September 23, 2004
Booking a hotel online
I just booked a hotel online for the first time in my life. As you may have read, I flew to America last minute for a funeral so the connections and everything aren't perfectly smooth. Unlike JAL, when you have to spend a night in Tokyo and you're flying American Airlines, you make and pay for your won reservations.
First I went to Priceline, but my first offer was too low and no one accepted. I tried to raise the price but Priceline also makes you change the date or location (or wait 72 hours). Can't really do that, so I'm not using Priceline. This seems like a stupid system to me and Priceline should do something more user friendly.
Then I tried Hotel Club. Of course I told them there were two people traveling and they returned Holiday Inn at 8,875 yen including taxes. I compared this to the Holiday Inn web site and they were 8,162 yen excluding 5% tax and 10% service charge so I went to book through hotel club and found that it was for a single room. Why do they show me single room prices when they know I'm traveling with 2? About as stupid as Priceline. The double was 11,000 through them so I went back to Holiday's Inn web site and made the reseravtion there.
Oh yeah, I tried Yahoo's beta travel search, but they couldn't find any hotels in Narita!
Posted by James Trotta at September 23, 2004 12:45 AM
Priceline is naming its own price now!! I was bidding and it only has one button in bottom middle of screen. You have to keep pressing it and rebidding. This is called a trainer. It becomes intuitive for the user to press the only button the is used for navigation. I was bidding $500 on a ticket and the named a price of $1058.47 I navigated to the next screen using the only button in the bottom middle. Without any confrimation. Congratulations!! You just bought the most expensive NONREFUNDABLE ticket!!
Pricelines stock is dropping. They are losing repeat business. They have lost me, my wife, and 4 other persons at her Insurance business when we conference called the customer service the was harder than heck to get a hold of. The lady fought so hard to tell me her practice was LEGAL. She fought for a $100 dollar mark-up. Me and my wife and her coworkers fly so often Priceline could have made 20X that off us by keeping us as a customer and not LEGALLY DECEIVE us. Great job Priceline. You lost a lot of business that will never come back. Plus hundreds of people call for insurance and quotes and it is a topic that will come up. The word is spreading. Sell Priceline Stock. Don't use the website it is deceptive and will rob you. It will authorize charges on the card you use for Reward and Crap that you don't want to pay for.
Remember it is LEGAL. They have your card. You agreed to the fine print. Call your card company and have them issue you a new card/number. KillaWabbit
Posted by: KillaWabbit at April 12, 2005 6:15 AMhave you tried hotwire. i've used it a bunch and never been burned. priceline is a waste of time.
Posted by: Ben Gould at August 4, 2005 2:01 AM