PHL Philadelphia SUV Alamo

[howie07]

:) My wife and I placed a bid for a SUV through priceline's "name your own price" service about two weeks ago. We were renting from Philadelphia International Airport from 8/23/06 till 8/28/06. Our bid of $40 for a SUV car class was accepted by Alamo. Priceline never differntiates between what types of SUV's you are bidding for on their site so you never know what you're going to get when you get to the rental counter. According to priceline our bid was accepted for an SUV. When my wife got to the rental car counter, Alamo charged her an extra 14.99 per day plus tax above and beyond the prepaid price through priceline because they claimed they were giving her an "upgrade" to a bigger SUV. My wife did ask for a bigger SUV than what they said they had reserved for her under priceline's service as we were four adults and two children traveling to Virginia. My beef with Alamo and Priceline is that Priceline never discloses to you that you may have to pay extra for the same car class under priceline's own car classification system (i.e according to the info on the bidding page, an SUV is an SUV and you should be entittled to any SUV in the lot under the prepaid price). Priceline's bidding page and website I believe is misleading. You could get your price accepted for an SUV and then have the rental car company partner turn around and charge you under a technicality that was never disclosed on the priceline site. I think Alamo's practices are shady at best. My attempts to get the refund for the extra 92 plus dollars that my wife paid were unsucessful. Customer service at priceline refused to take responsibility for the misleading information on their website (on the bid accepted page). You think you can get any SUV in that class according to Priceline's car category system, but you can't. According to their rating system, a change in car class would have been for a van, minivan or convertible and not to another type of SUV. I will not use priceline again for an SUV rental. I hope this information helps other people when consideriong a car rental bid on priceline. You never know what type of SUV is reserved for you and it is totally up to the discretion of the car rental partner to charge you extra if they feel like. You have no recourse. Priceline was totally inadaquate in investingating my claim about the extra money paid out. They refuse to let you speak to a supervisor and totally sided with the shady operations of their rental car partner, Alamo (at least in my case). To know what type of SUV you're going to get, you should try another site such as carrentals.com.

[howie07]

Bid for a SUV on priceline for 8/23/06 to 8/28/06. Alamo accepted a $40 bid for a SUV and reserved a mid-size SUV for us. We needed a larger SUV and they charged us 14.99 per day extra plus tax. Car picked up at Philadelphia International Airport. It is up to Alamo as to what type of SUV they will reserve for you and totally up to their discretion to charge you extra despite the priceline car classifications and categories on their website.

[ekypok]

JFK, 5/6/06-5/13/006

$23 Full-Size (unlimited mileage) Priceline bid accepted (AVIS)

But AVIS show me Hyundai Sonata like Full-Size car (named Mid-size on HOTWIRE!!!)

Who is right?

[headtrip]

I agree with you about one thing, if you want a specific type of SUV, larger or otherwise, Priceline is not right for you. On Priceline's web page, the SUV pop up window only says the SUV should be big enough to accomodate 4 adults and 1 child, 3 large bags, and 3 smaller bags. If your family is bigger than this, then Priceline is not right for you because that is the minimum required standard they said they would provide. You thought you would get a Suburban instead of a Tucson, and I'm sorry for your misunderstanding of Pricelines policies. It happens to a lot of people using priceline for the first time.

It would be nice if priceline developed more categories for cars so there would be midsize SUV and large SUV. It would also be nice if they you could bid on 2 beds instead of 1 in a hotel room, but at present, they don't allow for either of those things, so basically we will just have to wait until they do.

~Steve~