Priceline aggressively encourages us to wait until the last minute to book, and has an overweight retired actor telling us to negotiate. Unfortunately, if we wait to the last minute to book, then we can't modify our reservation, such as to make it a day later. And negotiate? It seems somewhere in priceline's online conversion funnel must be a secret door to the bidding area. But all I saw, after I went to priceline and booked a room, was references to fixed prices, which claimed to be discounted below the hotelies' prices. Had I called the hotel directly, I could have enjoyed the same off-season price and could have changed my reservation once it was set.instead, I got a joke from priceline in which they offered to "Cancel" my reservation but told me the cancellation fee would be the same amount and the full fee for the room.
So, instead of a chance to negotiate with the hotelier to change my reservation due to travel delays, I got no chance to change my booking even an hour or so after I booked a room.
I'm sure it's good for priceline's bottom line, but the thing is, room occupancy in the city where I booked is currently abotu 25 percent. Most rooms are empty. A hotelier would have been glad to offer me the weekly rate, which is what priceline called the "sale" price. Basically, I got ripped off. Priceline stepped between me and the local business I was trying to work with, ended my opportunity to negotiate with that local business and recited non-sense about offering to "Cancel" — while still charging me the full price for several nights stay when I tried to change a weeklong reservation to start or end one day later.
Last time I'll ever do business with priceline. I recommend calling local hotels and doing business directly. And I recommend Mr. Shatner spend some time in the gym while he considers the disservice he is doing for millions of fans whose loyalty made him rich.
Now, I'm aware that Priceline has shills who post rebuttals in this forum, and it could be paid shills running some of the "bid on Priceline" forums.in so far as these people are shills, it is in violation of recent FTC rulings for them to promote a product online without disclosing their fiscal interest. If we can catch them, we have them nailed to the wall.
These shills like to point out the fine-print ascension contracts one must agree to before Priceline finishes an online booking. For one thing, the contract does not say I'm buying a room from priceline instead of from the hotel.
For another thing, these ascension contracts are almost identical in every detail, so a person who shops for rooms would have to read every letter of every contract — which are apparently different from hotel to hotel and even from day to day for rooms at the same hotel. After reading the first few lines of each paragraph, few people will read through several hundred words of 6pt type, jammed together in paragraphs 500 words long, to find a tiny detail that different from the virtually identical contract that was presented on the last screen.
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