Originally Posted by
AutoSlash
First off, please accept our apologies for the problem you experienced with Priceline/Dollar. That is really annoying. We're not sure what happened there and why Dollar could not find your confirmation number in their system.
We can tell you that valid Dollar confirmation numbers transitioned from starting with a J to starting with a K around the end of 2021. The Dollar staff is a bit confused though because bookings made in late 2021 had a number like J94913237C6 whereas the confirmation numbers Dollar is issuing today would look like K2514243917. You can try a test booking on Dollar.com to confirm this. No idea what they mean when they say it should "start with a 0".
As far as your Avis booking goes, you can
click here to look your reservation up on Avis' website to confirm that it's active and the price matches what's shown on your Priceline confirmation email. The same is possible for most companies (including Dollar).
If you want to contact us at
[email protected], we can try to work something out with you where you can return your current $800 rental and we can try to make you a new reservation for something closer to the $400 you were originally supposed to pay.
Hi,
I appreciate the Avis link - that one DOES show our booking! I just searched on avis.com which I guess only has NA confirmation numbers and it didn't show.
Unfortunaly won't be able to return the car rental as I'm in the middle of Kruger and can't just leave to switch cars.
I very much appreciate the response and offer, though.
They mentioned they recently switched confirmation code types, and presumably my booking was made before the change - but if that means all bookings made pre-change were lost, that can't be true... That'd be ridiculous, no? Is there a way you (I don't know how much insider info autoslash has here) can contact Priceline and figure out what happened? Because they're sure not telling me and just going with "it's confirmed and not our fault that it's not showing on dollar's system"
We didn't really have the choice of not getting a car, as we needed to get through the park gates before they close. So it was either miss out on days of prepaid safari or pay up. 400 dollars extra is a comparatively small price to pay for whay we witnessed in return, but it sure was stressful!
Just... I guess everyone that booked with dollar through Priceline better double check their booking actually exists I guess is the lesson here.