Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Ebay/Priceline problems

I have done the Ebay to priceline deal over 30 times now and until recently got ALL my points. However on July 27th i got no points for a 4 star bid and from this thread it appears others are in the same boat.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=340649

However since this July 27th bid I have only gotten 2 postings for close to 6 winning bids. Anyone else missing points suddenly or is it just me? :(

rich

oops--put info in wrong thread.

Sorta a different topic - but does anyone have strong evidence priceline will only accept higher bids now using the ebay link (higher than not using it)?

I haven't tested bidding without going through ebay - but priceline has been declining all of my bids recently even when bidding relatively high - I bid $10 higher for the same product on priceline than hotwire was offering in three different cities and priceline wouldn't accept anything - so I ended up going with Hotwire. (And yes - I am comparing apples to apples. In a zone where the Holiday Inn was listed as a 3* on Hotwire and 2.5* on Priceline, I bid $10 higher than Hotwire was offering for the hotel for a priceline 2.5*. This particular hotel is the most common priceline hotel in the zone - but priceline wouldn't bite so I resorted to Hotwire for this Holiday Inn.) Does this have to do with me using the eBay link, or did priceline just not have any inventory at a similar price to Hotwire?

(FYI - a couple years ago I did several side by side bid comparisons bidding for flights using bonus money verses no bonus money. As this was for research purposes, I used CC I knew wouldn't go through. Using $10 bonus money, PL would only accept a bid about $4 lower on many of the fligths I tried.)

Points for three bids on Aug 4 still missing. Before that, everything poated without a hitch. I always got the same price via eBay as through Priceline main page.

Sorta a different topic - but does anyone have strong evidence priceline will only accept higher bids now using the ebay link (higher than not using it)?


I just completed a bid for Kensington London 4* - got it for $69 - which is the going rate or slightly under, and I went through the ebay link. Obviously it's not enough data for a statistical sample, but my experience shows no effect of using the link.