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  • Report:  #1430818

Complaint Review: priceline.com - Connecticut

Reported By:
Cheryl - Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Submitted:
Updated:

priceline.com
Connecticut, United States
Web:
priceline.com
Categories:
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We recently had to cancel our trip to Kauai, Hawaii because the owner of the condo we were going to rent emailed us to tell us that he had a court order to sell his condo and would therefore need to cancel our reservation.  I received the email at work on February 16 and at that point my husband and I attempted to find alternate accommodations, however, because our trip was booked for March 31, the accommodations that were available were few and far between and at a much higher cost.  My husband and I made the decision to cancel and hopefully rebook at a later date.  We called RBC Visa Rewards (we had booked the flight on points) and they advised that we could cancel but we would be charged a change fee by the airline and RBC Rewards in order to rebook/receive a credit.  We agreed to this because at least we weren’t losing everything… 

 Meanwhile, I had booked a rental car on February 14 (obviously not knowing that our accommodations would be cancelled a day later).  I used autoslash.com to get quotes and when I clicked on the link for the quotes it took me to priceline.com.  I booked the car rental with Budget Rent a Car (I thought) and paid the full amount up front to ensure that we had a solid reservation.  We received a confirmation email and thought everything was fine. 

Once we had made the decision to cancel/postpone our trip, I used the link in the confirmation email to contact the rental company to advise that we wanted to cancel/change our reservation.  At that point we realized that priceline.com had put a clause into the rental agreement “You have been charged for this rental car reservation. Your rental car reservation is non-refundable, non-transferable and non-changeable even if the reservation is not used.”  How is a company even allowed to have such a clause – if they are not providing a service or providing a product – how is this even legal.  From what I can tell they only do this with car rentals. 

 My husband spent at least two hours on the phone with them trying to get them to be reasonable and understand that we had no intention to cancel this vacation – we were going to celebrate my retirement and my husband’s 50th birthday – we were NOT going to cancel.  All they kept saying is that this is their “policy”.  We asked them if they would give us a credit that could be used at a later date (as was done with our airline tickets) but they would not even consider this (we were also willing to pay a “cancellation fee”).  I decided to go to social media and went to their Twitter account – I received a response back almost immediately because I posted the following:

 Buyer Beware!! DO NOT USE Priceline to book rental cars. They add a no cancellation/change/refund clause to bookings. The rental car companies that Priceline is "representing" never get the money either. Priceline is scamming the customer and the business they are "representing" (I can send you the full conversation is you are interested.)

 The other interesting thing is that they try to blame the rental car companies, however, the rental car companies have nothing to do with this – my husband also called Budget Rent A Car and they said that if we had booked through them directly we would have had many options – cancel, change, credit, etc…  Our Visa statement was charged by Priceline Rental Car – nothing to do with Budget – so we are pretty sure that the rental car companies never see any of this money.  By the way this isn’t just a one or two day rental – this was for a month so the cost to us is $1300 US ($1800 Cdn).  We believe this is theft/fraud/scam.  Have you ever heard of other companies having this type of non cancellation/change/refund policy?  If so, how are they allowed to do this?

All we are asking is for them to do the “right” thing.  Looking at their website, facebook, etc – it seems that their business model does not include any customer service – just make/steal money!

 Thank you for your time and if there is anything else we can provide or you would like to discuss further, please do not hesitate to contact us.



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