Fucking priceline.com

The BBQ Pit
1

Used this site for the first time today, and for anyone that has been thinking about it, I have one fucking word for you, DON’T.

I knew about a certain airline flight, and it cost $217. Well, I put a bid into priceline.com for $250, expecting that well, I would get a list of all the possibilities below $250. Well, as it turns out, I got the $217 flight, for my bid of $250, plus about $30 in taxes and fees. And you can’t cancel it, change it, or anything. If an airline likes your bid, bam, you got a ticket. I found out this is the way it is done after I ordered, and yeah, I should’ve read it beforehand, but still, I believe I was misled.

Called them, and it’s basically the run-around, “We can’t help you, but you can file a complaint.” Like that’s going to do fucking anything. Called the credit card, they couldn’t help either, but they did say they have gotten a lot of complaints with priceline.com.

Basically, this fucking site is a scam. They tell you to research beforehand, but, unless you know the cheapest price out there (virtually impossible), you are going to be paying more for the ticket. In my case, it came out to about 60 bucks more.

So to priceline.com, FUCK you. You are losing a customer (albeit a first-timer), who will be using his travel agent or Southwest exclusively from now on.

2

Even the tagline says “Name Your Own Price” - guess what, you named it, they gave it to you.

The way it’s supposed to work is that you find out the price you’d pay at a regular airline booking, then bid LESS than that price. It’s like at an auction - if you bid $400 for something worth $2.50, you still have to pay. I believe there was an episode of Friends where Joey was confused on this same subject. Too bad you missed it. I you must have really flown through reading all the stuff when you bid, because it seemed really clear when I used it.

3

They shut down their grocery and gasoline areas last month and the person in charge of the rental car area quit yesterday saying it couldn’t work.
I would steer clear of doing business w/companies in trouble.

4

I signed up for Priceline once upon a time. I gave my name and credit card information, and then went and did the refer-a-friend thing like a good consumer.

It promptly emailed the full name off my husband’s credit card to the people I referred. Not the name I’d given, (which didn’t include my real last name) but the name on the card. IMO, that is private information and should be secure.

I obviously never used their services after that, and still get angry when I think about it.

5

I can’t complain. I snagged a round-trip ticket to St. Louis on 5 days notice for $220. Another time, a RT to Phoenix for $160. As long as you can accept any departure time within the day you choose, it’s a great service.

I can understand them crapping out on groceries and gas. The margin for savings is just too small. We’re talking pennies and dimes for the most part. With airline tickets, savings can run in the several hundreds of dollars, espially for those last minute trips that do not qualify for the advance-purchase savings.

6

Are you sure that you wouldn’t have paid this extra $60 in taxes with the other rate?

7

Viscera, as you said, you should have read the rules beforehand. They are very clear about the fact that once you bid and your offer is accepted, you cannot change it. They are very clear that you don’t “get a list of all the possibilities” below your stated price: you make a bid and it’s either accepted or declined, and you’re stuck with it. That’s why you should bid low and move up if your bid is declined. There’s nothing misleading about it.

That said, it does suck to make a bid and then find out you could have gotten a better deal through a regular airline. That happened to me with Priceline once - bid for a trip to London at $250, next day all the airlines had a fare war, during which I could have gotten an easier flight for less. On the other hand, I recently went to NYC and stayed at a $300/night hotel for $130/night. You just have to make a few calls to see what the regular prices are and then bid half of that. All Priceline can do is decline and you can then bid again a little higher.

8

Another thing I don’t like about Priceline (and I’ve never gotten a ticket from them because they’ve never accepted my bids, which were reasonable) - once you put in a request, you cannot re-submit the same request for a different price. For example, if you ask for a $250 round trip ticket from Philly to San Diego on December 27 and they can’t give you the price, you cannot put in another bid from Philly to San Diego on December 27, even at a higher price.

I dunno, just seems too much trouble for not good prices. If you have a good travel agent, or use a decent web site, you can get deals all over the place. YMMV, of course.

Esprix

9

Esprix, when I have used Priceline, I could submit as many bids as I wanted for the same service - they just had to be at a different (whether higher or lower) price. It took me about 10 tries to get my hotel - I started at $80/night and worked my way up to $130.

When I did the airline ticket, I started at $150. I do recall the system telling me that I couldn’t submit a bid again for the exact same trip for the exact same price, for, I think, at least 24 hours. I discovered this because I accidentally submitted a bid for the same price twice without changing anything else about the itinerary. But I was certainly able to submit a higher bid once a lower one was declined. That’s the whole point of Priceline - what if I had submitted a $250 bid, gotten declined, and then offered to pay $2,000? I find it hard to believe that Priceline would turn me down.

Are you sure this isn’t what happened to you?

10

It is true that you can’t rebid for airline tickect for the exact same itenerary. They are just protecting their interest. The service is not set up to be able to bid repeatedly to “sneak up” on the lowest possible fare.

Having said that, they do try to help you make additional bids. As missbunny stated, the trick is to change something. Pick a different return day, for example. If you are fortunate, as I am, to live close to more than one airport, just change your departure site. With Dulles, Reagan, and BWI all within 45 minutes, I in effect get three chances.

The service is not geared for those on a rigid schedule, such as having to make a meeting at a certain time. But for those times where you have a little flexibility, the savings can be substantial.

11

It must work differently for hotels - I definitely remember (and this was only a few weeks ago) that I bid repeatedly on the same hotel specs - dates of arrival/departure, desired neighborhood, amenities, etc. I just kept upping the price. But it does sound like you aren’t allowed to do that with airline tickets.

12

I had an almost similar experience, except I read the instructions. Having done that, I found the cheapest flight I could at a different site and called the airline to book it. No problems.

When you do things with what is known as The Right Way™, you don’t get screwed.

13

Viscera, I’m sorry you got screwed. But face it, if you had paid attention to the directions, this wouldn’t have happened. You have no right to bitch and moan about Priceline.

My Priceline story: I live in California, and this summer, my friend got married in Ohio. I wanted to go, but was short on cash. I checked out Travelocity.com for their lowest fares. Once I felt confident that the lowest round trip airfare I could get from Travelocity was about $340, I went to Priceline and put in a bid for a flight from either SFO or Oakland to either Cleveland or Columbus (the wedding was in Cleveland, but there was a Doper I wanted to meet in Columbus) for nearly half of that - $175. And you know what? It was accepted. Even after they tacked on fees and taxes, I saved $150 by using Priceline. I was and am absolutely delighted with this, and would use Priceline again in a second. And all it took was a little bit of research and reading the directions.

14

Viscera, I almost had a similar experience, except that I read the directions before submitting my bid. I did all sorts of work on the site trying to get tix for me and my family. Then, like it says all over the site, I read the rules, as the purchase was nonrefundable, etc. When I found out I was not guaranteed a non-stop flight (from NYC to Miami, traveling w/2 small kids, so we didn’t want stopovers), I abandoned the hour work I had put in and just went through my travel agent. I’m sorry you think you got the shaft, but if you can accept its terms, priceline seems like a pretty good deal.

15

Well, I’m pissed that they dropped the gas. I drive quite a bit, used the full 100 gallon a month allotment, and got prices 25¢ lower than the price from the gas station nearest my house at that station. Now, other stations I pass regularly are usually 10-15¢ lower than that one, but $10 to $15 a month is $10 to $15 a month, for relatively little hassle.

16

When you go to Priceline and put in your cities and dates a screen comes up which says:

Now where in the world would you get the idea they would give you some kind of list to choose from?

This isn’t even a case of not reading the small print. You ignored the very clear explanation of Priceline’s procedures and made assumptions you had absolutely no reason for making. I’m not a big fan of Priceline’s for other reasons, but it’s your own fault you paid too much for these tickets, not theirs.

17

It IS possible to rebid with the same parameters on priceline.com, but you have to use different ISPs for each bid. A friend of mine has about 4 different free ISPs he uses simply for bidding on priceline.

I have no complaints…got a midsize car for 10 days for about $20/day…the going rate was about twice that.