I have just got my Mum onto cash rewards for booking her trip.
Unfortunately she has just showed me an issue with booking.com and other booking sites and I wonder if this is normal. When logged in with cash rewards it comes up with in partnership with cashrewards page on booking.com but also adds about $50 to the price! I replicated the problem and was shocked.
Is this ethical?
I wonder if anyone else noticed this.
I too noticed it when booking my latest travel. I now have to check with/without cashrewards to confirm the best price.
As to how ethical it is, not sure. I think they just put the price up according to how much they loose to paying CR the commission (which is more than what you get back). Accommodation is also one of the longest processes in getting your cashback I have found.
Very annoying to deal with anyway.
very dodgy
There goes your OzBer cred with your mum.
Is this ethical?
It sounds effectively like the standard "Offer not available in conjunction with any other offer" kind of thing. Why would not giving a discount possibly be an ethical issue?
When you're not giving a discount but leading customers to believe that you are…
Technically they're not providing a discount at all, Cashrewards is.
Noticed this also recently when booking a hotel in Berlin for later this year. Tried Booking.com, saw the price, then remembered I should go through Cashrewards, and yep, showed a higher price. Even taking the cash back into consideration it still worked out cheaper booking with the hotel direct.
Poor form really from booking.com
Pretty sure I've watched something on YouTube from CBC Canada about this exact thing. All sites will display different prices for different people which is intentional.
Agoda does this too.. different prices depending if you're logged in, used Amex discount, Cashrewards, etc
I got an explanation from cashrewards and we tried it again, It seems the prices change very rapidly and it seemed like it was due to the cashrewards but really just changing very rapidly.
You can confirm this is true or false by opening a browser window in private mode and another in normal-mode with cash rewards.
Refresh both windows and see if there's a difference.
I've noticed this too. I also pretty much always have problems with actually getting the cashback from those sites - especially Agoda.
Can you add the hotel to your cart at the original price then go through via Cashrewards to avoid the price hike?
sounds like your mum doesn't need your help finding bargains