Deal has expired, view more TripFuel deals by clicking here.
The Offer
Check your American Express login to enroll in the following offer:
- Get a $50 statement credit when using your enrolled card to spend $200 online at tripfuel.com/amexoffer by 6/3/19.
Tripfuel is a Priceline company for hotel bookings, see analysis below.
The Fine Print
- Must spend $200 or more in a single purchase.
- Limit 1 enrolled Card per Card Member across all American Express offer channels.
- Offer valid only for hotel bookings through www.tripfuel.com/amexoffer.
- Excludes all other Booking Holdings Inc. brands, such as but not limited to booking.com, priceline.com, and rocketmiles.com.
- Limit of 3 statement credits per Card Member.
Our Verdict
I did one search and a hotel was pricing at $599 instead of $483 when comparing with other sites. American Express seemed to do something similar with HotelStorm offers as well, offer something like $50 cash back on $200+ spend and then the hotels are all over priced. Even if this site did price competitively you’re better off stacking discounts with Hotels.com to get 30%+ off. Keep in mind with third party online hotel bookings like this you don’t get elite night stay credits, hotel points or your status recognized in most cases when booking chain hotels.
In my opinion American Express needs to clamp down on this type of offer if the hotel booking website is pricing significantly higher than other sites on a frequent basis. If you do your own price comparisons, please share your results in the comments below. For now I’m giving this offer zero stars out of ten.
Hat tip to DDG
View more Amex offers here & if you have any questions abut American Express offers then read this post.
- AmEx Offers: An Introduction & Profitable Examples
- How To Sign Up For Multiple American Express Sync Offers
- Amex Offer Credit Not Posting, What to Do?
- How Does American Express Decide Who Receives What AmEx Sync Offer?
- Do I Need To Make A Single Purchase For AmEx Offers, Or Is It Cumulative?
- What Happens When You Have Two Active AmEx Offers For The Same Store?
- Amex Offers: Do Electronic Wallets Trigger the Offer Credit?
I just got this offer again via Amex Membership Rewards card
One can easily understand why they can pay $50 back.
One person has posted his experience on trip advisor;
TripFule has paid $155 inclusive taxes to Hilton whereas they charged a customer $266. Markup of $111. Even if Amex payback $50, TripFule makes $61 with no downside because all bookings are prepaid in full.
You get no money back due to cancellation, change date or change locations. Also, you are stripped of any hotel benefits irrespective of your reward status.
It’s a loose loose battel for the customer unless you are paying through your workplace for your business travel.
A lot of the prices are jacked up, but some aren’t. The Hilton airport Madrid for instance is priced the same on this site as it is on Hilton’s website. There are some potential savings, you just have to make sure you compare prices.
Amex hurts their brand by allowing sketchy offers like this. It’s not going to pick off the average DoC, redditer, FTer…..but even Ma and Pa Kettle can check prices pretty easily nowadays. If they’re flagrantly off what Expedia, Hotels.com, or even what booking direct looks like, people aren’t going to go clicking into AmexOffers any more.
My own analysis: worthless. Same crappy inflated prices and limited selection as HotelStorm. Hopefully nobody is foolish enough to really think they are getting a discount.
I have not yet selected this AmEx Offer, and was not redirected away from Tripfuel Public (www.tripfuel.com). Perhaps the process of linking the AmEx offer creates a tracking mechanism (cookie).
Regardless, the DoC price example for this offer is 24% higher than the price available from other channels. So I don’t see this “offer” as useful at all.
I personally would not recommend, but YMMV by area. I had this (or very similar) offer previously, and the hotels in Pennsylvania I searched for were marked up $50 above the rates elsewhere. For that particular area, anyway, it was obvious that the credit was directly offset by the marked-up price. (Also, Tripfuel listed a lot fewer area hotels versus Booking.com, Hotels.com, etc.)
i qualified for a free night after using hotels.com and they gave me 2 free nights they broke up my avg spending into 2 nights instead of one whole night! annoying how do i take care for this issue i followed your advice to always use hotels.com when booking
0/9 for this.