Priceline is hit and miss. About 10 years ago, I took a monthlong road trip where I had no set plans, but just figured out where I wanted to stop for the night, and used Priceline to get a hotel. Did I get a lot of cheap places to stay? Yes? Did I get some amazing bargains in decent/nice hotels? Yes. But did I end up in some dumps that were listed as "3 star" and "4 star"? Yes.Originally Posted by ShadyJ
That's one of the reasons I stopped using Priceline. Here are some other reasons NOT to use Priceline for hotels:
- Hotels with Priceline contracts tend to be struggling, and there's usually a reason for it. Often the service and/or rooms at these hotels is lacking.
- You have no power at the hotel as a Priceline customer. They can (and sometimes do) give you the worst rooms in the place, and there's nothing you can do about it. For example, I once won a cheap Priceline bid at what seemed like a nice high-rise hotel. When I got there, they placed me in their low-rise annex -- a total dump of a motel that they bought and added to the main property a few years back. This was completely legal and allowed by Priceline rules.
- Resort fees. Hotels can charge resort fees, and you have to pay whatever they charge. This can turn a "great" Priceline deal into a not-so-great deal.
- No abilty to review properties before you select them. In 2003, reviews online were few and far between, so this didn't matter. However, in 2013, you can get a very good idea of how good most hotels are by reading Yelp and Tripadvisor, so I hate giving up that important piece of guidance.
However, I do understand that you're traveling on an LOL-$90-per-diem, so I don't really blame you for using Priceline in your situation.
I worked for a very large company in 1996, and they sent me on travel to Hunstville, Alabama. This company gave nice per diems for big cities (such as $250 for NYC), but screwed you in smaller, typically lower-cost locations. While it makes sense to adjust the per diem based upon your location, you can stay in a reasonable place in NYC and eat okay for $250/day. I got $65/day for Hunstville, which was a joke. There were only two hotels that were charging less than $65 -- Days Inn and some independent motel. I chose the Days Inn out of familiarity.
Among the fun I had at the (franchised) Days Inn, owned by an obnoxious Indian guy:
- My room shared a common wall with another room where they were doing major construction starting at 7am! I was not warned about this. I was jarred awake at 7am by drilling and power sawing. When I called to complain, the owner was not there and everyone was under strict orders not to allow anyone to move rooms. By the time I reached the owner, hours later, he told me "everyone gets up at 7" and that it's my fault for sleeping in too late!
- Because I couldn't reach the owner until 3pm, he told me that I couldn't check out without paying for another day, since it was after checkout time. My luggage was trapped in the room and he disabled my key until I paid him.
- I showed up at the hotel and tried to BS the desk guy into letting me in, hoping he didn't know my situation. The desk guy, a heavy-set black dude, said, "Aw... I know who you are. And I know how my boss can get. I'm just gonna give you this key to get in there to get your luggage, and when he asks me, I'll say I was confused." I was very grateful for this. No idea why he risked his job for me, but he probably hated his boss as much as I did.
- I was at least smart enough to only reserve the room (and sign for) one night, figuring I would move if the place sucked. This made it impossible for him to charge me for checking out before the 2nd night without enough notice. However, I was still pissed and felt I deserved my money back, given that I was jarred awake at 7am by construction on a common wall that he knew about and chose not to warn me. I tried to charge it back on my credit card. The credit card company denied my claim, saying that because I "stayed the night", I got what I paid for. When I called to speak to the department that handles this, I asked what if the construction was at 4am instead of 7am. They said, "Then we would have ruled in your favor." I asked what their cutoff time for construction noise on a common wall was. The woman was flustered and said she didn't have one, but that she felt 7am still gave me "a night of sleep". Awful.
- As a final kick in the ass, I found a month later that my credit card was used during the night I stayed there to order a delivered steak dinner. This was done by a different front desk employee, and this occurred BEFORE my issue the next morning, so it wasn't done to punish me. The idiot employee accidentally signed his own name on the slip instead of mine. The police were not interested in this when I reported it, because I was no longer physically in Alabama. A stereotypical hick cop told me on the phone, "You're in California, we ain't got no idear how to take a report from another state over the phone."
I moved to the independent hotel and it was actually decent.
Ah, per diem memories...
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