Is Priceline’s low-fare guarantee hard to claim, or is Ace just bad at navigating websites? When the airfare for his Christmas travel flight fell, he hadn’t anticipated it. Well, okay, they have that guarantee thingy – he could just claim that and get the $41 difference between the lower fare and what he had paid. Right? Right, but only if he could figure out exactly how to do that within 24 hours. The clock was ticking, and he missed the deadline.

I purchased a round trip ticket on Priceline.com on 11/23 for a flight
back east for Christmas. I did this knowing that, should fares fall, I
would be covered by their “Best Price Guarantee”.

In all honesty, I didn’t expect Christmas fares to fall, but they did
for a short window, by $41. I immediately fired off an e-mail to
Priceline’s Customer Service.

I got an email back saying I wasn’t qualified for a refund because I
was supposed to CALL them instead of emailing.

I went back to their website to try and find out where that policy
exists for their “Best Price Guarantee” and found that there is NO
place for contact on the “Best Price Guarantee” anywhere on their
website, so they can change the rules (OR make them up as they go
along).

Here is what they wrote back:

You can review our guarantees on our website at http://www.priceline.com.
Please click on the Help link at the top of our home page and enter the
word “Guarantee” as a search topic.

So essentially, you have to email them within 24 hours to get the info
on how to claim the guarantee (via phone call) and THEN hope that they
return your initial email with the contact info before the 24 hour
period expires.

So, for all intents and purposes, their “Best Price Guarantee” doesn’t
exist. Or to be more precise, it DOES exist, they just make it
impossible to make a claim on it.

Following the instructions given in the e-mail to Ace does get you to a page with instructions on claiming the guarantee, but doesn’t tell you the exact number to call.

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