Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Priceline Class Action Lawsuit

Does anyone remember a class action dispute with Priceline over their misguided star ratings? There was an article somewhere that I can't find anymore - I believe it was based out of California, and the hotel in question was one in the dominican republic.

I need to article for a research paper - if anyone could help, I would greatly appreciate it.

I remember Priceline being sued, but not for that. I don't know how anyone could sue over star ratings as they are subjective and even today there is much inconsistency among the travel sites.

Well, it took place some time ago... based out of San Diego (I just remembered!).

This is killing me...

I remember this, but with Hotwire.

Priceline was sued for lots of things, including trading fraud accusations, misrepresentations, and over-charging their clients on hotel tax (if my memory serves me). I don't think they were sued for hotel ratings though. I don't even think it is possible to sue for hotel ratings since there is no universal standard of judgment.

Try running a serch on Westlaw or Lexisnexis. or just Google it.

I remember this, but with Hotwire.
Indeed (http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:WTmnlEVHtUcJ:www.fn.com/2005/02/16/technology/hotwire.reut/index.htm).

Priceline was sued for lots of things, including trading fraud accusations, misrepresentations, and over-charging their clients on hotel tax (if my memory serves me).

I remember the hotel tax lawsuit. I believe Priceline charged the customer hotel tax based on the accepted bid price, but remitted sales tax based on the lower rate paid to the hotel and pocketed the difference.

The funny thing is Priceline actually did everything by the book at first (taxing based on rate paid to hotel). What happens is shrewd bidders are able to figure out the minimum bid by taking the tax amount and dividing it by the tax rate of the county where hotel is located, and pretty soon everyone is bidding right at the minimum, not a single penny more.

I believe the BBB supplies all that information on thier site.

Apparently there are several suits against online travel sellers for keeping (or not charging) sales tax or the full sales tax on online room sales.

One site where some info can be found http://www.astanet.com/news/index.asp

Since that is an industry group the info may be a little loaded.

I do recall seeing a story, perhaps in the San Diego Tribune about a city or county going after priceline and others for not paying the hotel occupancy tax. But it didn't come up on google. Perhaps it could be located on Nexus or on the Tribune website.

They make me pay sales tax--why not priceline?

I got a notice of proposed settlement for a class action lawsuit involving Starwood and lack of disclosure about resort fees. I think they were vouchers for 13 or 14 dollars off at select SPG properties.

Actually, we received our "settlement" from starwood-- a $3 coupon! Whoohoo!

I got a letter about the lawsuit. They are being sued for deceiving customers into buying flights to or from airpirts that were different than what they intended thru the counteroffer process.

The crazy thing is, THIS HAPPENED TO ME! In 2002 I wanted to buy a ticket from my local airport. They gave me a counter offer from a different airport and without realizing it, I bought it!! I ended up not using it and was out $200. I was furious (I'd bought from Priceline many times and never had problems.)

Imagine my surprise when I got this letter saying if I could PROVE my claim, I'd get $175! So I've been looking thru my credit report, trying to even remember which credit card I used and calling the companies and trying to find the purchase.

What saved me is that I BLOGGED about it when it happened because I was so furious. If it wasn't for that, I would have had NO clue of the date on which it occurred. Now I know exactly when I bought the ticket in 2002.

I'm sure there will be more Priceline lawsuits to write about. They just got their $100 cancelation fee from me today. I was concentrating on the destination city so much (class action suit in chicago for city switches) that I didnt realize that they had changed the dates on me. Reduced my 6 days in LA down to 12 hours. Doh! Buyer beware. Infact, with a large bloated profit margin on a bad business model, Investor beware. You can do a google search for Priceline scam there are so many.