My fiance wanted to go to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio for her birthday this past weekend so I went to look for some hotels. After hours of searching online, I picked out a pretty cheap hotel (thinking we wouldn’t be there but to sleep), I booked it through Priceline. That is the first and last time I will EVER use Priceline again and after reading the ConsumerAffairs.com Priceline reports, I should have done a bit more research.
After booking the hotel, my fiancee didn’t like that it did not have an indoor pool so I tried to cancel since I noticed a banner on their site that said “No cancelation fees.” Come to find out, I would have had to cancel a day BEFORE I even booked my hotel to no incur any fees. How the hell does that work? I booked Thursday at 3 am but the site said I would have to cancel on Wednesday. Why even have that misleading banner up then? Fine, I decided I’ll stay at this hotel – once again, we’ll only be there to sleep.
Once we finally get to the hotel, the hotel tells us that we must pay them which I thought was a bit weird since Priceline told me I must pre-pay. Anyway, we pay them and have the receipt for somewhere close to $140. When I pull up my Priceline information, they charged me nearly $40 more for the same room, hotel and dates. The day we were supposed to leave, I check our credit card statement online and notice that Priceline has charged us now too, so we’ve got a charge from them AND the hotel. We call up Priceline again, and deal with their HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SUPPORT which offers no help, and tells us we have to get the hotel to refund us and they will not match the price or do anything in regards to the $40 extra they were charging us.
All in all, I learned to never deal with Priceline again or any other “hotel” booking site at that. If you’re looking for a hotel for a trip, contact the hotels directly – never use these online “travel agents” who will do nothing but rip you off then take your money and run.
On a brighter note, I’ll be posting some pictures of our trip and some great recommendations for Sandusky, Ohio.
Lynn @ 12:10 pm
Send your experience to the Baltimore Sun, they investigate these things all the time and each Sunday they post one of the horrible problems a person has with travel. Stop payment on your credit card also. They will not authorize the payment, you should have 30 days before it is posted.