The "Too clever by half" factor?

[lwitchel]

The most addicting thing to me about Priceline is the strategizing.

But does anyone else feel like they might be strategizing themselves into corners?

My stepmother asked me to bid for a 5* in London on May 1. I was bidding Mayfair/Soho up to $165 and thought - "I'm going to get Le Meridien Picadilly for around $175-180. No one seems crazy about it. I've seen the Waldorf reported on that day as well. Why not pay $105 for a great 4* instead of $180 for a middling 5*?"

So I decided to underbid to see if there was a counter offer. And here was my mistake - I bid $100. If I only wanted to see the counter-offer, I should have bid $70, or another number I knew could not be accepted.

Sure enough, $100 was accepted at the Thistle Charing Cross and I had to apologize to my stepmom, who took it in stride, happily. This wouldn't have bothered me at all if I were only bidding for myself, but even though the place from reports is perfectly decent and in a great location, it wasn't what they asked for.

A continent away, I'm going to Philadelphia that same weekend. I've been writing a Priceline for the Timid primer for my blog, so I've been trying to meticulously overprepare the bidding steps on the Philadelphia bid by way of an explanation. Checking the Hotel sites, Hotwire, making imaginary vacation packages. . .

Well, the Hyatt Penns Landing is sold out on its own site, comes up on Hotwire for $249 a night and Priceline Vacations shows no 4* inventory that weekend. The Hilton Garden Inn is pricing at $189 that weekend as well, way over its usual. 72 hours ago, 2.5* up to $55 was rejected. I'm assuming that I'm shooting for one of the other 3* hotels that comes up when the Hilton has no inventory.

Because there are so many rebids I start with a 4* bid for the heck of it, starting at $60, figuring I will go up to $70. I'm really assuming nothing is going to come up. If the hotel were available at the usual bargain rate of $43 or anywhere up to $55, it would have come up three days ago.

I get the "sold out" Hyatt Penns Landing on the first attempt.

It isn't like I haven't seen "sold out" inventory on Priceline before, or that I'm unhappy with the price, although with an acceptance on the first bid there's always that nagging "I should have bid $56!!!" ringing in one's ears, but I just can't wait to go pedantically through the entire process as a teaching exercise and then come up with this completely non-textbook result, showing the important lesson that you can do all the research you want. Priceline is still opaque.

Next time I'm using a dartboard.

[WillTravel]

Ah, my fellow obsessive-compulsive Priceline strategizer :) .

See my Vacation Package thread for reasons why this strategy obviously doesn't work 100% of the time (or maybe even 50%):

http://www.betterbidding.com/index.php?act...=174&t=3327&hl=

My recent issues have been that I'm unable to undercut counteroffers using the free rebid methods (with one account only). I posted in detail about one instance, but it's not the only case - just the best-documented one. I'm semi-convinced Priceline is on to my combinatorial methods to maximize free rebids and is determined to thwart me.