Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Priceline magazine ad with code for $25/50/75/100 NYOP hotel bonus cash

In the June issue of Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel magazine between page 28 and 29 there's a Priceline ad where you scratch off an area on a "briefcase" William Shatner is holding to get a 6-character code.

The code is good for $25. $50, $75 or $100 in hotel bonus cash for name-your-own-price hotels. You go to a special page on their website, enter the code and your e-mail address, then go to a second screen where you enter the PL password linked to the e-mail (like logging in) and then they tell you how much bonus cash you've "won." They send an e-mail with that info and links to the e-mail you gave.

I won (surprise!) $25 and, in digging deeper into T&Cs, I see it's $5/night for up to 5 nights.

YMMV, but odds are you'll probably get the $5-off x 5 as well. Nothing to write home about, but useful for a little extra boost if using PL for something anyway. Maybe you'll even beat the odds and get a bigger discount. You have until 8/31 to book, for stays through 3/31/10.

The ad may well be in other magazines besides Budget Travel; that's just the one where I found it.

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Don't forget the Expedia UK deal is still going strong. $30-off for new accounts and no minimum stay or minimum to spend. PM me WITH E-MAIL ADDRESS and I'll have them send a code to you. The e-mail can be a junk e-mail, though they promise not to send spam.

You don't have to live in the UK to use it (works fine for U.S.-based addresses and credit cards), and in places like Las Vegas it's even possible to get rooms for only the booking fee ($1-$2). Otherwise it works best on single-night bookings. It's strictly one code per e-mail/account, though, so each code needs a separate e-mail PM'ed if wanting more than one. There's a thread in the Budget Travel forum with more info about all this, and it's also under the Hotel Deals sticky.

mine was 5 X $5 also.

If the text scrapes off like mine did about what you're supposed to do with the code, you're supposed to go to www.priceline.com/secret to input the code.

Thanks for the info. I bought the magazine and received $50 off, i.e., $10 per night up to five nights, single session usage.

OP, how long did it take you to receive your confirming email from PL? At the end of my session yesterday the screen said that I would be receiving an email from them. I didn't see any confirmation number and didn't print the screen. When I didn't get the confirming email immediately after the session, I thought that maybe it would arrive this a.m. But it hasn't.

I still have the coupon and code, of course, so if I have to contact them, I can provide them the code number again. But contacting them is a nuisiance, so I'm just wondering how much time I need to give them.

So, are the codes one time use only? Or could more than one person use the same code..... just asking.... :D

After "winning" $50 and never receiving an email confirmation, I finally sent a complaint/question today to Priceline.

It took them well over their stated time limit of 3-4 hours to answer, but they answered--sort of. The CSR hadn't really read my complaint but just threw out some phrases to the effect that they must have already sent the confirmation--evidently didn't even check. Also didn't bother to read my complaint, which indicated that I had checked even the spam folder of my ISP in case it was there, and had also tried to re-input the code, which I had--only to be told that the email confirmation had already been sent--which it hadn't.

Priceline probably has no incentive to check into matters or ilmprove their CSR performances.

It's an interesting company and I've appreciated some Priceline stays. But the CSR experience is a horror.

Venting. Just venting. :mad:

I got my email with the Bonus Cash link within seconds of submitting my code to Priceline. Did you ever get yours, SkeptiCallie?

I won $25 too.

The Budget Travel mag cost $4.50 and $25 is the smallest bonus available, so this is a no lose proposition...if you get the link.

Thanks for posting this, RustyC.

Thanks for asking, Colfax.

No, I never did. After reading the CSR "response," I seethed for a day, then emailed back asking that this be escalated to a supervisor. I reminded PL in my CSR reply that (1) I had given the correct email address (further confirmed by the fact that PL is still sending me advertising); that (2) I had already checked my spam ISP folder, as I had said in my original email; and (3) I had already tried the route of clicking on the priceline.com/secret link as recommended by the CSR response, and I had already stated such in my email, and that it said that an email had already been sent.

I am guessing that this is a case of emails that just somehow disappear into the ether, which happens occasionally with emails. I do think that PL ought to check into my complaint and furnish at least a time the email was sent, assuming that it was.

I have not received back any reply to that email. I tend to think that my request to forward the email to a PL supervisor did not get forwarded. :eek:

I may call PL on the telephone, but the problem is that if they don't want to help, they won't. I don't feel like starting WWIII over it, since I might not even use the coupon anyway. And anyhow, the magazine was just $4 and some change.

Anyhow, it helps to know that others are getting their discounts, so evidently it is a valid program. So thanks for your information.

I am annoyed at how things turned out for me, yes. But I'm picking my battles. ;) There'll undoubtedly be other times, have been before, will be again. . . .


:)

My e-mail came more or less instantly, though I do notice that the bonus isn't loaded into the "rewards" section of the account, even though you would think that with requiring the e-mail address and a login procedure that'd be technically possible. So it seems like if you lose the e-mail (or don't get it to begin with) you can't access the bonus.

My e-mail came more or less instantly, though I do notice that the bonus isn't loaded into the "rewards" section of the account, even though you would think that with requiring the e-mail address and a login procedure that'd be technically possible. So it seems like if you lose the e-mail (or don't get it to begin with) you can't access the bonus.

Noticed the same thing and thought it odd. Got to make sure to hang on to the link in that email confirmation for those of us that managed to get the confirmation.

Checked on a newstand a week ago and the ad is in those also, so it wasn't just a subscribers only run. I should have thought to check the other travel mags but didn't think about it at the moment. (Headed to catch a flight)

Finally, success! ^

I ended up calling PL on the phone and this time, although it took a bit of patience and working through what seemed to be an initial brush-off, this time the CSR actually checked. Their system indicated that they had already sent the email, but the phone CSR did eventually send it again. This time I received it.

ETA: The text of my Bonus Cash email received this a.m. stated that expiration is "Thursday, October 8, 2009, 11:59 PM Eastern Time." No indication as to whether that is expiration to make a bid or actually to stay in a hotel. But in either case, this differs from the expiration dates the OP is seeing, so I tried to check on Terms and Conditions to see what those showed. But for that, evidently I have to log in first and perhaps make a bid. I tried to click on Terms and Conditions and couldn't. I am just mentioning that, in case different coupons or different parts of the country have different expiration dates. It would be a good idea for each person to check his or her own expiration dates, in case expiration dates differ by region of the country or whatever.