Steve Peper: MIAMI- The Adventure

The first thing that I want you guys to know from this blog post is that I am trying to singlehandedly (with your help =) put Priceline.com out of business. If you take ANYTHING away from this post, please NEVER use Priceline again. I want to destroy them!!! Yes, this may sound a little sadistic but I have had enough of them. Yes, I am angry and yes, I apparently hold grudges so I am going to get this off of my chest and complain in this post! Let me begin by going back a few months...

When I was in North Dakota this summer I had to book hotels several times as I traveled across the state. I often had to book them on my own credit card and get reimbursed later, which didn't bother me. I tried my best to find the cheapest hotels so I could save grant money for continued use later (like I just did to go back out to ND this past weekend. But anyways, I digress). I have always seen these obnoxious commercials on TV with William Shatner for priceline. For some reason I thought I would give them a try. So I booked a hotel and priceline took the money right out of my account. When I checked out of the hotel I noticed that the hotel charged me for the stay as well. After SEVERAL phone calls, to both the hotel and priceline, I discovered that priceline never sent the hotel the money after I booked my stay. My bank filed a credit dispute with priceline and were able to refund my account but it took a while.

Around the same time that I booked that hotel stay I also booked my Miami trip. I used priceline because at the time I did not realize the headache that was ahead of me. I booked a hotel, flight, and rental car all through priceline. Let the adventure of my Miami trip begin...

I booked my flight out to Miami for a thursday night after my last class. I planed my flight to be at the airport about an hour and a half before the flight left. I was going to hit the road right after my comparative anatomy lab. Of course, that day happened to be the longest lab of the entire semester so I got started a little late. After I made it onto the road I of course hit some of the worst traffic ever and the weather was horrible. My hour and a half window quickly was fading away. By the time I got to the airport and found a place to park I had about 40 minutes before my flight left. I parked in the extended lot and so I tried waiting for a shuttle to come get me and take to to the terminal. As I was trying to find a parking spot I saw 3-4 shuttles driving around the lot but as I was waiting there were none in sight. After about 10 minutes of not seeing a shuttle I decided that I just needed to run for it so I booked it! I made it to the ticket check in with about 10 to spare, obviously not enough time. Apparently the ticket agent people had just left and they stop checking people in 20 minutes before the flight. I MISSED MY FLIGHT!! So with no agent to talk to about getting on the next available flight I had to call the airline. They said that since I booked the flight through pricleline they were not allowed to put me on the next flight =[ So after many more phone calls I realized that I had to buy a one way ticket on the next flight to miami. So in the end I had to buy 2 tickets. The one-way ticket cost as much as my round trip. Oh well, it was my fault for not giving myself enough time to get to the airport. That was the flight.

My friend Jeff made his flight so as I was sitting in Pittsburgh waiting for my flight the next morning, he was in Miami trying to pick up our rental car. Well, the rental car company that priceline used to book our car apparently ran out of cars... Even with a confirmation number ... True, part of the blame rests with Payless (the rental car company) but priceline guaranteed us a car and they need to be responsible for the companies that they do business with. Since we had no car, Jeff had to take a cab to the hotel and the next morning the concierge helped him actually get a car. Again, since priceline guaranteed us a car, I called them and asked if they would cover any extra charges that we had to pay that was more than what we had originally agreed with priceline for. They said, "oh no, we can't do that. The best we can do is cancel your reservation." Are you kidding me? I think my reservation was canceled when they ran out of cars!! So the bottom line, the policy that priceline obviously stands for is "If you, the costumer, screws up, you get screwed. If we, priceline, screw up, the costumer still gets screwed!"

The most recent incident with priceline is with a receipt. As mentioned earlier I booked a flight to go out to ND through priceline (again, before I realized how horrible they are). I did it on my own card again and am planning to submit my receipt to get refunded. After booking my flight priceline sent me several emails with my itinerary and a summary of the charges they made. However, they only sent me a "summary" of charges. None of the emails were an actual receipt, proof that my card was charged. The school obviously needs that proof that it was my card that they charged before they refund me the money. So I called priceline and explained what I was looking for. They said they would send me an email with a receipt. The email came and it was the same thing I already had, the summary. I tried emailing the costumer service department and explained that I needed an ACTUAL receipt and they emailed me the stupid summary again. I called back and finally got a hold of someone who said that they can not give me an actual receipt, they can only provide the "summary". I asked if they had a record/document of them taking the money out of my account, they said yes, of course. So I said, great! Send me a copy of that document. Oh, no, they can't do that. AAAHHHHHHH......

Anyways, here are a few pictures of the hotel we stayed at in Miami. It had a great view and was right by the beach! The hotel was really nice, 4 stars I believe, but as it turns out I prefer the not super nice hotels. Something like Hampton Inn. Really nice hotels rip you off. They charge you for internet, they charge you $12 for a belgium waffle that you can make for free at other hotels, and as it turns out, they charge you $20 a night to park. But again, the view was really nice!