FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - What $$ fee EXACTLY does Priceline charge on each hotel booking these days?
Old Sep 19, 2005, 4:12 am
  #6  
RobertTheTraveler
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Hinterlands, CA
Posts: 363
Originally Posted by ozstamps
There is such a thing as an exact fee.....PL seem to now have a sliding fee scale. I am curious if others know what it is, so I can allow for that when bidding.
I'm not sure what you are trying to prove here. Yes, each individual bid has an "exact" fee that applies to it. All bids are no longer treated equal. This change happened well over a year ago, maybe two. Way back in 2000-2001, I think your winning result actually even broke it down for you with separate line items. The line items were combined a long time ago and the fee seemed to jump to a flat 6.95. Over the past couple years, its pretty obvious that the "exact" fee on each individually accepted bid amount has fluctuated upward.

I have never used PL for International Travel, but it wouldn't surprise me if the "exact" fee for a winning PL bid is substantially higher than domestic US. I seem to recall that PL got into some "trouble" with a few states' attorneys general back when PL was new and folks were complaining about overcharging taxes.

To solve that problem, PL converted to the hotwire style of lumping everything together in a catch-all category. By shielding the consumer from the specific tax amount and specific fee, there cannot be any angry complaints to any US public entity (city/state).

Obsessing over tax levels will get you only frustration. If they seem out of line I suppose you can email them. Good luck on that. There are two valuable bulletin boards that post winning bids. I haven't ever seen a winning bid of the same bid amount and same hotel come up with a "variable" tax. Of course, hotels have multiple PL rates, so its possible that Person A bids $50, wins a $48 room, and pays $10 in taxes+fees. Person B gets the same hotel with a winning bid of $60, but wins a $58 room (the hotel has two PL rates: 48 and 58), and pays $11 in taxes+fees.

Do you think that the Sydney City Tax Manager is going to make an inquiry on the lump-sum that a USA customer is charged on a prepay hotel? All he/she is going to do is confirm that their X% tax has been paid.

Since there is no "watchdog" for international bookings, seems like its bidder beware -- which is why BFT and BB are so helpful. It is annoying though when folks just post their winning bids and not the entire bid price with taxes and fees.
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