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Comment by jmount | Hacker News Reader

Use a credit card that you can dispute the charge with.

Did you read the article?

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."

They paid with American Express, and eventually tried to dispute the charge with AmEx when Priceline wouldn't offer them a full refund.

If there's a credit card company that I would trust to get this right, it's AmEx.

I agree. It's just perception without any real basis for it, but I've always perceived AmEx as the company to do charges with if you expect to have issues and need a charge-back. Of course, this website is a single counter anecdote, so it's hard to say for sure.

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.

I wonder if the fact that Amex has their own travel agency that competes directly with Priceline factors into this at all...

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 ;)

It may have more to do with the customer's history with AmEx than AmEx general policies. Does the customer do $thousands or $tens-of-thousands in charges per year? If so, they get a fair hearing or even a presumption of correctness. Is this the customer's one charge this year? Higher or impossible burden of proof.

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 don't know why you're being downvoted for this. It's clear from the article that AmEx is not really bothering to check the claims and counter-claims. When I had disputes via MasterCard, and then again via VISA, the claims were investigated properly and the documentation provided showed that very clearly.

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.

Long time platinum amex holder. Every time I've disputed a charge, it's been in investigated timely and properly, and in my favor. They even have a nice tool on their "my account" page to dispute charges, and they follow up via snailmail to confirm. I also have visa and mastercard, but I only use them when amex is not accepted -- simply because AmEx offers me the best service.

And I think this is one of the common reasons why people are OK with the AmEx annual fee... no hassles.

I've upvoted you because it's useful to hear the opposite side - thank you. I've just spoken with some colleagues who say that their experiences with AmEx are uniformly poor, so I guess things vary widely and wildly.

I wonder if being a platinum holder changes things, and just how hard it is, how long it takes, to get to that level.

Of all the credit/charge cards out there, Amex is the most consumer friendly in large part because they typically side with the complainant (their larger vendor fees are the other).

I've never had Amex side with the business when I disputed a charge.

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