Hotwire's Book with Assurance

[Jason's Storm]

Now I saw this on a 3.5 star hotel in Bloomington, mn (likely the Sheraton) and I clicked on it. Here are the details:

How Book with Assurance works

Book with Assurance is fast and easy to use. Look for the Book with Assurance indicator that marks eligible hotels.

If your hotel is eligible, here's what you do:

Within one hour of booking, call Hotwire Customer Care to request Book with Assurance. In U.S./Canada, call us toll-free at 1-866-HOTWIRE (468-9473). If you're outside U.S./Canada, reach us at 1-920-634-3150 (regular toll charges apply).

We'll give you full credit back in HotDollars good for any Hotwire air, hotel, car, or package booking. The HotDollars expire one year from issue date.

Things to know:

This is a limited-time offer expiring 12/31/07.

A household may use Book with Assurance only twice before 12/31/07 regardless of whether the program is suspended and restarted before or on 12/31/07.

Not all hotels are eligible. Eligible hotels are marked with the Book with Assurance indicator on the Hotel Results and Hotel Details pages.

Here are the full Terms and Conditions

It has the same link as "double the differance", so is this the exact same?

Here is the Link?

~JS

[thereuare]

No, this is different than the Double the Difference Guarantee.

If you go to the Full Terms link and then scroll down you'll see the "Buyer's Assurance" terms (which are listed under the Low Price Guarantee terms)

This seems pretty good... almost like a "get out of jail free" card in monopoly. I could see this come in handy if you're debating between two HOTWIRE properties for a given stay, one of them being a "Buyers Assurance" property. I haven't read thru this completely yet, but it seems that you could buy the Buyers Assurance property, if you're not happy with the results, return it for the hot Dollars credit, and use the hot Dollars to purchase the alternate property.

I think this is very good from a marketing perspective (and hope more hotels participate in the future) as if a customer is unhappy with the property received, they would like never use hotwire again... this gives them a chance to get a credit to use for a future purchase, 'forcing' them to try the service again, turning the 'never again' customer into a 'satisfied customer'.

[travelingperson07]

hotwire no longer offers book w/ assurance