Priceline Trick

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Ryan-o

Level 2 Member
When looking to make a booking through Priceline here are a few tips to help you submit the best possible bid on the "name your own price" option.

Tip #1- Betterbidding.com gives you an idea on what the range is for acceptable bids in a given location or hotel. Make sure to reference this first before placing a bid.

Tip #2 - Use a prepaid card with insufficient funds. Place a bid on the higher end of the bidding range (based on the above website). If you get an error screen saying that the card had insufficient funds, you will know if the bid would have been accepted. If this occurs you can immediately rebid (not having to wait 24 hours) and slowly decrease the cost until you get a message saying that your bid wasn't accepted. You have now determined the lowest acceptable bid price. Use a different account and book the hotel/car/flight at this price.
 
smittytabb

smittytabb

Moderator
Staff member
Ryan-o said:
When looking to make a booking through Priceline here are a few tips to help you submit the best possible bid on the "name your own price" option.

Tip #1- Betterbidding.com gives you an idea on what the range is for acceptable bids in a given location or hotel. Make sure to reference this first before placing a bid.

Tip #2 - Use a prepaid card with insufficient funds. Place a bid on the higher end of the bidding range (based on the above website). If you get an error screen saying that the card had insufficient funds, you will know if the bid would have been accepted. If this occurs you can immediately rebid (not having to wait 24 hours) and slowly decrease the cost until you get a message saying that your bid wasn't accepted. You have now determined the lowest acceptable bid price. Use a different account and book the hotel/car/flight at this price.
Click to expand...
Hat tip to Stefan at Rapid Travel Chai? Looks like it is either from his presentation at Chicago Seminars, or his posted Slideshare PPT.
 
B

Barb

Level 2 Member
Biddingfortravel has data points re: successful and failed bid as well as lists of potential hotels in each zone, so worth checking there too before placing a bid.
 
sriki

sriki

Level 2 Member
Ryan-o said:
You have now determined the lowest acceptable bid price. Use a different account and book the hotel/car/flight at this price.
Click to expand...
Why use a different account? Is it to just keep the"abuse" (from their point of view) separate?
 
R

Ryan-o

Level 2 Member
sriki said:
Why use a different account? Is it to just keep the"abuse" (from their point of view) separate?
Click to expand...
Yes, you could look at it from that perspective, but the way I see it is that once your bid is accepted or denied, you have to wait 24 to rebid. By using a different account with your newfound knowledge of the lowest acceptable
bid, you submit it without waiting 24 hours (when prices could change).
 
Anh

Anh

Level 2 Member
smittytabb said:
Hat tip to Stefan at Rapid Travel Chai? Looks like it is either from his presentation at Chicago Seminars, or his posted Slideshare PPT.
Click to expand...
FWIW, I've known both of these tricks for years and I don't think I've read them at Rapid Travel Chai. It's likely that Stefan learned them through various sources as well.
 
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janetdoe

Level 2 Member
I find the reverse process to make more sense, bid low and have the bids rejected, keep raising your bid (using the rebid strategy on biddingfortravel.com or better bidding.com) until your credit card is rejected = the bid is high enough.

It seems to me that getting the credit card rejected multiple times is a red flag that you are doing something manipulative, and more likely to get the loophole closed in the very long run. <shrug>
 
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fr33b13

Silver Member
I like to use the zone tick to be able to have multiple rebids in one day. If biddingfortravel or betterbidding doesn't have any recent results for your location then you can use the Hotwire price or the Priceline express price as your upper limit and start 25% or 30% lower and use the zone trick to get the lowest possible price
 
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