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In its few short months, Priceline has gained incredible press as the a great
source for cheap airline tickets.
For those of you who are not familiar with Priceline.com, it is a buying service for
leisure airline tickets that lets you name your price. In order to use the service, you must register with your travel dates,
destination, credit card information and the price that you are willing to pay. Within one hour, Pricleine will tell you if they found
an airline that will meet your price. If they find flights within your specifications, they will use your credit card to purchase the ticket. Initially,
it sounded like a great idea, airlines could fill unsold seats with bids from travelers. Airlines could gain extra revenue and
consumers could save a bundle.
However, we have some major problems with the system:
- Priceline is rather inflexible on travel times. You must be willing to travel between 6AM and 10PM on the days you select with the possibility of a two hour layover. You do not have the option of rejecting the flights if Priceline.com meets your price.
- You do not collect frequent flyer miles.
- There are no refunds on tickets or changes to your itenary allowed.
- Priceline strongly recommends that you enter a price above the airlines lowest published advanced economy ticket. From this statement, we gather that Priceline cannot get you really cheap tickets.
- Tax is not included. Under normal circumstances, airfare is always quoted with tax. At Priceline, they add tax to your bid price.
We have read some relatively negative reports on Priceline. Business Week reported (June 1, 1998) that Priceline has deals to get
unpublihsed fares with only two domestic airlines, TWA and America West. (And with TWA, you can already save 20% on most fares by using
LowestFare.com.) After reading their site, we had assumed that they worked with most
major airlines. After learning they only had a couple of unpublished fare deals, we figured that they act more like a discount travel
agent than an auction service. Although a travel agent passes all the savings onto you. If you enter an incorrect bid, Priceline gets
to make additional money.
Read more reviews written by others including Business Week, CNNFn, MSNBC, and BestFares.com.
Read actual customer feedback. By reading how others used the service, you may get some insights for your bid.
Please describe your experience with Priceline here. By getting feedback from users like you, we can provide better information for others.
If you are about to use Priceline, please come back and tell us about it.
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