger discounts.
Heyyy, if you have already booked with Agoda, why don’t you start searching if your reserved room is offered cheaper elsewhere?
Try Trivago, Traveloka, Hotels Combined, Booking.com, Expedia etc. And then if you do find a lower rate for the same room, promotion, dates, you know what to do *wink. :).
This blog post is part of the I Love Freebies series in Penfires where gushing over unexpected windfall, awesome promos, and fabulous deals is normal. Haha.
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