Comments on: 5 Strikes for Priceline.com

By: matt

matt — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:17:25 +0000

877 850 9658, this number works

By: Pennie

Pennie — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:01:39 +0000

THANKS for the phone #, Julie! I was able to get a REAL LIVE PERSON on this phone this morning. My husband booked a car thru Priceline & when he arrived at the National counter to pick up the car, they didn’t have the Priceline reservation. National wouldn’t honor it (bad National!), even after my husband got a Priceline rep on the phone who verified the reservation. So my husband had to pay the walk up rate for the car. We are now attempting to get our money back, and may have finally made some progress after getting a customer care rep on the phone, who AGREED w/ me they owe us the $$ – yea!! We’ll see how it goes, but I’ll sure be calling that # again if they don’t get it straightened out soon.

By: karen D

karen D — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:42:47 +0000

Thanks for the your website and post…I had a horrible time with airfare today and Julie’s phone number in the comments section was the only number to a live person I could get hold of to find out what was going on. After un- returned responses to 3 emails, I also emailed the VP of customer service and will wait to see how she responds on Monday.

By: Kay Abell

Kay Abell — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:08:46 +0000

I recently purchased 3 airline tickets through Priceline and received a FREE car with the deal. We were delayed in flights and never picked the car up due to having elderly diabetic father with us. It was more important to get him food than delay in airport anymore. I called Hertz and Priceline after arriving at family members home explaining delays…etc and that we were at funeral and would not need the car. We were told NO PROBLEM! “You do not have to take the car!” I received my credit card and Priceline had charged an additional $154.80 to my card for the car… After many attempts to locate #’s & calls to machines, I found the number here (thanks) they were not at all willing to make any changes. They tell you it is free…it is but if you don’t get it …..watch out! Even if they tell you it is ok…….DON’T BELEIVE THEM! HONESTLEY: It is not really free! So you really get no deals! After speaking with Hertz I realize that it is Priceline that charges…….good extra money if this happens alot! No wonder they can give cheaper tickets….. On the expense of some of the unfortunate !!!!

By: Alan Wong

Alan Wong — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:49:58 +0000

Funny thing, I went through EXACTLY the same ordeal. I went to Investor Relations or something though. There’s a link to “send a comment to management”. I had a couple of back and forths and it came to no resolution, so I decided to give up. But the canned response was pretty ridiculous — at one point I typed in “I guess no one bothers to READ my questions” and all that came back was the canned response.

If you’re still looking for a car though, inventories are back!

By: Julie Richardson

Julie Richardson — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:25:45 +0000

I have the phone number to get someone from PRICELINE on the telephone. It’s 877 850 9658. They will change or cancel paid reservations, generally with a penalty. Secondly, I understand from Budget Rent-a-Car that if you do not use the Rental, Priceline WILL refund to non-used reservation after the dates of service.

By: Derek Hatchard

Derek Hatchard — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:17:23 +0000

Well, Brian Ek at Priceline wrote me back and cleared things up:

“I have shared your experience with our customer service and rental car teams. Currently, we do not have Name Your Own Price rental car inventory available for pickup at the Toronto airport. We do expect inventories to open up in the near future. However, your request should not have automatically defaulted to the other airport. We are working to correct that situation. And we are working with our customer service teams so that an issue such as yours will be addressed directly and correctly.”

A reasonable response if you ask me. The problem was CURRENT inventory, not that the Name Your Own Price option isn’t available at that airport. That makes more sense. Hopefully we’ll see that messaging reflected in the error message in the future.

@Andrew: Thanks for the contact.

Thanks, Brian, for replying to me. Cheers!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:10:48 +0000

I’ve found that the best way to deal with problems like this is to go directly to the people who care. If the support team doesn’t have your problem fixed within two emails, it’s normally because they don’t care.

I had a similar problem with the Mozilla store a few weeks ago when I had to deal with the company Mozilla outsourced to.

The people who do care? The people managing the brand image.

In your case you might want to send an email pointing to this post to: Brian Ek (brian.ek@priceline.com) whose involved in their PR. It’s our responsibility to help companies with genuinely good products to improve their service.

You could also drop a note to Connors Communications – they used to handle Priceline’s PR though I’ve lost touch and can’t recall if they’re still a client. Blog Outreach was one of Connie’s strengths.