Nice surprise - Hotels.com lived up to its guarantee!
 

Hotels.com posts a lowest price guarantee policy that says if you find a lower rate within 24 hours of booking they will match or cancel w/o penalty. Yesterday I booked a Paris hotel and then found the same itinerary on another site out of the UK that was $70 less. I called hotels.com customer service and informed them; they asked for the source of the better rate and when they verified it immediately issued a credit for the price difference. Though I'm usually suspicious of mega-sites, this impressed me and I'll llikely use them again.

Do you work for hotels.com?

I will confirm that hotels.com is a very reputable internet travel site. I read somewhere that they are actually #4 or 5 on the list of biggest travel web sites.
About a year ago, I've used their sister site(www.180096hotels.com) because they had the hotel I wanted for less than I could find anywhere else and ALSO offered rebates(as they do to this day). I made the booking, my CC was charged. I showed up at the hotel in England, had no problems whatsoever. Anyway, while staying at the hotel, I read that their headquarters in Texas was evacuated because(and I don't remember exactly) I think it was either a bomb or chemical attack threat. I believe the authorities made them stay out of their office building for days. To my big surprise I came home and my rebate check was waiting for me.
I highly recommend the company if it suits your purposes, and also take advantage of their rebate program.

Thanks for the support, Patrick - but I do understand the question, too. For the record, I do NOT work for hotels.com or any other tavel related company. As I said in the original post I'm usually pretty leery of sites that promise to "do it all", and thought I'd pass along my experience, FWIW. From A2F2's comments, sounds like this may be a site that I'll start to use more often. Of course, I'll also cross-check with the hotel and/or other sites, too...

I think it's useful when someone posts a personal recommendation and comments for sites like these -- they can be useful when others are looking for information in a search.

I myself have perused hotels.com occasionally but have never found their prices to be that great. I think it is very good they actually refunded a price difference, but I personally still wouldn't use them based on that as I don't want to spend my time searching around sites after I've made a booking in order to compare prices, especially within 24 hours. I do that before I book and then don't want to spend more time at it. I imagine that is part of why they offer that guarantee -- most folks won't bother or have already searched and 24 hrs is pretty limited.

I do think these consumer reports add to the usefulness of the web site and the more, the better.