I know, this is what I was thinking. I just attempted to do a priceline offer and the screen you hav

Q uestion staples center los angeles ca : I tried to make a hotel reservation in London, Ontario, Canada through Priceline. The site displayed three tabs. The first two tabs displayed the correct city, but when I switched to the best deal tab it automatically switched to London, UK.
I contacted customer service, but they wouldn t refund the room. After some arguing, they finally offered to let me try to make another bid on a room in London, Ontario, and that if the bid was successful, they would refund the charge, minus a $25 fee.
If Priceline staples center los angeles ca s site doesn t work, shouldn t it apologize and refund the purchase? Instead, a Priceline representative told me there was no one else I could talk to. I was wondering if there is anything that you can do. Jaime Deane , Toronto
By way of explanation, when you book a hotel through Priceline s Name Your Own Price section, you re bidding on a nonrefundable, nonchangeable hotel room. You don t find out the name of the hotel until after you ve made a successful staples center los angeles ca bid.
As you can imagine, some customers aren t happy with the hotel they get, so Priceline s customer service agents are used to reminding them of the rules. But this was different: Your hotel was in the wrong country.
I m not sure if calling Priceline was the best course of action. staples center los angeles ca An email explaining your problem would have probably worked better. It turns out you did your homework, and saved some screenshots of the erroneous tabs. Sending those to Priceline might have done the trick. They could have seen the problem, as opposed staples center los angeles ca to just hearing about it.
I contacted Priceline on your behalf and shared your screenshots. Priceline agreed that its system failed to draw a distinction between the London in England and Canada. It promised to fix errant tabs.
I myself have never used Priceline staples center los angeles ca because I like to know what I am getting upfront. Taking chances like this with my travel that I am spending my hard earned money on is too much of a risk for me. However, I do feel that Priceline erred but they finally did the right thing by refunding all of the OP s money.
Because of the nonrefundable nature of many of its products, Priceline tracks and saves each keystroke you make during the bidding process in order to deal with these types of situations. staples center los angeles ca If this type of dispute develops, readers should staples center los angeles ca ask that Priceline prove its position.
I didn t vote because I m somewhere between the two. All you have to do is watch Chris s column for a week to understand that Americans, as a traveling whole, don t like to accept responsibility for our mistakes and failures (Shall we go through the didn t buy travel staples center los angeles ca insurance , won t refund my non-refundable , etc complaints). A site like Priceline must accept lots of it s not my fault. Your website messed up phone calls in a day. So I do think that the CSRs are jaded to that excuse. At the same time, software staples center los angeles ca is written by humans and only does what you tell it to. If there s a bug, it can cause problems.
2. The OP requested London, Ontario. London Ontario came up was presented on the first two tabs. Who in their wildest imagination would expect that a website would present two different cities in different staples center los angeles ca countries. Priceline made an error, plain and simple. Its hardly the OPs fault that she didn t catch Priceline s crazy error.
Think about it. Say you do an online search for hotels using Marriott.com for London, Ontario, and 5 hotels are presented each claiming to be in London, are you really expecting that hotel #4 is really in the UK?
2. I said it was a shared responsibility. staples center los angeles ca Are you really telling me that when he went to the Best Deal Tab and could see the properties he didn t look where they were at? Also, he went to a different area (tab) of the website to find the deal. It wasn t one out of a list. Priceline owns a large portion of this for presenting options that were outside the search limits. Notice I did say I think that the correct result was reached.
Third-party websites are notorious for deciding things for you. They are the home of the pre-checked checkbox and the defaults that are always the options most lucrative to themselves. Still more reasons to stay away from them.
Good answer, Carver Clark Farrow II For John Baker to draw his conclusions on a small sampling of the public (and we don t know how many ARE actually American because Chris doesn t have the proviso he only helps Americans, thus it s never really mentioned WHERE the people are from) is short-sided, more than a little ethnocentric and narrow staples center los angeles ca minded, at best.
When you are your own travel agent, priceline is the supplier and you are the travel agent, you assume full responsability. I pay insurance premiums to cover that kind of stupidity and have used it 2 times in 40 years. staples center los angeles ca She made the oops and admitted it. Priceline wasted their $$$ and time with this complaint. There is plenty of opportunity to review the accidental switch of cities before you hit the purchase button.
staples center los angeles ca The issue transcends website glitches. staples center los angeles ca In general, staples center los angeles ca many businesses make it very difficult to reach someone who is empowered to go off script and apply common staples center los angeles ca sense and discretion to unique situations.
staples center los angeles ca Wow. Look, in this case I don t necessarily agree with John Baker (breaking a run of posts in which we DID agree with each other sorry John!) But calling him a jerk is just out of line. Nothing he said in these posts was jerky. In fact I thought he was very respectful in his disagreement something you were not.
Given the representative sampling here, I guess we can now say that all people who are associated with Exploration Travel Mag are unable to carry on a civilized debate without resorting to insults and ad hominem attacks!
Glad Priceline did the right thing in the end, but they really should empower their low-level employees to escalate such cases. This was obviously a computer staples center los angeles ca glitch, and not a case of buyer s remorse.
I m a split decision on this one. Personally I think that Chris s community of complaining travelers is probably more representative than not of the traveling public in terms of how many of them are whiners and overly-entitled. I do think that most people who correspond with him are more educated travelers than the average, as one can assume they wouldn t know about him unless they at least occasionally read his blog. And it s impossible to read his blog without learning at least something about travel!
As for shared responsibility, I m in the camp that the vast majority of the responsibility falls on Priceline. One should be able to expect the website you are using to function properly if it s going to take your money and tell you that it s non-refundable. The website did not work right, plain and simple, and I do agree with you that the correct result was ultimately reached.
Should the OP have noticed the wrong city? I can t answer that without actually seeing the screenshots. But both Christopher staples center los angeles ca and Priceline were convinced enough by them that this was Priceline s error, and that s good enough for me. I give the traveler a pass on this one.
However, staples center los angeles ca mistakes can be made. There have been several humorous anecdotes about international travelers trying to visit San Jose, Costa Rica and who then ended up in the heart of Silicon Valley, or vice versa. Just try and book a hotel room in a city named Springfield. You ve got to be especially careful. Always look at the preview screen, which will have all the information on the location.
Absolutely true ESPECIALLY with Priceline! I made a fatfinger keystroke error on a Priceline bid once, and ended up with a hotel on the entirely wrong date. I could not for the life of me get anyone on the phone! staples center los angeles ca I m not even sure how the OP in this case did, because there were no humans to be found back when this happened to me.
I know Christopher always recommends sending emails, and I do agree, staples center los angeles ca but I like to try the phone first because it s entirely possible you ll end up with a normal human who will provide a quick resolution. If that doesn t happen, then yes, send emails and documentation.
But with Priceline there WERE no humans. And my emails were responded to with cookie-cutter form letters refusing to allow me to change dates. I finally did get their agreement to change the date, with a service charge. Personally I feel there should be provisions for typo errors in these non-refundable purchases, if caught by the buyer immediately (which mine was the moment staples center los angeles ca I clicked enter I realized that I d hit the wrong month).
I stopped using Priceline some time ago. But during the period of time when I was staying home with the kids and we were living on a much tighter budget, I used it a few times quite successfully. I relied on Bidding for Travel (the one with the witch of a moderator! LOL!) and that worked VERY well for me. I got a 5-star hotel in Vancouver for a couple days pre-cruise for less than half of the cheapest price I could find for it anywhere else. I also got rooms at the Palazzo in Vegas for incredibly cheap.
But after they gave me a hard time about a fatfinger keystroke error and refused to refund it, I stopped using them. Now I won t use any opaque site since I went back to work our travel budget is a bit more generous and I m happy to pay more to know exactly what I m getting.
But for folks on a budget, it really can be a good way to get a good deal, provided they use one of the sites like biddingfortravel that helps them understand how it works and what they might get. And provided they don t make any typos!
I know, this is what I was thinking. I just attempted to do a priceline offer and the screen you have to put your initials in is very clear about the city and country. It is someone who didn t review their itinerary very well before committing.
So, despite voting YES on the pole I have to blame the OP here. If you actually go to the Priceline site and attempt to name your own price (which is the Best Deal Tab the OP refers to in his letter) in London Ontario Canada you are presented with a screen that detai