The Unofficial Guide on how to get P’wned by Priceline
Or…
USING PRICELINE TO GET A 3.5 STAR HOTEL ROOM FOR HALF PRICE.
P’wnd: Intentional or unintentional misspelling of the word “owned”. It is used primarily as an exclaimation by those that bear witness to someone getting put down or abused.
Forward: The following is a harrowing tale of incredible savings and awful customer service. I mean BAD.
Weeks ago, I stumbled upon the term Travel Hacking. This term is crawling across the Internet. Essentially, Travel Hackers scour the web for ways to earn frequent flyer miles and points. They always know when the hottest promotions are going on which airlines. Travel Hacking means that you don’t have to wait to win the lottery or for your kids to graduate college to travel the world.
Some of the best Travel Hackers are probably business travelers (such as our step-dad who racks up the miles with Southwest all on the company dime, the lucky dog), yet through my research I found that you don’t have to be a frequent flyer to earn miles, nor do you even have to own a credit card (yet owning one certainly helps in earning points), you just have to know where and when to look to find points, promotions, and how to turn those into miles. Or, have someone tell you where and when to look. More on this in a later post.
Since Jacob and myself aren’t bathing in cash, yet we certainly long to get some traveling under our belts asap, I decided that Travel Hacking is right up our alley.
HOTEL HACKING WITH PRICELINE
Excited about these new prospects, Jacob and I began to research how to get our mits on some discounted travel. It didn’t take long to discover Priceline’s Name Your Own Price feature. This in itself is a great way to save, but it really gets interesting when you find a way to hotel hack it. A website called The Bidding Traveler makes finding out just how low the Name Your Own Price feature will allow you to bid. In map form, The Bidding Traveler shows you which hotels are accepting which bids in the vicinity you wish the stay. Pretty sweet, eh?
SANTA FE ?
For a while Jacob and I have been trying to convince Jacob’s mother and step-dad to take a Spring Break trip with us this year. We visited Santa Fe last year with my father and have dreamt about getting back to those adobe buildings and green chili enchiladas ever since. So naturally, Santa Fe was the town of choice, as Jacob’s folks love it as well. PLUS Jacob’s mom is turning 50 this year (the woman doesn’t look a day over 40)! Let’s celebrate with a trip!
After finding the bids that Priceline was accepting for Spring Break 2011 in Santa Fe, NM (via TBT), we scurried on over to Priceline to see if our bid of $85/night for two 3.5 star hotel rooms would be accepted (checking to see that two rooms would be available, one for Jacob’s folks, and one for ourselves).
Well, Priceline knows what it wants. It wants your money. Priceline requires you to enter your credit card information before you can see if your bid is accepted, before you can choose which hotel you’d like to stay at. Instead, it selects a hotel for you, based on the star rating you selected. These are things that were not clearly stated on the Priceline website. Perhaps naively, Jacob and I assumed that if we entered our credit card information, entered which hotel star rating and bid, Priceline would give us the opportunity to select “YES” or something, anything, whatever… before charging our credit card.
A lofty thought.
“YOUR BID HAS BEEN ACCEPTED. YOUR CREDIT CARD HAS BEEN CHARGED” (read: you’ve been p’wned).
“Wait, what? Hang on – we just wanted to check for availability and pricing. We don’t even know if these dates will work. What the? Surely Priceline’s customer service department will help us to fix this situation – give us a refund, credit, a transfer, something!” After roughly 45 minutes on the phone with customer service, we found that a) absolutely NO refunds are given b) you cannot change your credit card information and c) Priceline customer service sucks.
YEP, SANTA FE !
After quite a bit of anxiety over the shock of the situation, the happiness set in. We’re going to Santa Fe, NM this Spring Break for 4 days and 4 nights of skiing, green chili EVERYTHING, and Southwest culture. We worked out the logistics, and our folks added an additional night onto our 3-night stay (which Priceline claims is actually one thing you CAN do to your Name Your Own Price feature, yet in our case they denied for no apparent reason).
The Positives:
- Our hotel is The Inn of the Governors, a 3.5 star hotel. Traditional King room on Spring Break week: $152.33/night. Our savings: roughly $75/night
- After calling the hotel, our savvy business-traveling step-dad had our rooms upgraded to a Superior King room at no additional charge: $172.33/night. Our UPDATED savings: roughly $90/night! OVER 50% SAVINGS!
- Priceline gave us a $10/night voucher for our next hotel stay
- Our 50th birthday gift to Jacob’s mom ROCKS, and it just kind of… happened. Honestly, being able to take this trip with them alleviates any of the frustration, since we get to celebrate with her in such a wonderful city. This kind of turned into a happy accident, but it DOES NOT absolve Priceline of their awful service.
WILL WE USE PRICELINE AGAIN?
The short answer is: yes. First, to redeem that $10/night voucher, eventually, and future only with caution and the complete understanding of their refund policy, which is nonexistent.
The moral: When using Priceline, make sure you have all of the correct information available (dates, credit card, etc) before even LOOKING at your computer.
Has anyone had a similar experience with one of the big online travel agencies? I’d love comments or feedback on similar travel logistics nightmares.
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Tags: cheap hotel, Priceline, Travel Hacking
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