I just completed the worst travel company nightmare I've ever experienced. My roommate and I wanted to travel on her college spring break from Chicago to Orlando to visit my family and see the sites. I went to Priceline.com specifically because I'd heard of their bidding system on vacation packages. Their home page shows bids for motels and flights, but not vacation packages. On the package tab I entered the dates from 3/12/10-3/16/10 for two round-trip tickets, hotel, and rental car. It asked for my credit card information and I expected the bid page to come up after that screen. It never did. The next page confirmed that I was paying close to $900 dollars for a package I had wanted to place a bid on it.
Thinking I made a mistake, I called their customer service to cancel the full-price package and I could start over with the bidding process. They refused, stating that everything was non-refundable, non-changeable. I stated that I'd paid and extra $56 for trip insurance in case I had to cancel and they said I needed a valid illness with a doctor's excuse they could verify in order to cancel. After speaking to the corporate office I was told there still wasn't anything they could do, even though their website didn't allow me to place a bid.
Angry and upset, I finally found someone who would cancel both flights. I figured if they refused to cancel the motel or rental car, they weren't about to get my business for the flights. After all of this, I then had to call them back and get an updated itinerary because I never received an e-mail confirmation on the flight changes and seven days later my itinerary online still hadn't been updated to reflect the canceled flights.
To top it off, after receiving my updated itinerary I found out that their system had defaulted the pick-up time for the rental car at 5A.M. On the 13th... The day after my flight was supposed to arrive. When I explained that the package consisted of me entering in only the dates of the vacation and the website plugged in the relevant information in for the rental car and hotel, I should at least get the missing rental car day for free. Of course, they refused.
At the end of it all, it's caused financial problems and enough stress for both of us that my roommate has now backed out of the vacation, refusing to pay Priceline.com's prices when we started this whole ordeal simply wanting to place a bid to get a decent price. Since Priceline refuses to refund the hotel and rental car, I'm pretty much forced to go on this "vacation" alone. I will never, ever, ever deal with Priceline.com and I will make sure I tell friends, family, and anyone else I meet what a horrible experience I had with them. I've never met a company that was so anti-customer as I have with this one.
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