Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - OT: Priceline Debacle

Mateo Sr. is stuck in New York right now:

He made a reservation on priceline.com and has the printout etc.

Goes to The Roosevelt Hotel (where he "won") and they have no record of his confirmation.

Calls priceline, first time they tell him "no you don't have a reservation", second time they tell him "it may take 24 hours for the reservation to come through"

He spendt 3 hours today on the phone and in the hotel trying to settle to no avail, he ended up staying at another hotel at rack rate.

Since priceline has a no-refund policy, but clearly they were unable to deliver, how would you go about settling this?

Call CC Company and dispute charges? For failure to deliver on services rendered?

Man, both Mateo's have had a really bad day... :mad:

What on Earth made you post this in the AA forum?!? :confused:

oy!

I didn't even realize I was in the wrong forum! :(

Mod, please move as I need sleep/soup/advil....

moving....

Mateo Sr. is stuck in New York right now:

He made a reservation on priceline.com and has the printout etc.

Goes to The Roosevelt Hotel (where he "won") and they have no record of his confirmation.

Calls priceline, first time they tell him "no you don't have a reservation", second time they tell him "it may take 24 hours for the reservation to come through"

He spendt 3 hours today on the phone and in the hotel trying to settle to no avail, he ended up staying at another hotel at rack rate.

Since priceline has a no-refund policy, but clearly they were unable to deliver, how would you go about settling this?

Call CC Company and dispute charges? For failure to deliver on services rendered?

Man, both Mateo's have had a really bad day... :mad:


Before this gets moved to the bidding forum, you should contact Priceline ASAP for a refund. If they did charge your (or Sr's) credit card, and then refused his reservation, I see no reason why they won't process a refund. If that fails, then I'd get the credit company involved. You need to at least make a reasonable effort with the vendor before filing a dispute with your CC company, but I suspect Priceline will work this out before it gets to that.

I had this happen 2 years ago. Call or email Priceline, and they should refund you. I would request that they refund the rack rate, since that's probably more expensive.

Priceline owes you the difference between your bid, and what you ended up paying. Period. This assumes that the hotel you stayed at (if not the Roosevelt) is the same or lesser star rating than the Roosevelt.

Just curious... did Mateo Sr. call the Roosevelt Hotel prior to showing up, to confirm his reservation? Not to say that the burden should've been on him to do so, of course.

i have made PL reservations just a few hours before checking in

i wonder what went wrong here?

'Confirmed reservations' but no reservation when you check in - sounds like Expedia ? I guess we have to ReConfirm all reservations now!

He did'nt call to reconfirm :(

It never occurred to him as this has never happened before :mad:

Priceline is not budging, it's off to Visa....

Priceline is not budging, it's off to Visa....

Are you kidding me?! The issue here (if it should be an issue at all, which I think it shouldn't be) should be whether or not PL should cover the costs incurred for that other hotel he had to go to! Complete refund of the charges paid to PL should be a given.

PL's handling of this situation is deplorable.

Sorry to hear about this debacle. Any more such incidents reported here?

If I found myself in such a situation, then I would have tried to stay at the hotel "won" on Priceline even if it involved paying rack rate (on a credit card) at that very same hotel on those very nights. Why? Because a dispute would be somewhat easier to resolve.

To the OP: have you gone to the Priceline.com site and done "check your status" for all hotel reservations using the same credit card and email address? Past bids that are won should have a checkmark besides them and when you pull it up, check out the details.

This incident and the lack of resolution is discomforting, to say the least.

Once I was staying at a hotel in New Orelans and decided to extend my stay by a day (wasn't feeling too well after partying on FQ) and added one night by bidding. Couple of hours later the reservation hadn't transferred into the hotels system so I just printed out the Priceline confirmation.

This happened to me a couple years ago. I checked in at the rack rate, called PL and it was "fixed" before I checked out.

If I found myself in such a situation, then I would have tried to stay at the hotel "won" on Priceline even if it involved paying rack rate (on a credit card) at that very same hotel on those very nights. Why? Because a dispute would be somewhat easier to resolve.

Me too.

It hardly seems good enough to get a refund from Priceline for the amount of the winning bid when because of a Priceline screw-up, presumably the original poster's father wound up paying much more for a replacement room at rack rate.

If I found myself in such a situation, then I would have tried to stay at the hotel "won" on Priceline even if it involved paying rack rate (on a credit card) at that very same hotel on those very nights. Why? Because a dispute would be somewhat easier to resolve.

Great advice GUWonder. As long as they had a room.

Great advice GUWonder. As long as they had a room.

Very true. With an offer of rack (or other prevailing) rate at an early enough hour will often result in rooms appearing even where the property is noted elsewhere (or by other channels) as "sold out". (And then a lower rate paying guest gets walked later that night.)

Good thing you didn't do this on one of the internet's huge travel websites or you'd have to re-confirm by e-mail, twice, and then by phone. :eek:

Mateo Sr. is stuck in New York right now:

He made a reservation on priceline.com and has the printout etc.

Goes to The Roosevelt Hotel (where he "won") and they have no record of his confirmation.

Ironically, the random Google ad next to your post is for the Roosevelt Hotel.

Ironically, the random Google ad next to your post is for the Roosevelt Hotel.

Durrhhh. You think Google places paid ads in text here at RANDOM? :rolleyes:

As usual, I am just a little confused.. :confused:

1. As I understand it, the OP's father had a confirmed PL reservation in hand and the hotel had no record.
2. Priceline first denied they had it in the system and then said it would take 24 hours...this is crazy as I have booked a few hours before a reservation and it was there.

3. Customer had to pay rack rate at different hotel.

4. Priceline is STILL going to charge the customer for a reservation he did not get? They are refusing to credit the reservation they did not make and was not used?

5. In view of #4...it is obvious that PL does not intend to pay the difference in cost for the customer.

No way that PL can refuse to credit the CC for a service that was denied.

Durrhhh. You think Google places paid ads in text here at RANDOM? :rolleyes:

Yes, I understand that Google ads are targeted. But any one of dozens or hundreds of ads that play in rotation, all targeted, could have displayed. I thought it was funny to see a Roosevelt ad next to a slam of the Roosevelt. I've returned to the first post a couple of times since and there were other Google ads showing, for hotels and firms never mentioned in this thread.

Mateo Sr. is stuck in New York right now:

He made a reservation on priceline.com and has the printout etc.

Goes to The Roosevelt Hotel (where he "won") and they have no record of his confirmation.

Calls priceline, first time they tell him "no you don't have a reservation", second time they tell him "it may take 24 hours for the reservation to come through"

He spendt 3 hours today on the phone and in the hotel trying to settle to no avail, he ended up staying at another hotel at rack rate.



When your father read his Priceline number to the customer service agent did Priceline acknowledge that it was a valid reservation for the Roosevelt Hotel on that night?

If it was simply a matter of the hotel not recieving a fax from Priceline that can be done in less than 15 minutes. I've bid from a Kinko's a mile from the hotel before and the Priceline fax got to the hotel before I did. If Priceline acknowledged that your reservation was valid it's hard to imagine them saying it would take more than 24 hours to re-fax, especially for a reservation that night.

Or did Priceline maintain that they didn't have a record of your reservation at all? When you look in "My Trips" now do you find a reservation confirmation there?

Any updates?