Priceline guide discussion area

TheGarage

Hi. I'm staying in NY for just one night. I've registered with Better Bidding but I haven't received their validation email (I have checked all folders). I emailed the admin folks to let them know, but no response to that either. Bit of a head scratcher!
I'm going to have another go at my bidding now. Wish me luck!

TheGarage

Hi,
Just to let you know, I've had my 8th bid tonight accepted. I bid £80 and the total bill is £101.31. I had my bid accepted for The Roosevelt Hotel. Thanks for the guide and advice.

blindman

TheGarage wrote: »

Hi,
Just to let you know, I've had my 8th bid tonight accepted. I bid £80 and the total bill is £101.31. I had my bid accepted for The Roosevelt Hotel. Thanks for the guide and advice.

Hi

Can you fill out some details of the bid pls?

Did you use the Pricelineexpress method as advised ?

Is this the hotel you were expecting?

Happy with it?

What price is it for "nomral bookings?"

Can you report back to BB if you do get the email


well done!

Cheers

duchy

I've not used priceline in a while but will be booking some US hotels shortly and notice the gap between priceline and hotwire has noticably narrowed and seems that hotwire can offer better prices than priceline in some situations which didn't used to be the case (or maybe it's my specific destinations this time ?)

GMN_2

I had a positive experience with using the bidding system on priceline.com.

Usually, I would book hotels either directly or via booking sites, but this time I decided to try Priceline.

I travelled from London to the US in Oct 2013, and I was originally staying at another hotel, but there wasn't much to do there.

On a Sat morning at my hotel, I registered on Priceline, entered my payment method and went to the bidding area.

I entered the dates I wanted, the area I wanted to stay in and the star rating. I decided to choose the 3 star and above option to try and be safe, as I had a rough idea about what I'd get for a US hotel.

Then, I proposed a rate for the room. There's a type of calculator on the site which makes a suggestion as to the price you should propose for your booking. You can follow this or ignore it.

With regards to choice, that's pretty much all you have control over. Priceline chooses everything else for you. You have no idea which hotel you're getting in advance or the town etc.

Once you submit your request, you then sit back and wait for Priceline to email you with an answer. With my experience, the email response was received within about 15 mins.

If they reject your bid, they'll tell you why i.e your bid was too low etc, and they'll also give you some tips as to how you could improve your chance of submitting a successful bid.

If they accept the request, they'll also let you know via email, take the payment from your card and then send you the full details for the booking. Alternatively, you can phone a US customer service number to get a response.

I was first time lucky and my bid was accepted right away, but for those with rejected bids, you have to have a little patience.

Usually you can only bid once in 24 hrs with the exact same request, but if you keep tweaking a few things, you can bid repeatedly within the same day.

So for example, if your first bid was for $300, the next bid can be $310, then $320 and so on. Or you could change the star rating, location, country or dates. If US dollars isn't your usual currency, it's handy to use a currency converter.

Priceline found me a 3 star Marriot Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My bid was for $59 a night and the original price for a room of that choice would usually be about $130 a night.

If I recall, Priceline claims to save you around 40%.

Breakfast wasn't included, but I did have a nice King size bed, a sofa bed, modern TV, a nice bathroom, room service, a pool, hot tub, good wifi, PC access in the lobby, unlimited water in the lobby, vending machines, dining areas, a gym, seating area downstairs with TV booths, friendly, professional staff and the hotel was also attached to a large shopping mall.

I really couldn't complain.

There's some small print/ instructions which you need to pay attention to:

-No refunds, changes or cancellations.

-You have to enter your details on Priceline the way it appears on your passport.

There's more, but those come to mind.

I've also tried the bidding system for flights, but some of my bids were rejected and I never got to a place where I completed a booking, so I can't really comment too much on it.

All in all, my experience was positive and I didn't have any problems checking in at the hotel. I think I'll continue to use Priceline in the future.

G4CHP

Beware....having used Priceline in the past, I booked a London hotel last night. I was charged £521. On checking the hotel web site, I could have booked direct for £485. I won't be using Priceline again.

blindman

G4CHP wrote: »

Beware....having used Priceline in the past, I booked a London hotel last night. I was charged £521. On checking the hotel web site, I could have booked direct for £485. I won't be using Priceline again.

Obviously did not do any research-BUT did you claim the difference
https://www.priceline.com/help/#/faq/13697


?

duchy

Prime example of over bidding by not doing the research first - however you can claim the difference back. I've successfully got the difference back from PL in the past.