Priceline dot com experiences ?

[Vinman]

OK so my wife and I are thinking about flying to SLC to visit her family over Christmas week. (read Vinman gets to go skiing in LCC for a few days) Dec 23-30. And we are looking into using priceline dot com to get our tickets. But since I have never used their service before I was curious to see if any other maggots had used them for travel arrangments and how it worked out.

Also what techniques did you use? Lowball and hope for the best? Or.. go with your highest amount you would comfortably pay?

[The General]

Priceline works good. I was just gonna use it today to do the same thing. Usually I just start off with s lowball fare and work my way up.

[INDY GS]

I have used priceline alot for hotels, never had good luck lowballing with airline tickets. But I haven't tried for a while. Lowballing usually doesn't work, there are a few message boards that are out there that give you lots of insight on getting the best deals.

My wife and I used priceline.com to book hotels for a 9 day trip to the east coast last may. we never stayed in a less than 3 star type hotel, usually 4 star (on the priceline scale) and averaged about $43.00 a night The cheapest room we had was $25 in Pennsylvania on the way out the best deal was the sweet pad in Downtown Boston for $45/ night. and the most expensive night was on our way back in Toronto for $63.00 (and this was by far the best nicest damn hotel I have ever stayed in.

So yes I reccomend trying priceline. you really have nothing to lose on the deal, if they don't accept your bid, just look at travelocity or orbitz.

I highly reccomend staying away from hotwire.com They will put you on the most rediculous schedule with redeyes and extra long layovers.

[basom]

i've gotten last min. tix lowballing several times. i got $100 round trips for logan to denver a few years ago, when the cheepest price i could find was around $350 for advanced bookings. gotta be really flexabile though. because you can't pick when you fly, and once you put your price in you own the ticket.

[myles long]

check out the site www.biddingfortravel.com its kind of a priceline hack site .........the priceline winning bids for hotels rental cars and plane tickets are posted. if you look thru it, you can find out the bidding floor for what you want and bid that right away so you know that you get the lowest prices.

i have been using it for years, i think the plane tickets are a tough buy on there b/c you lose some flexibility in flights......if you shop around you can get almost as good of a deal on plane tickets.

hotels are another story, i have stayed in 4 and 5 star hotels across the country for 50-60 bucks a nite. i have been compiling a spreadsheet of the places i have stayed and the prices i have gotten, please pm me if you need some hotel info.

[Ubersheist]

I used them to fly to the Canadian summit. I think lowballing works best if it's just you or maybe one companion. If you have a family, I think that lowballing wouldn't work.

You have to have a flexible schedule. You will almost certainly end up with super early or super late flights on days that aren't the most opportune. Once you get your flight days and times, it's basically impossible to change them.

[Raps]

Sorry vinman, this prob won't help you unless you are a student or faculty at a school or university but http://www.studentuniverse.com/fly/ has sick deals for those affiliated with schools. I'm flying from NYC to Vancouver on United for $314 US including fees and taxes.....

[Vinman]

Thanks for all of the info and links. The wife and I talked about it and we are going to hold off for this year. Financialy and logistically it would be hard to pull off this year. We're gogint o plan on a SLC trip for next winter and book tickets in the sumer to get a god rate, etc so that we have time to plan.

Thanks again.