I've noticed that priceline has recently begun displaying standard retail fares for airline tickets. After entering your O+D and dates, priceline goes to a page that lets you bid or click a link under "Not Flexible" to see retail fares. These are like other tix in that they're changeable for a fee and show flight times, airline, etc. I think you get FF miles too.

That's not such a big deal because savvy shoppers always checked retail fares elsewhere before bidding, but here's the thing: Before bidding priceline says "Save up to 10 percent" or 20 pct or 40 pct, depending on the intinerary. If I got a message saying "Save up to 10 percent" I'm out of there because to me I have to save at least 30 pct to even consider priceline.

I've only looked at about 6 or 7 itineraries but in four cases I got save up to 10 pct, twice got 20 pct. One time when I got "Save up to 20 pct I bid very low, got denied and went back and started the itinerary from scratch and got "Save up to 40 pct" just a few minutes later.

What this says to me is that it's likely you can save more than that what priceline is saying. It seems like they're understating the potential savings because they want you to bid more, but by doing this I bet they're scaring away customers who won't bother with priceline to save 10 pct.

And if you're a first-time user and get a msg saying "save up to 10 pct" you might leave and never come back, thinking why bother with priceline if you can only save 10 pct.

One thing seems clear: priceline wants a piece of the retail market but I wonder if they're sacrificing their core air biz in pursuit of something that might not pay off.