My daughter, who works in the reservations dept of a large Dallas hotel told me that she regularly matches the hotels.com (and other) rates when the caller asks and the hotel has appropriate inventory.
I was very surprised.
She said that they only did it when asked to do it... and that not too many people ask.
It makes sense. They get the same reservation and get to keep all the money.
Have any of you done this at other hotels?

Yes. I check several sites and find the various rates. Then check it against the hotels website, and go from there. We are headed to Victoria soon, and the Expedia rate was better than the hotels, but when I asked the hotel they were very nice in honoring the lower rate.

I've done it twice, and it worked once. I found a great rate for the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago through Expedia a few years ago. Called the hotel to see if they could match it, and they told me that no, they were sold out for those dates. So, I booked through Expedia at that rate and had no problems.

Last year found a rate for the same hotel through 877chicago.com only to find the hotel never got the reservation. They worked with me to find a slightly better rate for the same dates I needed and all was well.

TTP..Just curious, when she does this, does she append the same restrictions: non refundable, non changeable, blahblah etcetc? I have heard from other travellers that they have been successful.

No, actually she just matches the rate and gets the standard cc guarantee.
This is GREAT news to me, I will try it everytime now.
I use Hotwire a lot... too bad you can't see the hotel until after the sale.

I find that calling hotels directly almost always gets you the same or better rate than a booking site. I also always ask if they have any special deals, or discounts, AAA, etc. They generally don't seem to volunteer any deals unless you ask. Also sometimes there are even better deals if you book via the hotel's website.

In general I've never seen any great deals on hotels.com.