Charged by Priceline & then charged by hotel!
This was my second stay using Priceline, the first time I ended up at a Westin Hotel (everything was fine). On my second Priceline stay I ended up at a Marriott Hotel and this time I was charged once by Priceline the day of my bid and two days after my check-out, I was charged again! And this is not the room service, parking, etc... Does this happen often? I was happy with both of my stays, but I don't know if I should try this again and deal with the hassle again? I haven't heard anything from Marriott or Priceline yet.

 

I have never had it happen and I use PL quite a bit.

 

This happened twice to us with Hyatt.

 

I'd phone the Marriott again and talk to a manager. If that fails, do a credit card challenge.

This happened to me with the Westin Grand in Berlin. They took care of it when I pointed the problem out, and it took about a week for the charge to be reversed. When it was reversed, I had lost money due to the currency conversion, so they charged back another 15 Euros.

This has otherwise not happened to me with Priceline, but it did occur at another place where I had a free night.

 

It's happened with me and Hyatt too.

 

Sometimes the hotels mistakenly charge your credit card that you put on file for incidentals for stay that they should charge Priceline. Just dispute the charge with your CC.

 

Well, I called the hotel a few days ago and they told me that they would call me the next day. No calls. I called Priceline and they told me they would look into it. No news. I finally decided to send a complaint letter directly to the hotel billing department and one to Marriott Guest Services in Salt Lake City, Utah. We'll see what happens. I hope this is not typical of a Priceline stay. Why is it so easy for hotels to charge our credit cards, but so difficult to reimburse us?!

 

No need to get panicky about this. At least, not yet. It happened to me once at a Hilton. I called the Hilton and Priceline about it; within a week (the usual processing time for things like this) my credit card was credited back the erroneous charge.

Ed

 

Not really, that is the slowest way to correct it. Just contact the hotel's billing department.

 

Has happened to me four times in many hundreds of Priceline nights. All were at the same hotel about two years ago in quick succession. I really suspect it was a deliberate act on the part of an assistant manager and one employee, who would double bill and then remove the extra in cash.

Bank One (now Chase) was very unhelpful when I challenged the card statement, and refused to delete the charge. While its saved me a fortune Priceline is clueless if anything goes wrong, and in this case I'm not sure what they can do anyway.

I hope you still have a copy of the hotel folio, and I learned to hang onto Priceline printouts till well after the stay bills. I finally got it resolved by taking a later plane next time I was in town and taking the folios and Bank One statements back to the hotel, which may or may not be possible for you. I reguested to see the General Manager, ended up with the new Front End Manager, and was passed to the relevant accountant. (The former manager and accountant first involved were "no longer at the hotel", which was put in context by eye-rolling, so I assumed they were canned). The new accountant was quite competent and it was fixed by the time I flew home.

 

I called the hotel billing department and they did not care; they did not bother to call me back either. Priceline did not care because the charge is not exactly the same amount that Priceline charged me. I called Mastercard and I was told that they will start a "search" and that I should have news in about 4 to 6 weeks. I don't know if I should do Priceline no more...

 

In 20-30 Priceline stays in the last 18 months this has happened to me once, this June. I contacted PL customer service twice, and received a reply after a long waiting time (actually two replies), saying that "they will contact the hotel and ask them to reverse the charge". However this was almost 3 weeks ago and I've yet to see the charge being reversed on my CC online statement. I'm willing to give them another week until the next bill for the CC arrives and afterwards I probably need to look into disputing either of the charges.

So basically it does happen, but not that often. When it does, getting the charge reversed might be difficult because of the different paties involved.

 

The billing department of the Hyatts was very helpful in our cases.

 

I had a charge that shouldn't have been there on a Marriott PL stay. I faxed the bill to the hotel (and you should also fax the Priceline statement) and told them the issue in a note. They corrected it and apologized. Things happen. They are not crooks. Just document it to the hotel's accounting office. Priceline can't do anything more than you can.

 

I think it won't get corrected. I contacted Priceline and they say that they contacted the hotel and that the only charges that we're charged to my cc was my parking and that they cannot help me further.
When I called the hotel they said the same thing... that they did not charge anything else than parking. They did not return my calls after that. All sides say they don't know anything about the other amount. The amount charged is a little lower (not the exact amount) than the price I paid on Priceline, so I would not be able to say that I was charged twice. Clever aren't they? I think this is a scam from the hotel directly because if I add both those two charges my price is about the same as the regular rate charged by the hotel. I don't think I will use Priceline again, I guess I will have to live in the world of rack rates!