nowhereman

ok.. it is the hotels fault that they billed you. we are given a credit card by priceline to charge every time a reservation comes into our hotel . what usually happens is a nooby at the front desk takes your card for incidentals, and usually put in and wites your card over the card on file for priceline (thus they loose the card info priceline gave them). when they check you out they bill what ever card is on file with out paying attention.. congratulations, youve just become a property charged customer!!! how to prevent this. avoid the credit card bill rush -always check and make everything is right before you leave the hotel, and that you were not billed. if you were billed kindly explain that you prepayed through priceline and that they need to bill priceline, not you. kindly ask them to call the pricelines hotel help desk and get ol capt kirk on the phone to straighten it out. the priceline hotel agent will give them the correct credit card information (ie pricelines credit card number) either over the phone or fax. why do this at the hotel? as i said.. there is a hotel help desk they can call directly to a hotel agent with priceline. ok.. so what does this mean? well its not your problem its the hotels problem. its their job to make sure everything is straightend out. further more, you dont have to call customer service and be on hold til the next millenium. if you spend a little time dealing with it right away, you will spend less time than you would if you waited for your bill. if you dispute with your credit card company you will lock up the ability of the other company (hotel if you dispute their charge, or pricline if you dispute their charge) to process any kind of refund. (thus you just made a small headache into a bit pain in the ass, because it will take much much longer to get resolved, while interest grows on your bill) if you wait til you get home, and call the hotel, dont talk to the front desk. talk to a GM, an AGM or someone in accounting. be nice, explain the situation, tell them you need it resolved. if they tell you to call priceline, kindly tell them that they are the ones who messed up, they need to deal with it (its called good customer service.. somthing ive noticed that most people at hotels lack when it comes to priceline customers.. yeah you know what im talking about.. (oh but youre with priceline.. :) )

ok, maybe im just new here and not hip to the jive (god im old.. :) ) but what is tobb? sounds like a bunch of up tight p***ks

Cathy, it is always a good idea to confirm your reservation, regardless as sometimes some reservations will fall through the cracks b/c of miscomunication between hotel and website. it takes the hotels sometimes 24 hours before a reservation will get into their system from their central reservations. (goes from online travel site to a central reservations office where youre reservation is booked by the computers. from there the central reservations office has to take that information and generate that booking from the central system to the in house system). depending on the operation.. it can take a while. this being said, its in your best interest to call the day after you get confirmed from hotwire or priceline. if you call before, its most likely they will not have it in their system yet, and you will worry yourself to death about the hotel not having it, when they do (they just dint know they have it yet). when its a same day reservation what we would get is a fax from the websites saying they have a same day booking, with all of the pertenent information we needed to manually put it in, and so that we could expect the guest, and adjust outr availability and so forth. ok.. so whats all this mean? if your reservation is for more than a day after it was booked, wait 24 hours, confirm your reservation with the hotel. while youre on the horn with your wining hotel, make your bedding request. also if youre going to be late, let them know at this time. some hotels close their desk at 11 or 12 (when the nght auditor does his magic in the back room). if you let them know you'll be running that late, the hotel will leave a note for the night auditor to be aware you will be popping in, so he can keep an eye out for you. if you are going to be arriving after midnight, or the next day.. let them know, so they dont put you down as a no show (a headache you dont want to go through). now if its a same day.. call them an hour before you take off, try to confirm it, if they dont have it at their desk yet dont freak out. just ASK the hotel to call the website at the hotel help desk and confirm it. (dont demand.. be civil.. no one likes a demanding person, and people dont always respond well to others who are about to loose it because a reservation they booked less than 10 min ago is not on their desk that instance). keep cool, things will work out. if somthings not there right away, remember youre buying from a discounter so not everything will be flawless all the time. roll with the punches go through the right steps, keep a level head and things will be fine. ( if you want somthing with out possability of kinks or some hoops to jump through, then eliminate the middle man, pay rack rate and buy through the property where its booked directly thorugh where yorue staying.. if you buy through a discount website dont be supprised if murphy stops by everyonce in a blue moon.. end rant... caveat emptor) ok.. now if its a BIG hotel ie 4 star.. waldorf, hilton et al. they will have people there at the desk later than most hotels.

i know a few hotels in euope will not allow more than 2 in a room period. my sister and her family went to england, france and germany and used priceline thinking all would be cool... they made her husband get a 2nd room at rack rate in most places b/c they are very strict with their occupancy (2 in a room no matter what!) since my neice obviously couldnt have a room by herself my brother in law had to get the other room. as far as requests go.. thereuare is dead on.. just requests. we wouldnt take the request from customers we made them call priceline. (i wish priceline wouldnt put that on their contract page asking requests to be made through the hotel). if it looks like there are lots of openings we would just change it when priceline calls us.. if it looks like its close to a full house, we would just note the reqeust. i dont know how other hotels do it. ive heared some hotels charge upgrades for certain bed types.

when you get to the area of the website where you pick your zone, you can find a link (i believe the name of the zone is highlighted) and it should show you your zones.

what thereuare said. just be calm and cool with the front desk, let em know whats going on when you arive, and ask if they can block you in the same room for the other nights. if you dont there may be confusion and run around.

i dont think priceline (the us company) owns the asian site.. notice how similar the us and the uk sites are, and look at how different the asian site is in set up.

youre absolutly correct. basically you name the price you pay. priceline already has a negotiated rate. priceline makes the difference, and whatever they have contracted with the hotel on top of that. the hotels will only sell these to priceline at this negotiated rate on the basis that once they are booked they cant be changed at all. they make little profit, but what they do make is garunteed income no matter what. the hotel never gets your credit card from ol capt kirk. they only get pricelines credit card, except for the one that you give for incidentals. now some hotels have people at their front desk who dont quite know what they are doing (like the one i used to work at) and will charge the card you gave for incidentals instead b/c they sometimes write over pricelines card with yours.. hense why some customers get charged by the property for their room. (it might behoove you to check your recipt when you leave to make sure someone didnt do this.. that way you can get it settled there and not go through a headache when you get home). also heres another lil nugget for you.. if you have a problem when you are at the hotel, tell them to call priceline (they have a direct number for hotel assistance for when hotels have problems.. this is not a public number). do not have them make you call priceline, as they always have high call volumes on their customer service line.. so of course you will wait a while before reaching a cs person. its the hotels job to make sure they have things straightened out, so dont be affraid to push back and have them do their job. (but keep in mind, you get more bees with honey than vinegar.. so dont be a pain.). cavet emepetor my 2 cents.. priceline is good in therory, and if you are very flexable it can work well. if you are very demanding, and have to always have to have it at your specifications then book directly through a hotel, where you will have more flexability to do what you want and to get what you want (and to have better service imho). btw.. has anyone noticed that they are pushing their options more as far as their given price products and sites go? i wonder if this is a sign of the times that the name your own price product is only good in theory.. kinda like their grocery fiasco they had back in the day.