Review - Priceline

I have used Priceline for travel for years now--every since I first heard of it. It has it's quirks but I understand that for the most part you get what you pay for. The biggest issue I saw was not knowing where you were staying until the bidding process was over & you were committed--with no refunds allowed. So I have always been ultra-careful about the bidding process, & have often used the "best price posted" feature to bypass the uncertainty completely. Nevertheless, there have been a couple of times through the years when I ended up paying for something I didn't use, but I know the rules & am willing to abide by them.

A couple of years ago I made a reservation online & used the bid process. I was surprised to find that my reservation got accepted for a city that I wasn't bidding on but had checked into earlier that day for another trip (yeah, I like to travel). I called customer service & they elevated the request to tech support who evidently analyzed my keystrokes & issued me a full refund. They told me it was a caching issue between the Firefox browser I was using & their website. No problem-if there's anything I understand it's tech support issues. I kept on using them.

Yesterday however, all that changed. Here's how it went down:

• I looked in Greensboro, NC for hotel rooms & eventually bid & won a reservation.
• A couple of hours later I looked in AVL (Asheville airport) for rental cars & found one.
• I bid & as I hit the submit button I literally watched with my own eyes the airport code change to GSO (Greensboro airport).
  
  This was exactly what had happened before & I knew it was the caching issue I spoke of earlier. So I got on the phone to call tech support. That was when the problems began. The customer service person could barely speak English & I could barely understand her. She said she would "make an exception for my mistake" & only charge me a $16 fee. My accepted bid was $17. I explained to her again that it wasn't my mistake, but rather a known tech issue between the website & the browser I was using, explained to her that she could go into my customer history & read the results from the previous time it had happened. It was like talking to myself. She repeated by rote what she had told me before. We went back and forth that way a few times & finally I asked if there was someone else I could speak to (I wasn't entirely sure she understood English well enough to understand what I was trying to explain). After a 5 minute wait, (I checked) another person came on the line. I was still pleasant at this point because I know that unpleasant not only doesn't usually work, but I knew she was only doing what she had been trained to do.
  
  I explained the whole thing again, this time to a fellow who barely spoke English & who evidently didn't care whether I could understand him or not. He reeked of bad attitude from the minute I got on the line with him, speaking polite words with an incredibly sarcastic tone. He basically implied that I was telling lies just to get out of paying for my own mistake. That burned me up but I still didn't lose my cool, I was just trying to get the problem fixed. He kept interrupting me & finally just said that he was through with the conversation & if I wanted the $16 refund I could take it now or leave it. Grrr.
  
  I asked him if there was anybody else he could elevate the issue to & he told me no. I asked him if he was the highest level of management that could make a decision & he said no. Ok, can I speak to someone else? He said no. He said I could write to someone in management but that they didn't speak to customers by phone, & he would not do anything else to help me.
  
  I asked for his name & he would not tell me. I asked again & he said "Ivan" (yeah, right). I asked for his employee number & he told me it was 526008. He didn't give me the addy to write to--wonder why?
  
  After I get through disputing the entire charge with my credit card company (& winning) I'm going to write a nice long letter to Priceline to let them know that they will never have my business again. And since I make the travel arrangements for most of my family too, they just lost that as well.
  
  All because "Ivan" can't make a $16 decision. Sorry Shatner, I love you, but it's the principle of it now.
  
  What a difference between my 15 minute conversation on Wednesday & my 2hr 47 minute tech support nightmare with Verizon Tuesday. The people at Verizon went above & beyond it to help me out with some advanced user issues & even though I didn't want to be on the phone that long, I very much appreciated their professionalism.
  
  Maybe Priceline could send their employees for training at Verizon? Nah, it would probably cost more than the 2 or 3 dollars they are obviously already spending on customer service training...