Beware of bonus cash!

[scottlevin]

I wanted to share this with the community...

I had always believed that bonus cash "worked" as PL said it does. But tonight something happened that made me think differently...

I bid $130 for a resort in Oahu and was told I could automatically rebid $150 without changing anything. I thought to myself: "A-ha! I'm getting close." Then I realized I hadn't included my bonus cash.

So I used another account in a different name that had the bonus cash. I then rebid $140 (+ $10 bonus cash), hitting the $150 mark that PL asked me to hit.

And I didn't get it!!! In other words, PL would have given it to me for $150 on one account, but not $140 + $10 on another account.

The only other explanation is that the $150 rate got snapped up in the five minutes it took me to switch accounts. If you are a true believer in bonus cash, that would be your explanation.

(I used the links for all these bids.)

[warsad]

WOW! This is very discouraging and gloomy information. Nevertheless, thank you so much for your investigative reports!

WarSad

[rc408]

I'm not sure if this is the case all the time. I've done "test" bids with and without the bonus cash and came up with winning bids at the same total dollar amount both ways. It could be a case by case situation. I think it is a very small possibility that the rate was sold out within your timeframe. This is all theoretical so I would say don't base your entire bid strategy on this.

[thereuare]

I don't think the conclusion above can be made...

There have been a handful of examples where a bid wasn't accepted at the counter-offer rate... this could be one of them (whether the hotel was purchased by another user, pulled by the hotel in the interim, or some other reason, nobody can say for certain). This happens so infrequently that when i first hear of this i attributed it to 'user error', but then i had seen it myself once when helping a friend bid for a hotel (we weren't using any bonus cash... a $135 bid was countered with $150 and we proceeded to bid $140, $145 and $150... all rejected although placed within a 5 minute window of each other)

In the OP's situation above, if the hotel was then purchased in the first account at a price of $150 (without bonus cash) then it would add a bit of weight to the theory, but my guess is that something happened to the inventory (purchased by another user, taken down/increased by the hotel, etc) during the 5 minutes between bids.

Occasionally we have also seen 'glitches' in PRICELINE where a bid which should be accepted is not, only to be accepted a few minutes later (ie- user bid $50 for 3* hotel and is rejected, lowers star rating to 2.5* and bids at $50 again... wins and is upgraded to a 3* property). The rejected bid with the bonus money could have been a glitch in the system as well... another possibility which would explain the situation above.

Regardless of the reason, i think it's a bit premature to draw the conclusion that the bonus money doesn't work as intended.

[scottlevin]

Update: The glitch doesn't have to do with the bonus cash. It has to do with the counteroffer.

Today I bid $120 + $10 bonus cash. It then said that if I raised my bid by $20, I could bid again. So I did!

It then told me that inventory had changed and the counteroffer could not be filled.

So basically, it's a phantom counteroffer. Who knew that if PL offers you a counteroffer, it could be fake?!

Someone should change the name of this thread to: "Beware of fake counteroffers!"

I have to ask myself, what incentive does PL have to give a fake counteroffer? It must be a glitch.