I had a similarly terrible experience in which I called the night before to confirm a hotel room in Boston that was paid for in advance. I was told by the hotel that the room was canceled by Priceline! No other rooms were available and Priceline denied any responsibility and made no effort to secure another room or provide a refund. Their customer service was wretched. Everyone shifted responsibility to someone else. No one provided a timely response. And no one had the authority or ability to make the situation right.
If you use Priceline, be prepared to make (pricey) alternative arrangements at the last minute.
I wonder if they have to keep some amount of bad service to try to discriminate actual marginal bookings like me from trips that would've happened anyway at a higher price.
I emailed their support, and instead of arguing with me, they wrote back "That sounds terrible! We hate that happened to you. Here's $100 credit for a future JetBlue flight."
As the author said, instead of being angry, I'm now looking forward to spending money with them again. Good customer service pays for itself.
Particuarlly AMEX - Merchant's don't like AMEX because they typically charge considerably more to process their cards (up to 2x as much) as with Visa or MC.
Therefore AMEX pushes hard for their consumers to keep them demanding that merchants accept the card in the first place.
They did offer to let us cancel the tickets for a $420 charge, meaning we'd still be out almost $1100. We thought this was unreasonable, so we disputed the charges through Amex, thinking they'd have more leverage than we would -- another mistake, as Priceline kept responding to Amex's inquiries with the same "they accepted our tickets" line. We found out that in the event of an Amex inquiry, Amex just forwards your documents to the vendor, and accepts their answer uncritically, even if the answer has nothing to do with the dispute. We tried to contact Priceline one more time to discuss our REAL complaints, but their answer now is "We'll only talk to you through Amex since you involved them."
Then they did me wrong similar to the OP and px. I won't do business with them again. Priceline's horrible customer service becomes evident once you try to get someone on the phone.
Eventually I gave up and ate the slightly worse prices at Expedia. No bugs, easier to pick a flight, and no obnoxious William Shatner-oriented graphic design.
I am not sure if this is a bug in Priceline. I've seen the same with Orbitz last week. Moreover, with Orbitz fares reduced or became unavailable while trying to book.
I feel like that should be a question that the customer service reps should ask: "Do you know how to distribute poor customer service via the internet?"
They did offer to let us cancel the tickets for a $420 charge, meaning we'd still be out almost $1100. We thought this was unreasonable, so we disputed the charges through Amex, thinking they'd have more leverage than we would -- another mistake, as Priceline kept responding to Amex's inquiries with the same "they accepted our tickets" line. We found out that in the event of an Amex inquiry, Amex just forwards your documents to the vendor, and accepts their answer uncritically, even if the answer has nothing to do with the dispute. We tried to contact Priceline one more time to discuss our REAL complaints, but their answer now is "We'll only talk to you through Amex since you involved them."
If there's a credit card company that I would trust to get this right, it's AmEx.
The author's claim, while it seems credible to me, is also made complicated by the fact it presents to Priceline/AmEx the same as someone who didn't understand the Priceline commitment-even-if-you-don't-like-the-exact-times model, or who did but then wants to renege on the deal.
Not that I would have been paranoid enough to do this the first time through, but having read this account, I now know what I would if I were in a similar situation in the future. I would not only capture the screen showing no active trips (as did the Buechelers), but also seek redundant confirmation via both phone and email support, with CSR rep names, that their record of the inquiry included them telling me no trip existed.
I'm pretty sure there are further avenues. I'd imagine they could take either company to small claims court and get money back, but it's a shame that they couldn't resolve it through other means.
Heh thanks for the downvotes.
I wouldn't know anything about the issue. It's not like I'm not sitting at my desk in a Travel Agency right now ;)
I've heard this several times about AmEx - this is all hearsay and anecdote - that AmEx really doesn't help in disputes such as these.
Add this to the fact that AmEx is not accepted in many places in Australia and Europe (to my personal knowledge) and yet MasterClass and VISA appear to be accepted everywhere, I wouldn't use AmEx.
And now I also won't use priceline.
I wonder if being a platinum holder changes things, and just how hard it is, how long it takes, to get to that level.
I've never had Amex side with the business when I disputed a charge.