UPDATED Priceline Airline Tkts- Be careful...be very careful
Written: Apr 13 '00 (Updated Jul 26 '00)
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I waited until the last minute to make my flight reservations for Easter, consequently, most all return flights on Easter Sunday were taken and what was available was HUGELY expensive. Given the great experience that I had with the Priceline Grocery purchasing, I thought I'd give Priceline Online Ticketing a try. I made a mistake by not reading all of the directions before I started this process. I've outlined my experience with Priceline below. Lots of people are very happy with the fares they get on Priceline. Before you jump in, I recommend you understand the whole process and what happens if you need to make a change.
My experience:
I went to the home page and filled in my information: Departure City was Boston, Arrival City was Louisville, I wanted to leave on the 20th and return on the 23rd. Simple, so far, right? Then I choose the price for my ticket which was $100. This price didn't work in the system. In order to help defray my costs, I had the option to join Columbia DVD club and a few other consumer offers, but I skipped it. Instead I offered to pay $200. Still I hit a snag.
Knowing that my family would probably kill me, I chose to leave for Easter on Friday and return on Sunday. Here's the flight that I got through Priceline:
Departure Date: 04/21/2000 Friday
Airline: UNITED AIRLINES
Flight Number: 529
Equipment: 735 JET
Departs: BOSTON - LOGAN INTL
BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES
06:45 PM 04/21/2000
Arrives: CHICAGO - OHARE INTL
CHICAGO, IL, UNITED STATES
08:23 PM 04/21/2000
Connecting To:
Airline: UNITED AIRLINES
Flight Number: 671
Equipment: 72S JET
Departs: CHICAGO - OHARE INTL
CHICAGO, IL, UNITED STATES
09:20 PM 04/21/2000
Arrives: LOUISVILLE INTL
LOUISVILLE, KY, UNITED STATES
11:26 PM 04/21/2000
Return Date: 04/23/2000 Sunday
Airline: UNITED AIRLINES
Flight Number: 1475
Equipment: 72S JET
Departs: LOUISVILLE INTL
LOUISVILLE, KY, UNITED STATES
06:45 AM 04/23/2000
Arrives: CHICAGO - OHARE INTL
CHICAGO, IL, UNITED STATES
06:58 AM 04/23/2000
Connecting To:
Airline: UNITED AIRLINES
Flight Number: 504
Equipment: 733 JET
Departs: CHICAGO - OHARE INTL
CHICAGO, IL, UNITED STATES
07:44 AM 04/23/2000
Arrives: BOSTON - LOGAN INTL
BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES
11:00 AM 04/23/2000
Price per ticket: $200
Number of tickets: 1
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Subtotal: $200
Total taxes and other fees: $30.45
Total Fuel Surcharges: $20.93
Shipping and handling: $0
___________
Total charged to your credit card: $251.38
This itinerary pretty much gave me 36 hours with my family for a price of $251.38! Now for some people this would be plenty of time for a family visit, but I happen to like my family! After a few phone calls, it was decided that if this was the flight plan, then the trip wasn't worth taking. So, I called Priceline to cancel the flight.
Customer Service Guy #1: Here's where the "be careful...be very careful" part comes in. Priceline won't cancel the flight because they are buying up unused tickets on flights. I explained that I couldn't fly to Louisville because my family and I decided that the trip wasn't worth taking and that I needed to cancel. The customer service guy argued with me on the phone until I had to speak to his supervisor.
Customer Service Guy #2 (The Supervisor): I reiterated the problem to the supervisor. He tried explaining the Priceline system to me again. I explained my problem to him. After a 5 minute stand off, he agreed to cancel the ticket, but to charge me $75 "just like the airlines". I said that when the airline does something like that, I still have a ticket that is good for one year for another trip. He said that it was a lost, unusable ticket for Priceline. We argued for another 5 minutes. Finally, he agreed to charge me $50 instead of $75 and told me what a great deal I was getting and how Priceline NEVER does anything like this. I told him that I still didn't get his logic, but to go ahead and charge me the $50, but that I probably wouldn't pay it with American Express and that I'd never use Priceline again for an airline ticket.
Moral of the story...lots of people have great experiences with Priceline, but I didn't. Before you book a flight with Priceline...read all of the fine print. Should anything happen to change your travel plans, it's almost impossible to make a change. And, there's nothing more annoying than a customer service person who wants to argue with you for 15 minutes and who doesn't seem to care if never do any business with them ever again.
UPDATE - I got a letter in the mail confirming my flight a week after I cancelled it so I called to find out about it. I was told by Priceline customer care to "just throw it out because my cancelled flights were in the system. Sometimes the computer just sends out a confirmation because they don't catch it in time". So I did and forgot about it. When I opened my May credit card statement - I was shocked to find that Priceline had charged me the $251 for my "cancelled flight" and $75 for the cancellation fee. So I called the credit card company to let them know about the problem and I called Priceline. I was routed to a call center in Ohio that is outsourced by Priceline. They said that I never had been cancelled out of the system at all, but because of all of the problems I had that they would cancel out all of the money that I owed them except for a $5 cancellation because that was their policy. So I asked "How many official policies do you guys have? While I'm happy to just cancel all this for $5 and move on, I'm just curious as to why everyone quotes me on a different policy that I have to follow." I didn't get a really clear answer, but was assured that as soon as the computers were back up after catching the Love Bug virus, they'd make the change. Sure enough, I got an email 2 days later letting me know that because I was a special case, they were letting me off with a $5 charge but that I was an exception. I'll update this again if my credit card is shows up with some more incorrect charges next month. ;-)
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
caroleg
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Location: Boston, MA
Reviews written: 151
Trusted by: 185 members
About Me:
Live in Boston. Enjoy lots of home & garden things - especially epinions.
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