I just bid for a rental car in Phoenix from Priceline. I filled in all of my fields and clicked on “buy my rental car.” My initial bid was for $20 a day. The next screen had a special offer for a car at $19/day. The third screen stated the price was $19.91/day. By the end of the buying process, the rate has risen to $25.05 a day. What is Priceline up to? Is this classic bait and switch?
Here are the screen shots in sequence. The search was conducted at about 7:08 a.m. on Sunday morning, April 3, 2011. I recorded the screen grabs in reverse sequence, hitting the back button each time. They don’t tell a pretty story.
Here is my first image. It is a screen grab of my initial priceline bid, for an economy rental car in Phoenix. The bid was $20 a day.
The next screen to display said “Negotiation on Hold: Please Try Again … Great news! The Negotiator has cooked up some exclusive offers just for you. Hurry – these deals are only available for a limited time!”
I clicked on the $19/day offer ($100 total price) and clicked on next. Here is a screen grab of the following screen. Note that the price has now been increased to $19.91/day and the total price has increased minimally to $100.84.
I continued on with the buying process and the following screen displayed a notice that there was a “Rental Car Rate Change” The estimated total amount of your rental has changed. Please see the new rate details below. If a buyer was not watching and reading carefully, it would be easy to click “make the purchase” without realizing that what was offered on the previous two screens is not what you were purchasing.
I have sent this series of screen grabs to Priceline.com. I will publish their explanation as soon as I receive it. I sent priceline these screen grabs early morning yesterday April 5th, I have not heard from them as of publication.
In the meantime, use priceline.com prudently and carefully read every screen. FYI at the end of my search for a rental car, priceline.com could not offer the lowest price, even when bidding for the rental car. Orbitz consistently had the lowest price through Fox Rent-A-Car. But that’s another story.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
