Priceline Hotel: 3* Ottawa Radisson Hotel

[MJRBIM]

1st bid - Ottawa DT zone - 3* @ $38 = Accepted.

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Check-In Date: Monday, May 17, 2004

Check-Out Date: Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Hotel Name:

Radisson Hotel Ottawa Parliament

402 Queen St

Ottawa, Ontario K1R 5A7

613-236-1133

Your Offer Price: $38.00 (US dollars)

Number of Rooms: 1

Number of Nights: 1

Subtotal: $38.00 (US dollars)

Taxes and Service Fees: $8.70 (US dollars)

Total Charges: $46.70 (US dollars)

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Anyone got an idea why the taxes and fees are $0.02 more expensive on this bid that the one I posted earlier this morning [$8.70 vs $8.68] ?

It's only 2 cents - but it is once again an example that whatever "formula" PriceLine uses to calculate the Taxes and Fees appears to float...rather than being a fixed dollar or percentage mark-up.

[thereuare]

Another example of what i said about Hotwire the other day...

if they want people to have faith in buying an opaque product, they need to have consistency throughout their entrie system... this includes star ratings, fees, etc.

It may only be .02 today, but what if it's .10 tomorrow, .25 the day after, and a few dollars down the road? Not only that, but multiply even just a few cents by thousands of purchases a day, times every day in a year, and you're talking about real dollars.

In Priceline's defense i suppose the actual cost of the hotel room could have been $37.75 for one nite and $38 for the other nite, thus accounting for the .02 difference.

As well, when Priceline switched to combining taxes and fees (not picking on Priceline here as many other companies do the same thing and it unfortunately has become the 'norm') it leaves some 'wiggle' room which is not good for the consumer. A good example of this is WillTravel's observation in this HOTWIRE thread. Since taxes and fees are combined, the user would have no way of noticing that the taxes were way out of line (and who would get that extra money?... Hotwire). Another frustrating point to bring out is when HotwireCSR brought it to their attention their immediate answer, without even looking at the problem, was "taxes and fees vary by region." :)