When I travel to downtown Chicago, I usually end up paying $75 for a 3-4 start hotel. looking at Orbitz and the non-bid portion of Priceline, The same hotel would be $99. A hotel I booked last week for $100 is $125 on both Priceline no-bid and Orbitz.
C'mon man
My Priceline investment is literally half of my retirement funds.
I invested heavily when Priceline hit it’s record lows in Jan 2003, and finally sold off the last of it last summer.
Now, if the same amount I had invested in Midwest Express Airlines had done the same, I’d be out next year. Oh, well...
Also, Airline consolidation has really put the fork in “Name-Your-Own-Price” airline tickets.
United is basically the only domestic Airline still offering Priceline fares, with the demise of Northwest and Continental, and I know they are moving away from it.
I”m in the exact same boat. Seems that priceline has been cutting negotiating ties with hotels for around 6 months now, as I have not been able to get a deal in houston on priceline for around that time frame. I never had a problem prior to that. I’d often get rooms for $79 a night, now I don’t win a bid below $109.
Really stinks.
The best part of Hotwire is their customer service. I reserved a room for one of our employees through Hotwire and it turned out the hotel actually didn't have any rooms available. A customer service rep called me and told me of the error, found another hotel room for our employee and refunded the entire purchase amount.
The same thing happened with another employee when I booked a room through Price Line. I didn't know about it until the employee showed up at the hotel and they told him there were no rooms available. I called Price Line, was on hold for at least 20 minutes, had to explain the situation to 3 different people, and ended up having to find another hotel with no help from them. All the while my employee had to wait about an hour and then drive to another hotel after he had been working and driving all day. I hate dealing with them and refuse to unless I have no other choice. With Hotwire you deal with one person, they actually care about problems, and best of all English is their first language.