The Site: Priceline.com
Two travel booking options:
1. Fixed-priced airline tickets, rental cars, hotels
- Compare over 60,000 hotels worldwide
- Priceline “PriceBreakers” – Daily travel deals on Priceline. Sign up to have them delivered to your email inbox
- No booking fees on published airfares, plus earn airline reward program miles
- City guides and traveler hotel reviews
- “Best Price Guarantee” *- If you find a lower price on your hotel up until 24 hours before your travel dates, they will match that price or refund the difference to you. Click for full details
2. Priceline Negotiator “Name Your Own Price”
- Agree to fly any time of day on any major airline, or stay in any name-brand hotel and name your own price on airline tickets, hotels, and rental cars
- “Name Your Own Price Hotel” - See winning bids in top cities up to 50% off retail prices
- 60-second response time to “Name Your Own Price“
- “Big Deal Guarantee“* – Find a lower published price for the same hotel up until midnight before your check-in date and Priceline will match that price and give you $25*. Plus, they will also give you a $50 Priceline vacation coupon for a future vacation booking. ”1 star” hotels are excluded from the guarantee. Click for full details
- “Quality Experience Guarantee“* – If you bid on Priceline airline tickets or hotels, they will make some guarantees. For airline tickets: generally no red-eye or off-peak flights, only one-stop each way, and no layovers over 3 hours. For hotels: Priceline rates hotels and assigns “star-levels”. Thus, you will be booked only into hotels that are within the star-level that you agree to. If they don’t meet these terms, Priceline will allow you to change or cancel at no charge. Click for full details
The Good:
Priceline was the first major travel site that we’re aware of to offer no booking fees on published airline tickets. They also have lower fees than other major travel sites, all around. Compared to other major travel sites, they also seem to get fewer complaints. We also find that Priceline’s hotel selection is huge (60,000), and believe it is larger than any other travel site that we have written a review of.
We like to book rental cars with using Priceline’s “Name Your Own Price“ bidding option. The bidding risk is small, and they are really cheap! Place your bid at about 15%-30% less than the lowest price you can find elsewhere. As for bidding on hotels, the risk is greater. However, they have some good guarantees, such as the Big Deal Guarantee, which protects you all the way up until midnight before your travel dates and will give you $25* if you find a better price for your hotel. If you are flexible, you can save some serious cash by bidding your own price hotels.
The Bad:
When you make a “Name Your Own Price” (Priceline Negotiator) reservation, it is always non-refundable and all sales are final. Make sure your travel plans are solid. Always keep Priceline’s cancellation policy in mind, if you are unsure about your travel plans. If there is any chance that you will need to cancel or change your travel plans, you may want to make a “fixed price” booking, and read the cancellation policy on the booking screen prior to completing your purchase.
The Priceline bidding process can be a little confusing if you are not experienced. It pays to do a little research before you start a bid. We have a few Priceline Negotiator bidding tips included in our review for you below.
Priceline Bidding Tips:
If you lose a bid on hotels, you are not allowed to re-bid unless you either change your star-level or add an area. Which brings us to,
- INSIDER BIDDING TIP#1: If you are bidding on 4-Star hotels and add an “area” that has no 4 star hotels, you will be able to re-bid without really changing anything! Otherwise, you will need to wait 24 hours to re-bid.
- INSIDER BIDDING TIP#2: Keep hotel booking fees in mind. Bid at least $20/night less than the going rate, or else it is not really worth it.
- INSIDER BIDDING TIP # 3: You will not know the name of your hotel or airline until after the non-refundable reservation has been made. Priceline hotel bids are based on the “star-level” of the hotel. Thus, verify that all of the hotels within your desired “star-level” are acceptable, because you may get any hotel within that star-level. To check this, we use Priceline’s regular search engine to find hotels in our destination and filter them by star level. Then, we research the reviews of the hotels that are in the star-level that we plan to bid on. While we can’t guarantee this will work for you, if all of the hotels are acceptable in our desired star-level, we start a bid. We highly recommend bidding on “4 Star” (or higher) hotels to get the best value for your money.
10 Steps to Start a Hotel Bid on Priceline:
- Go to the Priceline hotel search engine and enter in your “destination city”, “dates”, and hit the “Search Hotels Now” button
- If area is important to you, filter the results by “Hotel Area” first, and hit the “Update Hotel List” button.
- Filter the results further by “Star Rating” by selecting the check box next to the number of stars you prefer (we suggest 4 stars) and hit the “Update Hotel List” button
- Sort these results by “Lowest Price” by selecting this tab. You will now see the cheapest hotel in your star rating level first on the list of hotels
- Write down the price per night of this hotel
- Rather than selecting the hotel, hit the orange tab at the top of the screen that says “Best Deal – Name Your Own Price”
- Select the exact same “hotel area” and “star level”
- Be aware that Priceline claims* that the hotels that you found by searching above may not necessarily be the hotels that you are bidding on, so there is risk involved. Pricing and star level may be different than fixed price listings.
- Name your own price for less than the quoted average price, which should be less than the amount that you wrote down as the lowest price within this star level
- If you lose your bid, you will need to either choose an additional area or star level
For more information on Priceline’s Name Your Own Price – Click Here!
The Fees*:
- No booking fees on all published airline tickets on Priceline.
- Priceline Name Your Own Price (Priceline Negotiator) purchases carry a variable booking fee. This is disclosed after your bid is accepted.
- Priceline Name Your Own Price (Priceline Negotiator) purchases are non-refundable and unchangeable.
- Priceline Name Your Own Price (Priceline Negotiator) carries no guarantee that specific hotels, dates or prices are available, that your bid will be accepted, or that you will get savings off of fixed prices. Fixed prices and star levels of hotels do not necessarily correspond with Priceline Negotiator.
- For all other purchases, the cancellation policy varies per booking. Read the individual cancellation policy on the booking page before you buy.
*Based solely on research done by TravelSiteCritic.com, and may be inaccurate and subject to changes. See Priceline.com for full details. Reviews disclosure
The Deals:
Want more hotel bidding tips?
Check out our how-to article on travel auctions and learn how to bid on travel auction bidding websites such as LuxuryLink.com and FamilyGetaway.com where you can bid on hotels and save up to 60%*.
I bidded for a 3 star hotel in Miami Beach. there were 5 hotels in the area i requested. A resort hotel accepted my bid that was not on the map viewer listing. I called Priceline, and here’s the catch. the list they use to get bids doesnt matchup with their online viewing of hotels. So you CANNOT rely on the mapviewer or hotel searcher on priceline if your bidding a hotel. quite simply, Priceline will search the complete exhaustive list of hotels everywhere (not necessarily on their hotel listing).
called priceline and their reps wouldnt budge one inch, no cancellation, no help rebidding without resort, no help rebidding area with only hotels that show up on their listing.
Twitter: Pamela_Jones
says:
Thanks for this comment, Brian. This is good information!
I purchased a ticket for my boyfriend and his account was charged twice (by Priceline and also by LowestFare.com). If anyone has a number that would allow me talk to a human being, i would really apperciate it.
I made reservations via Priceline.com. I had requested 2 rooms that could each accommodate 4 persons. After my price was accepted, I called Ramada Inn Carlsbad to confirm rooms, and check in times. I was informed by Patricia (Associate at Ramada Inn) that Priceline.com only reserved me rooms that accommodated 2 people (each room only had 1 queen bed) and that I would not even be allowed to check in 4 guests per room (Fire Marshall regulations). I then contacted Priceline.com thinking there had to have been a mistake, but sadly I found that there was no mistake at all. This is how Priceline does business . The first associate I spoke to was named Abby. Abby told me that there was nothing they could do for me about my rooms being reserved for only 2 occupants , and that it was my problem if the hotel would not let me check in having 4 people per room. I then asked to be transferred to an associate at a higher up level. I then spoke to Tania and she confirmed what I had already been told by Abby. There was NOTHING Priceline.com would do, and I would likely have to forfeit my reservation plus the $430.00 that had already been charged to my credit card. So here I am out $430.00 for 2 rooms at the Ramada Inn Carlsbad that I will be unable to use and Priceline.com could care less!
Priceline customer service is useless. Ask the hotel if you can upgrade to a room with 2 beds, there will be an extra charge, but at least you won’t loose it all. I hope it works out.
Priceline will not help if it is their fault. They take no responsibility for anything that happens and let all of the blaim fall on the rental company, hotel, or airline that is left to try to clean up their mess.
Twitter: marc15
says:
OK –Are we working for the other sites? I have bid on Priceline for years and never had a problem–they even let me out of a winning bid when there was a sickness in the family–they charged me 1 of 5 days I had booked- which I thought was fair as I reneged.
Cars you are better off to use Hotwire –but hotels I have been very pleased Hyatt in Buffalo and New Orleans for $35 Marriot Courtyard in NYC, Sheridan in Toronto for $28 all are 3 stars plus and they treat you the same as a customer paying the 3x you could have paid. Used it at least 20 times without problems—OH ONE—they have very loose area guides—you may not be as close to the area as advertised
We recently used Priceline to book our Hotel and purchased the insurance provided in case something went wrong after reading all the fine lines. When we went to check into our Hotel they refused us because they said we were booked wrong after making sure we added the correct amount of people staying. Then they said they only had one bed per room, which is not what price line booked us we asked for 2 queen beds per room, then they said since they were not going to let us stay they only would refund for one room instead of two which we paid for, we might get back our money in 7 to 10 business days. This was the Candlewood Suites Hotel in Alvin, Texas.
I have used Priceline’s “Name your own price” for a rental cars before and have never had a problem. But recently I encountered a major problem and Priceline has been unable to explain to me what happened.
My flight was supposed to land at 10:30 pm. It was delayed by several hours so I called the car rental company to make sure they would hold my reservation. They said that my reservation would be held for 15 hours.
I arrived at my destination at 1am. The rental car company entered my information into their computer but because it was now technically the next day, the price on the computer kept reverting back to the regular price. We called Priceline and the Priceline representative I spoke to had no suggestion except to cancel the reservation. He also told me that my account would be credited with the full cost of my rental.
There is nothing on the Priceline website that states that if you do not pick up your reservation on the same calendar day it was made for, that it will not be honored by the rental car company. I called Priceline a second time and the representative I spoke to this time claimed that the reservation should have remained active for 24 hours and that the problem must have been with the car rental company. They had no redress fro my situation and could not explain what happened. In addition, my account was not credited with the reimbursement until after my trip ended. So for two weeks they held my money (on top of the month before the trip when they had my prepayment). I will not be using Priceline again.
I used LuxuryLink.com instead of Priceline last week and I highly recommend it. They don’t have all the cheap hotels that Priceline has, but you get a lot more cool stuff on luxury link, like free massages and meals included in your reservation. I’ve used Priceline in the past and was less than happy, and plan to use luxury link to bid on hotels again
BIDDERS BEWARE! the no refund policy extends even to technical difficulties or mistakes by consumers so be very careful. i was told i lost the bid and still charged. even though this was an obvious technical error or fraud the no refund policy is in place so i ended up double booked. I picture their customer service like that on the movie my best friends girl where under no circumstance is a refund given.
if it was their fault they would have given you a refund. you probably made an error and didnt realize it.