priceline?

[tonysgal34]

Has anyone ever used Priceline.com and have you been successful? It seems that you have to give your CC before they will commit to a price and then you are committed to buy?

 

[peg2001]

Yes. When you have a succesful bid, you are committed and your credit card is charged.

What are you thinking about bidding on: rental car, airflight, or hotel?

Educate yourself before bidding. Become familiar with www.biddingfortravel.com

Good luck.
Peggy

 

[Pat_Elliott]

You will find many people here who use Priceline. The Budget Board is a great place to look, as well. I'd highly suggest visting www.biddingfortravel.com. I used Priceline often before finding this site, but never knew what I was doing until I found them.

To answer your direct question, to bid you must give them your CC# and be prepared to buy. There are no refunds. If you bid and win, you own it. For that reason, be sure you're going before using Priceline.

Priceline has its place. For Hotels, I find it fantastic, at least in Orlando. My needs for a hotel aren't much, and for $30 to $35, I can get a hotel that would cost me over $50. So I use it extensively for hotels.

For rental cars, I seem to be better on my own. The compact and subcompact prices on Priceline just aren't what I can get with codes and research.

The wildcard is air fare, which many people use Priceline for. I had a bad experience where they changed my flight times (Baltimore, MD to San Jose, CA) significantly on short notice (less than two weeks, if I remember correctly). Kind of threw my schedule off. For that reason, I won't use them for air fare. Plus, anymore you can get decent discounts on air fare without them. Others would disagree.

So the bottom line, before you put in a bid, know what you can get. Read everything on Bidding for Travel. If you follow their rules, they'll actually help you get together a bidding strategy. My rule, for instance, when using Priceline for a hotel: I look at the hotels that are coming up, I figure out which one that's come up the last couple of months I'd least like to stay in. If I can be happy in that hotel for a given price, then I bid. If I get the hotel I want, all the better. Example: The Swan/Dolphin was coming up for resort at around $70 give or take for a while. But others were coming up, too, like the Hyatt DTD. Folks were bidding because they thought they'd get the Swan/Dolphin. Priceline doesn't work that way. You're not bidding for a certain hotel, or a certain flight. You're bidding for a hotel in a given zone, or a flight on a given day. If getting a flight that puts you into Orlando at 9 PM the night you travel will ruin your trip, don't use Priceline.

Hope that helps!

Pat

 

[inkkognito]

I LOVE Priceline!!
We don't use it for airline tickets because most of our trips are for Disney cruises, and we need very specific times. Thankfully, we live in Chicago and ATA has great fares.
But we always spend the night before our cruises near MCO, and we typically get the MCO Marriott for $28 (we got the Renaissance once for that price, which was very cool!). We only bid for four-star hotels, and there has only been one time when I didn't get my price...not bad, since we cruise 8 times a year. On that trip, we got the Holiday Inn Select for around $40 via Priceline.
Usually we use Happy Limo, so we don't need a rental car, but sometimes we come out for the weekend and want to drive around. Since we only need the car for a couple of days, it's rare that we can find a good code. I find the cheapest rate, bid below it on Priceline, and so far I've gotten a car every time (twice Alamo and twice Avis). I always specify an MCO car rental place because we prefer the convenience of the onsite agencies.
William Shatner may be the world's worst singer, but Priceline is okay with me!
Barb
Visit the Platinum Castaway Club at: www.castawayclub.com