A couple of days ago, I wrote about my last-minute plans to fly the JetBlue Dunkin’ flight this coming Monday, July 7th. I booked my ticket mere hours before publishing that post. A few hours after publication, a friend reached out who booked the same flight after reading my post — but when he sent the screen shot I saw that he’d paid less than I did! Sure enough, the price had dropped by $50 overnight. My immediate thought was that I might be automatically covered by Capital One Price Drop protection, but as I dug into the terms I wasn’t so sure. Instead, I invoked a Capital One Price Match guarantee and got $50 back in travel credit.
An overnight price drop
Late on Tuesday night, I booked a JetBlue flight for the following Monday. Specifically, I booked JetBlue from New York-LaGuardia (LGA) to Orlando, FL (MCO) via Capital One Travel for about $328.48.
Less than 24 hours later, a friend messaged me to let me know that he’d booked the same flight for $278.48. Sure enough, the price for a Blue fare on this flight had dropped by $50!
Capital One Price Drop Protection vs Price Match Guarantee
I initially thought that this meant that I would get $50 back from Capital One’s automatic Price Protection. As it turns out, I’m not so sure: Capital One does indeed offer Price Drop protection whereby they will issue a travel credit for up to $50 in fare difference in some cases when your airfare drops, there are some conditions to that protection (bold added to part for emphasis):
Eligibility. When Capital One Travel recommends that a customer buys a given flight now (including a flight subject to a frozen flight price), Capital One Travel will automatically apply price drop protection to that purchase at no additional charge. For flights subject to a frozen price, price drop protection is based on the recommendation at the time of purchase to freeze the price. If the recommendation changes before or at the time of exercise of the frozen flight price, the initial recommendation at the time of purchase to freeze a price still applies. If you void or cancel the flight after booking, Capital One Travel may not provide the price drop protection benefit. As described above, Travel Packages are not eligible for Price Drop Protection.
Price Monitoring for up to 10 Calendar Days. Once price drop protection is applied to a flight, Capital One Travel will monitor the price of that particular itinerary (with the same flight, fare class, seat selection if applicable, etc.) for 10 calendar days after the day of purchase, recording price updates periodically.
Price Difference Issued As Travel Credit Up To $50. After the monitoring time frame ends, if there was a price drop of at least a certain threshold identified during one of the periodic monitoring checks, the maximum difference in price will be issued to the customer in the form of a travel credit up to $50. Price drops smaller than the threshold will not trigger the issuance of any travel credit. There is no further action on the customer’s part to receive this complimentary price drop protection feature. In the event of a system outage or other network interruption limiting the ability of Capital One Travel to monitor flight prices or detect price drops, Capital One Travel shall have no liability to provide you any travel credits under the price drop protection feature.
As you can see, Price Drop Protection offers an automatic credit of the fare difference (up to a $50) if the price drops within 10 days on a flight that Capital One recommended you book. Capital One employs AI from Hopper to predict when prices are “good” and you should buy. If their advice turns out to have been poor, they credit you for the difference.
Unfortunately, in this case, I wasn’t sure that would apply. I hadn’t paid attention at all to whether Capital One recommended I buy at the time of purchase, nor did I take a screen shot. Since fares were listed as “High” (probably in large part to booking within fewer than 7 days of departure), I was far from confident that the site had said “you should buy this!”.
However, Capital One Travel also offers a Price Match Guarantee:
How price match guarantee works
If you find a better price for the same flight, hotel or rental car on another site within 24 hours of booking with Capital One Travel, you can get a travel credit for the difference.
Simply call Capital One Travel at 844-422-6922 to submit a price match claim with the customer support team. If the agent can verify the lower price while on the phone with you, you’ll get a travel credit for the price difference.
I was confident that the price match guarantee would apply in this case since I was indeed finding a better price for the same flight within 24 hours of booking with Capital One Travel.
In this case, the new better price of $278.48 was available both via Capital One Travel and JetBlue.com.
Our successful Capital One Price Match Guarantee claim
I was afraid that if we called and told an agent that the price had dropped on Capital One Travel that they would assert that Price Drop protection should apply without being sure as to whether the site had predicted that I should buy. Instead, I had my wife call (we had booked through her Venture X account) and explain that she wanted to take advantage of the Price Match guarantee since she booked less than 24 hours prior and had noticed a better price on JetBlue.com.
She was connected to an agent quickly and he took the pertinent details, including the Capital One Travel trip ID, the website where she found the better price (JetBlue.com), and the proper fare class and new price. It took less than 5 minutes for him to verify the better price and return to the call to say that he would immediately apply a $50 travel credit to her Venture X account to use on a future trip via Capital One Travel. The process was painless. Sure enough, we logged in right after getting off the phone and the $50 travel credit was there and ready to be used.
That reduces my cost further for the Dunkin’ status run (cheers to the friend who messaged me!).
A fun side note: the price match guarantee effectively extends my travel credit into the next year. As you may recall, I booked this flight with my wife’s Venture X $300 annual travel credit (which was due to expire on November 10, 2025) and $9 in flight credit from a past automatic price drop protection. As you can see above, my wife now has $0 in annual travel credit due to expire in November 2025. However, she has $50.01 in travel credit without a marked expiration date. Since the price match effectively creates a new credit, I fully expect that this means we will carry this $50, which otherwise would have been set to expire on 10/10, forward into the next year (assuming we don’t use it before then).
Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to take advantage of Capital One’s Price Match Guarantee. I’ll certainly keep this in mind in the future for those times when I might rather book through Capital One Travel but price match to a site offering a better deal.
For what it’s worth, I might have instead been able to cancel the JetBlue booking online, receive a credit with Capital One Travel that could only be used to book JetBlue and then rebooked the same flight with that credit. However, I wasn’t sure how smooth that process would be. Furthermore, since I wasn’t booking at least 7 days in advance, I wasn’t sure that a 24hr free cancellation window would apply. Finally, invoking the Price Match would give me a $50 credit that could be used for any travel (not just JetBlue). I was happy to use the Price Match Guarantee in this case.
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