zbenye

At starbucks.com, if you buy a new $50 Starbucks prepaid card, or reload your existing card with $50, and pay with a Visa, a $10 bonus will be added to your card later on. A 20% bonus is far better than any bank deposit yield. There's no limit to the number of times you can buy/reload and profit through 9/30/06.

Tried to use the $10/night bonus money link PL emailed me, and the page says "We're sorry! Your special $10 Hotel Bonus offer has expired"... Another screw-up at PL?

Right, no one gets penalized here. And if you forget or don't care to go through SavingsBarn, you can always help the upkeep of this board by making a PayPal contribution through the link at the top "Have You Been Helped Here". thereuare is too modest to solicit contributions, so we have to remind each other.

This just in (got a separate email for each of my cancelled reservations): Dear zbenye, Please accept this one-time bonus money offer of a $10 per night discount, up to a maximum of five nights or $50, for your next priceline Hotel Request in consideration of the inconvenience caused by the La Quinta Resort & Club reservation error / cancellation... You must use the link to place your offer in order to receive the bonus. This offer is only valid for hotel rooms purchased through priceline's Name Your Own Price service. Please note this offer expires on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 11:59 PM Eastern Time.

There may have been some naive people who had hit this deal and believe that that is what it was - a great deal. But the majority of us, here and on FT, did not accidentally hit this deal. We learned about it on these sites, where the possibility that this was an error was largely discussed, including the chance of the whole thing being voided. We made an informed decision to go for it because there would be no downside if cancelled, while the upside would be a tremendous indulgence if honored. It is very unfortunate that Priceline/La Quinta took almost four weeks to contact us, since they surely realized right away that something had gone very wrong. So they're jerks. There, we said it. Now let's move on. Someone goofed badly. The potential damage to them is substantial. It behooves us to accept their apology and let go. If you or I ever made such a terrible mistake, we really would like to be excused, wouldn't we? And although Priceline will not let us get out of reservations where we book something we didn't intend, I'm sure that if you accidentally bid $1000 instead of $100, they will work with you. At the very least their guarantee will refund you the difference between published rate and your excessive bid. I have no problem with Priceline cancelling two of my bookings. I've already promised my first reservation to a couple of friends so I'll keep it, but if it were not for that - I'd allow PL to cancel that reservation as well so that they would not incur any loss at all. It would be the right thing to do. It would be nice of PL in this circumstance if they allowed us more options, to show some good faith. For example, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for them to offer to change the reservations (with no increase in price) to another area hotel where $25 is not too outragous, like the Hilton Garden Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Courtyard, etc. As for contacting the AG or BBB, I don't think they'll do anything about it. Contacting the media will just give PL publicity. The public will take note of the one-time error reported, yawn, and go on to check out PL's website where the've just heard that people are getting awesome hotel rates. Finally, this was a big mistake that had to be corrected. I don't believe that PL will allow abuse in the form of hotels arbitrarily voiding reservations just because they miscalculated their inventory levels and want their rooms back to resell higher.

Received an Email from Priceline today that this win has been revoked. The hotel made a mistake in setting the rate. Since I had multiple wins, the hotel will honor my win of 2/2/06-2/4/06.

Check-In Date: Sunday, August 27, 2006 Check-Out Date: Friday, September 1, 2006 Hotel Name: Courtyard San Francisco Airport Oyster Point Waterfront 1300 Veterans Blvd San Francisco, California 94080 Your Offer Price: $55.00 Number of Rooms: 1 Number of Nights: 5 Subtotal: $275.00 Taxes and Service Fees: $49.54 Total Charges*: $324.54 $54 for 2* rejected in SSF, CC, CH, USE $45 for 2.5* rejected in SFO

Check-In Date: Friday, August 25, 2006 Check-Out Date: Saturday, August 26, 2006 Hotel Name: Hyatt Regency San Francisco 5 Embarcadero Center San Francisco, California 94111 Your Offer Price: $70.00 Number of Rooms: 1 Number of Nights: 1 Subtotal: $70.00 Taxes and Service Fees: $17.60 Total Charges*: $87.60 First bid of $65 rejected. Booked for a friend too timid to try Priceline himself ;-)

So this is the Courtyard in San Bruno (SFO zone) and not the one in Oyster Point (South SF zone), right?

I am currently using up my three free nights at a Comfort Inn near SFO. Very nice place and I figure I would have otherwise spent about $190 on Priceline. I hope Bank of America will forgive me for using their Visa card just once, for a starbucks cup of coffee... ;-) From the Marriott Visa card, I used the certificate for one night at a Residence Inn, and the 15000 points for two nights at a TownPlace Suites in San Jose. This Visa card was used to pay for another cup of coffee... Six free nights just for getting credit cards... a value of more than $400. Keep the offers coming!

Check-In Date: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 Check-Out Date: Friday, August 25, 2006 Hotel Name: Courtyard San Francisco Airport Oyster Point Waterfront 1300 Veterans Blvd San Francisco, California 94080 Your Offer Price: $55.00 Number of Rooms: 1 Number of Nights: 2 Subtotal: $110.00 Taxes and Service Fees: $23.79 $50 rejected for 2.5* in SFO $53 rejected for 2* in SSF, CC, CH $54 rejected for 2* in SSF, USE

Pick-Up/Drop-Off: San Francisco Intl Rental Car Company: National Car Class: Compact (unlimited mileage) Pick-Up Date: Friday, August 25, 2006 Drop-Off Date: Sunday, August 27, 2006 Your Offer Price: $7.00 (per day) Total Rental Days: 2 days Subtotal: $14.00 Taxes and Fees: $21.40 Total Charges: $35.40 This weekend PL gave me a car for $8, so for next weekend - tried $5. When that was rejected, changed to Compact and bid $7.

Last September I stayed by myself at an all-inclusive Wyndham resort in the DR and paid $74/night. I actually believe that that price was for a room with 2 adults. So not only is $156 not too little for 2 adults and a child, it also might be a bit too much. Check published rates.

Pick-Up/Drop-Off: San Francisco Intl Rental Car Company: National Car Class: Economy (unlimited mileage) Pick-Up Date: Friday, August 18, 2006 Drop-Off Date: Sunday, August 20, 2006 Your Offer Price: $8.00 (per day) Total Rental Days: 2 days Subtotal: $16.00 Taxes and Fees: $21.60 Total Charges: $37.60 Last weekend I got this for $11. For this weekend, thought I'd try $8... Hotwire's rate: $23.95 Total on National's website: $95

I was surprised to find mostly positive reviews on Expedia for this hotel. It is acceptable as a 2* hotel on Priceline, but these are people who paid from $70 to upwards of $100 for a room, and then had to shell out an additional $10 for parking and $9.95 for Internet, if they needed those. How do these people choose a hotel... don't they realize they would be getting far superior accommodations for this kind of money at Holiday Inn Express, Courtyard, etc.? The hotel looks like it was very glamorous at its days, but that must have been very long ago. The lobby is remarkable and could be made grand, but sadly it looks lifeless. The corridors dark with worn carpet and paperwall. Stepping into the room I thought I went back in time to the 60s or 70s. A wavy wall-mounted formica desk that streches over half the length of the room; an old wooden chair on wheels. The TV appears to be the newest thing in the room. Old stained carpet and wallpaper, window that has come off its reel and needs to be manipulated to open. Funny smell all around (some overly-sweet air freshener the maid squirted about?). Someone on Expedia described the room as contemporary and beautiful... maybe I got a "Priceline room"...? My biggest gripe is the abovementioned charges for parking and Internet. These are commonplace at the 3* hotels in this zone, but as far as I know this is the only 2* hotel in the area that charges for these. That and the general dilapidated condition are a good enough reason to avoid as much as possible bidding 2* in this zone. One can avoid parking charges by parking on the street (Cowan Rd) about two blocks away, between the Westin and the Marriott. Plenty of unrestricted space there. Walk from the hotel's rear parking lot and through a service road behind the Westin. Telephone charges are also exaggerated: $1.50 for a local call, $2.00 for a toll-free call, additional $.10/minute over 60 minutes. The good things are: the bed is comfortable; the bathroom is clean and much nicer than the room; all the fixtures are working; the grounds (inner courtyard) are nice; and being in a room facing the courtyard, I have noise from neither the airport nor the freeway so slept well.

Check-In Date: Friday, August 11, 2006 Check-Out Date: Sunday, August 13, 2006 Hotel Name: Beverly Heritage Hotel 1820 Barber Lane Milpitas, California 95035 Your Offer Price: $40.00 Number of Rooms: 1 Number of Nights: 2 Subtotal: $80.00 Taxes and Service Fees: $17.02 Total Charges: $97.02 First tried $36 as posted by WzDancer for these dates but that didn't work.

Pick-Up/Drop-Off: San Francisco Intl Rental Car Company: National Car Class: Economy (unlimited mileage) Pick-Up Date: Friday, August 11, 2006 Drop-Off Date: Sunday, August 13, 2006 Your Offer Price: $11.00 (per day) Total Rental Days: 2 days Subtotal: $22.00 Taxes and Fees: $22.49 Total Charges: $44.49 Total on National's website for same: $97.16 Note SFO Airport Transport Fee increased from $13.50 to $15 per rental.

Pick-Up/Drop-Off: San Francisco Intl Rental Car Company: Avis Car Class: Full-size (unlimited mileage) Pick-Up Date: Sunday, September 3, 2006 Drop-Off Date: Monday, September 4, 2006 Your Offer Price: $11.00 (per day) Total Rental Days: 1 day Subtotal: $11.00 Taxes and Fees: $13.72 Total Charges: $24.72

BW Grosvenor does not have a guest laundry. The HI Express does not have a restaurant. My guess is this is the regular Holiday Inn.

Thanks for clarifying. Here I was thinking that maybe PL has changed the zone boundaries. It would be oh so nice if they had the boundaries that Hotwire has: airport-north / airport-south. The difference: expensive parking and Internet at most hotels south of the airport, free parking at all hotels north of it as well as free Internet at all but Embassy Suites.

Would you clarify, please - did you bid in the South San Francisco zone or in the airport zone? If you can't remember, you can see what zone PL has this hotel in by going back to the acceptance page under "My Trips". The zone will appear directly above the hotel address. Thanks!

Check-In Date: Sunday, August 13, 2006 Check-Out Date: Friday, August 18, 2006 Hotel Name: Courtyard San Francisco Airport Oyster Point Waterfront 1300 Veterans Blvd San Francisco, California 94080 Your Offer Price: $55.00 Number of Rooms: 1 Number of Nights: 5 Subtotal: $275.00 Taxes and Service Fees: $49.17 Total Charges: $324.17 $54 rejected for 2* in SSF, CC, CH $50 rejected for 2.5* in SFO.

Check-In Date: Tuesday, August 8, 2006 Check-Out Date: Friday, August 11, 2006 Hotel Name: Clarion Hotel San Francisco 401 E Millbrae Ave Millbrae, California 94030 Your Offer Price: $54.00 Number of Rooms: 1 Number of Nights: 3 Subtotal: $162.00 Taxes and Service Fees: $31.98 Total Charges: $193.98 In 5 years of using Priceline I've been fortunate enough to never have gotten this hotel. I hope this does not happen again for another 5 years. Yuck. The only 2* hotel outside the city that charges for parking and internet. $53 rejected in SFO, SSF, CH, CC.

I had a seminar at this hotel but Priceline put me elsewhere for those two nights. But then I got the Beverly Heritage for the weekend. From the folks attending the seminar who had spent the night on-site I learned that some rooms were old and tired while others where freshly renovated. So when I checked in I said to the front desk guy that I know that not all rooms have been renovated yet and that he should feel free to put me in one of the renovated ones if he didn't need them for anyone else... He laughed and did. The room was very nice and large and definitely deserving of a 3-star rating. I was completely satisfied. High speed Internet was free which is the most important thing to me. They charge for local and 800 calls, so use your cellphone. Nice pool and spa, well kept grounds. Would gladly stay here again.

Check-In Date: Friday, August 4, 2006 Check-Out Date: Tuesday, August 8, 2006 Hotel Name: Marriott San Francisco Airport 1800 Old Bayshore Hwy Burlingame, California 94010 Your Offer Price: $55.00 Number of Rooms: 1 Number of Nights: 4 Subtotal: $220.00 Taxes and Service Fees: $41.20 Total Charges: $261.20 Nicer than the Holiday Inn for sure, but I lament having to pay $10/night for internet access. Oh well, at least I didn't get the Doubletree or Sheraton where on top of internet would have had to pay for parking (no street parking around those two). $54 rejected for 2* in SFO, SSF, CC, CH