Question: I recently pre-paid for a rental car using Priceline’s “name your own price” option. I was given a car through Avis — or at least that’s what I thought.
When we landed in Raleigh-Durham International Airport, I went to the Avis counter and showed them my reservation. But the agent said my number was “invalid.” He said it had already been used in Chicago in 2007, and that the reservation number couldn’t be used again.
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It’s not a word you hear very often in business. It’s something Tami Alloway desperately needed when she contacted Priceline recently to cancel a nonrefundable reservation at the Hawthorn Suites in Charleston.
Alloway, a nurse from Kansas City, had every intention of honoring the reservation when she made it last summer. But then something happened.
“Totally unexpectedly, my sister’s children were removed from their home and taken into state custody,” she told me. “I was awarded foster care for all three of them and they have been with me since then.”
Her sister’s kids will be with her until the end of the school year. Which brings us to that hotel reservation in South Carolina. In order to find the best price, Alloway clicked on Priceline.com, a site with great rates but super-strict refundability rules.
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Fiona Lau contacted me in a panic a few days ago. She’d booked a “three-star” hotel through Hotwire, which doesn’t reveal the name of the property until you’ve paid for a non-refundable reservation by credit card. She ended up at a Clarion Hotel property in Pennsylvania she didn’t expect — or want.
“I looked at the picture from the official Clarion website, and the hotel doesn’t just look old, the family suite picture that they displayed is showing an extremely old room with patches on the wall,” she says.
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When Lefteris Michailidis didn’t get a confirmation email from Priceline for a recent three-night hotel stay in London, he thought his bid wasn’t accepted.
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Like many resort hotels, the Marriott San Juan Resort and Stellaris Casino in San Juan, Puerto Rico, adds a fee to its daily room rate to cover amenities such as bottled water, a casino coupon, local phone calls and wireless Internet.
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Are you still with me?
Good. Because this could affect your next trip if you’re not careful.
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A few days before Eric Kimmel flew from Montreal to San Francisco for a recent conference, he checked to see if he could find a better deal on a hotel.
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