Problem Solver: Hotels.com Sends $50 Gas Card

High gas prices may be keeping you from traveling but there are plenty of incentives out there to get you on the road. And offers for free gas are tough to pass up. But one Upstate couple says the $50 in gas they were promised from Hotels.com wasn’t so easy to get. So our Dianne Derby got it for them. It’s a 7 On Your Side Problem Solver.

Marc and Kim Irey can’t get enough of Myrtle Beach…it’s one of their favorite vacation destinations. But these days the cost to get there, or anywhere, is creeping higher. So when they saw a deal for $50 in free gas on Hotels.com they booked their room through the website.

“We said well if we stay the extra night then we get the $50 and that’s about what it will cost us to drive to Myrtle Beach,“ said Mrs. Irey.

3 weeks later…
“We called and said ‘Gee you know we booked this, stayed and where’s our gas card’,“ said Mrs. Irey. “Well they don’t send it until the end of the month. So we waited until the end of the month into July and we called and they said ‘Oh no it won’t be sent out to until the middle of the month’ and we waited and they didn’t send it.“

Two months passed and they tried again. This time…
“(The representative) said ‘Well we sent that gas card to an address in Las Vegas,“ said Mrs. Irey. “Well that was 3 years ago that we lived in Las Vegas and we have our new address registered with them and it’s on our receipt.“

The Irey’s wanted to know why it was so hard for Hotels.com to come through with their promise especially since they had reserved rooms with them for years with no problems.

“We actually got disgusted and Kim just said ‘No I’m not gonna let this go’,“ said Mr. Irey.

So 7 On Your Side took a stab at it and got a promise in writing from Expedia spokesperson Michael Eggerling that the Irey’s would receive their gas card and a $50 goodwill credit. Eggerling also said, “We looked into our records and they show that the customers booked online using an old profile that they created in 2006, therefore the old address was used. We don’t have any indication that they provided a new billing address at that time.“

That didn’t make sense to the Irey’s since their receipt had the latest address but at least they finally were going to get what they were promised.

“They advertise this they should follow through,“ said Mr. Irey.

The confusion continued. Late Monday we got an e-mail message from the Expedia spokesman that said the gas card was sent to the Irey’s last known Greenville address… not Las Vegas. He said it could have been misplaced in the forwarding process when they moved. The Irey’s did say they moved from that home about the same time they went on vacation but have not had any other problems with their mail forwarding.