Newbie-Please help

[3sweetpeas]

I would like to bid on a hotel in the mall of America area for the end of this week. (7/29-8/1) I would like the Sheraton Bloomington but any nice hotel with a pool would be okay. :) I am not sure how to go about bidding. I do have an Entertainment Book and can use the bonus $...just not sure how to do that through the link here???

[Romelle]

There is a process spelled out in the Entertainment Book that gets them to send a link to your email.

If I remember right, you then have to click on that email to get the bonus into your Priceline account. It just takes a couple minutes.

You might get those steps done first.

Maybe read the FAQ area here and the Help area on Priceline to bring you up to speed on bidding.

Then a bit of research. The Sheraton is a 3 1/2* in the Bloomington West MOA area? In any case, there are of course no guarantees as to which hotel you'd get. Look at the other 3 1/2s to be sure you'd be OK with those. There are also a few 3 1/2* hotels in the MSP Airport-MOA area. If you want, you can bid both areas. You can go to the hotel web sites to check the pool question.

For the record, the 2 1/2* LaQuinta has a particularly warm nice pool.

(And of course it is always possible to get a hotel not previously reported to this site. Not too likely in the larger well-reported US cities, but possible. I've managed to do it.)

Then you start with the link from here (betterbidding) into PRICELINE. Within Priceline, get into My Account and My Rewards and you should see that bonus you worked so hard to run down. Click on it and it will take you on into the bidding process.

If you are wondering how much to bid, go through the Priceline and Hotwire Calendar of Wins (just above here, center of page). Your dates and Minnesota-Priceline. I just did it and there definitely are some bargains there. With that bonus, really bargains!

I'm just a member, but saw your short time-frame and thought I'd help get you started.

Romelle

From entertainment.com:

Sign on. Search on 'priceline'

"Click the Get Discount Button, enter Entertainment Membership Number and email address to receive your bonus cash.

HOW DO I GET THIS DISCOUNT? Click on the "Get Discount" button. You'll be taken to the website where you can make your purchase and get your discount.

DISCOUNT CAN BE USED: 1 per year"

It really works. I did it a while ago.

[3sweetpeas]

Thank you so much for your help! I'll check out the other hotels! I got my email for my bonus $...so I am partway there! I'll post later if I am able to get a room!

[Romelle]

Good work so far!

If you are interested in both the MOA areas, you actually can squeeze in three bids, increasing $$ a little on the 2nd and 3rd bids, in one 24 hour period.

Go in and bid MOA 1 (your favorite, doesn't make any difference which one you start with). If not successful, log out and come back in all over again. This time start with your second choice and increase your bid a little. If this is not successful, stay in this session, add in MOA 1, raise your bid a little more and bid again.

Furthermore, if you happen to hit the top of your budget and aren't successful at the desired star level, if you want you can then add in a lower star level (maybe even lowering your bid a little bit?).

There are some other things that could be tried, but the above is probably enough to do the job.

Write back when you've bid. If you haven't got a hit, let us know what you've tried and we can take another run at it.

Romelle