Issues With The Capital One Venture X Travel Portal
I have written quite a bit about the Capital One Venture X. My initial thoughts were mixed mainly because the card focuses so much on the Capital One travel portal, powered by Hopper. If the portal, and their customer service, was good then the card could be super valuable. If it wasn’t then it was a way to get free Priority Pass for a lot of people and a pretty nice welcome offer. Well after a week or so we have been alerted to some issues with the Capital One Venture X and its travel portal. One of which makes absolutely no sense to me.
RELATED: Our Complete Capital One Venture X Review
Two Big Issue With The Capital One Venture X Portal
Over time we will get a better feel for what the Capital One Venture X portal can and can not do. I will say that the initial takes are not overwhelmingly positive. This is a new system and hopefully Hopper can get some things ironed out in time. But, for now, there are a few issues the portal has that I thought I should highlight.
Update 2/16/22
It looks like Hertz has been added to the portal. This is a big improvement that should have never been needed. At least now you can book a Hertz car with your Venture X through the portal for 10X earning and use your Hertz status at the same time now!
No Hertz Rental Cars
The first issue is one that makes absolutely no sense to me. Hertz rental cars do not appear in any portal searches. Why is that strange? Because one of the better perks of the card is Hertz President’s Circle status, although pretty much anyone was getting it.
So you have a card giving top tier status at a car rental company but that rental company isn’t in your travel portal. Uh, what!? How do you have a partnership with a company but not have them appear in your travel portal? Not to mention the only way to earn bonus points on that Hertz rental is to book it through the travel portal. But nope, your cardholders are going to use their Hertz status but book the car with another card that earns a bonus on travel purchases. A card like competitor Chase Sapphire Reserve.
I had also said I would be likely to use the $300 credit, plus the 10,000 bonus points, you get annually on a car rental. It would have been nice to pair that up with your newly minted Hertz status. Big fail here.
Update 2/16/22:
It looks like same day bookings now work as well for car rentals but it is still glitchy for flights. Ryan S was able to get some car rentals to show up for same day when searching in the Capital One portal.
No Same Day Booking
Another issue with the Capital One Venture X travel portal is there are no same day bookings. I had a reader alert me to this and I suggested he call in and see if you could do it over the phone. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option either. So if you have a last minute need to travel you are not going to be earning 10X, or 5X, on that purchase. Because the Capital One travel portal won’t be able to help you. This is another miss in my book that they are hopefully able to fix in the future.
PDX Deals Guy was able to get next day travel to appear though. So this probably won’t come into play all that often for most. It will be annoying if you ever need to pay those expensive last minute prices and only earn 2X with the card though.
RELATED: Capital One Venture X Approval Odds Seem Better Than Expected
Final Thoughts
We knew there would be some issues with the Capital One Venture X travel portal, it was just a matter of what they would be. We still don’t know if their customer service is competent or not, and probably won’t for several months. That will play a bigger role in if this card is successful long term than these two issues will. That doesn’t mean they are not annoying, or frustrating, all on their own though.
I still don’t understand how Capital One didn’t get Hertz added to their travel portal. Why offer status to a company your cardmembers can’t even book with you? It would have almost been less embarrassing to not offer the status at all.
The last minute booking issue will be annoying to some for sure. I find myself needing a last minute car rental most often when it comes to travel. Others book flights last minute because of business etc. This means they will have to only earn 2X on the purchase. Or, they will have to pull another card out of their wallet to get bonus points on that expensive travel spend.
Do either of these Capital One travel portal fails change your thinking on the card at all? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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I JUST got the venture X two days ago and it’s a nightmare and I’m already thinking about cancelling it as there’s no single case I can think where I’d use it given how it’s set up. Card awards hertz elite status but none of the benefits apply if you book through the capital one travel portal AND the prices are lower on the actual hertz website with the same account and cdp added. Why provide the hertz elite status if you’re forced to chose between those benefits (and a potential price drop) and the bonus miles for which you MUST use the travel portal? Same kind of nightmare with hotels. I have yet to use it for flights but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s issues there. I spoke to a rep and they agreed about all the issues and said I should try it for a year and if issues aren’t resolved then they’d let me cancel and refund the yearly fee. I’d advise everyone to call them up and make it known you’ll take advantage of this. It could be a great card with some work but right now it’s just a frustratingly poorly designed system.
I’d love to tell you my horror story with the travel portal from last week, Mark if you wanna reach out to me. It’s a bit of a long story to put in this forum
You can always email me at mark@milestomemories.com if that works better.
Has anybody tried using portal to get credit for flights? For FLL-SJU I got 0 JetBlue flights, and only showed 1 Spirit flight costing $500+ (Spirit website selling multiple itineraries for ~$200)
Can’t book flights to Russia. Spoke to someone from Cap One travel, was told that Russia is on the list of restricted destinations with no forecast about when it will become not restricted.
Interesting – thanks for sharing Alexey
Their travel portal sucks!!! I’ve tried to book hotels and rental cars many many times and it NEVER works. It will take me through and then at the end it will just say error. It doesn’t seem like their inventory is correct. And this week I tried booking a hotel room and same error so I had to call in and was on hold 30 minutes. Then the agent had to do it manually but had to try many times. It’s horrible!! I can’t use my $300 credit as it never works.
Same issue with rental cars. It will give a price/car but then never work.
Sad to hear. I had hoped Hopper would be better but it seems like more of the same.
Yes it does! I upgraded from the Venture one to the venture X specifically for the Priority Pass, and the travel portal. I had a horrific experience last week with the travel portal and I will never ever book my travel through them again.
The reference… I’m a travel agent so I know what I’m doing when it comes to booking travel and dealing with schedule changes. Those people in the travel portal are incompetent. Every single one of them
There’s still issues with same day flights, I tried today through the portal and the system is broken, displays nothing available
Thanks for the info. I’ll update to working for cars but still glitchy for flights.
I tried to book a domestic flight for two adults and a child. And only one airline showed up. I changed it to three adults and all the airlines showed up on the route. So keep that bug in mind if traveling with children (you put in the age anyway at booking)
I have a Hertz Rental through the portal and I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to use my status based on what I’m seeing — the rental doesn’t link to my Hertz acct, and there’s no way to add my Hertz number to the reservation.
NO, you can’t use your status. Hertz says it’s through a third party (Hopper) and they no longer allow you to use your Hertz Status which doesn’t make sense as Expedia is third party and I can still link it. They said they don’t with Hopper anymore.
[…] we surprised that Capital One has issues, come on! Some Surprising Issues With The Capital One Venture X Portal. Actually, I expected worse, much worse. No Hertz cars and no same day bookings is tolerable. You […]
My biggest problem with the travel portal so far is that several “smaller” us cities are not showing the available hotels. So far this is Everglades City in Florida and Seward and Healy in Alaska. I wanted to switch over my hotels.com bookings, but I can’t!
That is tough, thanks for sharing Panu. Seward hotels are not cheap either so that would be a great use of the portal credit too.
The Capital One travel portal sucks in europe. Its based on what inventory hopper has. Tried to book 7 days in dec in Rome for 2 adult 2kids. But the inventory only has room for 2 occupancy. What sucks is even though you search for 2 adults 2 kids the search gives result of rooms with two occupancy. I called the travel portal they were not able to help as they said it’s based on what inventory they have. So had to book via hotelsdotcom.
[…] Miles to Memories reports issues with the Capital One Venture X portal. […]
I booked a room two days notice in Seattle no issues. They had all the Hyatt and Hilton rooms I was looking at for the same cash price. I Earned 3,000 Points and saved 300.00 two days after receiving the card. I don’t see myself needing to book a room within 24 hour notice and if I do there’s Hyatt and Hilton for that. Card nearly paid for itself in 2 days.
Glad it is working for you Chris. Yeah, last minute / same day bookings are where the issue would come into play. May not be a big deal for many, depending on how they travel.
That’s all that matters for me is the card paying for itself, I’m sure they’ll iron out the Hertz issues. No issues with portal as far as booking rooms, gettin 10 X points.
This takes away from the premium of the card. I knew the travel portal would be garbage. Bloggers need to stop peddling this awful product. There is one lounge open. Chase is a true premium card and their points program is far superior.
It does devalue one of the bigger perks of the card, had you planned to book Hertz through the portal for 10X earning.
With all of the recent horror stories about Hertz, Hertz is the last/worst of the major car rental companies I would rent from. (National followed by Alamo and Budget are my favs.) Only reason I’d try Hertz in the future would be for their new Teslas. For those with Costco memberships, their travel portal typically offers the lowest car rental rates IMO.
Fortunately, I’ve never had to book same-day air travel. Walk-up fares are often the most expensive, and should be avoided unless one is traveling for urgent business (in which case you can expense it) or for a rare family emergency.
But yeah, hopefully Hopper bounces back with these features for those that need them.
Auto Slash takes the cake for a rental car search engine.
I use National / Enterprise most often. Never wanted to use / have used Hertz myself.
10X hotels and rental card as well as 5X on flights is available on Chase. Nothing special.
If you can’t even use the portal, then you have a 2X card, which is essentially a “regular” Venture card.
Okay, fine, you get the lounges. etc.
Yup, it is a Venture card imo that comes with some nice lounge access and a lower annual fee (assuming you can find the $400 in value in the portal from the points / credit).
The other thing I have noticed is international premium class itineraries are really random in terms of what shows up and at what price. Domestic seems to have the normal selection but international is an entirely different ballgame.
Hopefully that gets fixed over time but annoying right now for sure.
It’s not the odd. It’s a little something called “breakage” 🙂
No, it verifies my concerns about the card – a card I probably will never apply for. That and hideous service in the past from Cap1.
I mentioned in the post on MtM when the Venture X launched that because of the travel portal, I would be interest. This confirms what I’ve come to know about other travel portals and it seems this one, so far, isn’t any different than the other cookies in the jar.
It looks that way so far.
I mentioned in the post on MtM when the Venture X launched that because of the travel portal, I would be interest. This confirms what I’ve come to know about other travel portals and it seems this one, so far, isn’t any different than the other cookies in the jar.
Not sure I’m bothered by this. Most people should be quoting car rentals through Autoslash first anyway, as their rates are most often going to be better than any travel portal, including Cap One. And I can still use my newly minted President’s Circle status from Cap One on an autoslash rental
That is true. It won’t bother everyone, especially if you hadn’t planned to book through the Cap One portal anyway.