- Report: #616594
Complaint Review: Priceline And Priceline.com - Internet Internet
Reported By:
Christopher -
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Submitted:
Updated:
-
Author Not Confirmed
Why?
Priceline And Priceline.com
Internet, Internet, United States of America
Phone:
Web:
http://www.priceline.com/
Categories:
Business Rating:
(0)
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Priceline - Priceline.com Stole My Money, Issued Tickets with No Notice, Refused to Cancel Internet
See the full timeline at (((Redacted)))
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The story:
Plane tickets to Paris around Christmas are very expensive, so my wife and I tried to "name our own price" on priceline.com. After several failed attempts, it looked like one of our offers had gone through. Here's what happened:
1. The offer explicitly stated that accepting a price does not guarantee that Priceline will be able to deliver the tickets (in which case the offer would be voided)
2. We were auto-forwarded from the confirmation screen back to the main page so quickly that we didn't have time to write the confirmation number down
3. We never received a confirmation email.
4. A charge appeared on our Amex online statement, from Priceline, for the quoted price.
After several days of NOT getting a confirmation email, and of the itinerary NOT appearing in the "My Trips" section of their website, the charge on our Amex disappeared. We tried to contact Priceline customer service. Two emails did not get answered, so we called, and talked to a representative who assured us that we did NOT have a flight booked. We waited a couple more days to see what would happen. When that turned out to be nothing we bought new tickets from another company, frustrated that we had to wait 10 days, during which time prices had gone up further. We really wanted those tickets from Priceline and would have been happy to have them!
A few days later, the charge showed back up on the Amex statement. We called Priceline again, and they informed us that we had tickets after all, and refused to refund the charges. 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."
CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report. 
