There has been some coverage of various Priceline bidding strategies to find the lowest price necessary for a successful bid given a particular geographical area and star-level. For instance, when Priceline first shows you the options for geographical area around the city you entered, there are often times several areas that only offer star-levels lower than the level you are interested in. For instance, you may be interested only in 3, 3.5, and 4 star hotels, but there may be certain areas where only 1 and 2 star hotels are available. Since Priceline shows you which areas offer which star levels, you can essentially take advantage of "free rebids" by selecting the additional geographic areas where no hotels matching your star-level are offered. These free rebids make it possible to feel out a price very close to the minimum while still obtaining your first choice in geographic area and star-level.
However, I recently stumbled across another strategy that I have used on several occasions with good results, namely, bidding using a closed credit card or with the wrong CID/CVV value. I actually stumbled across this by accident when bidding with one of my old stored cards that had been shut down and assigned a new account number by Citi.
Essentially, Priceline will go out and search for hotels to accept your offer without first authorizing your credit card. It will notify you if your price is too low to be accepted; but if your price was high enough for a successful bid, it will come back with an authorization declined message. It then gives you a form to enter new credit card information, which will then finalize the deal. Note that you still don't get to see which hotel accepted your offer until you enter new valid payment information, but this is important simply because it will let you know prior to committing to a particular price/geographical area whether or not it will be accepted.
In my particular case, I was able to use this strategy to compare the "bottom-dollar" prices of 3.5 star hotels in 2 different geographical areas, and make a booking decision accordingly.
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the card i have in my Priceline account is expired, it lets me keep trying to name a price till i hate the amount they want, then it comes back about my card.............i can log out and back in and it starts over, works great for finding the price one name it
Out of curiosity, can you please list the property you ended up with, the dates, and the rate? I think this would also help others on this forum if they were looking for similar properties in that area.
This strategy is fully explained at betterbidding.com. They also have a list of hotels for Priceline & Hotwire, so you know where you'll be staying before finalizing the bid and if the area is not on the list.
Be aware that this may not work in all cases. I have used this strategy successfully before, but one time I tried it and my bid was accepted even with wrong security code entered.
BbeforeC said:This strategy is fully explained at betterbidding.com. They also have a list of hotels for Priceline & Hotwire, so you know where you'll be staying before finalizing the bid and if the area is not on the list.
As valuable as Biddingfortravel.com and that other site are, there is NO guarantee that you are going to get a hotel on the their lists. I have received new hotels that were NOT on their list on at least ten occasions.
Bidding for an area an expecting a particular property will often lead to major disappointments.
scurrymurray said:Be aware that this may not work in all cases. I have used this strategy successfully before, but one time I tried it and my bid was accepted even with wrong security code entered.
tante said:I tried using a bad CID/CVV value and it accepted my bid and charged my card anyway so this is YMMV
The wrong CID/CVV is definitely YMMV, but the other option the OP stated is much better.
"bidding using a closed credit card or with the wrong CID/CVV value"
I've tried the strategy above and used a low fund prepaid gift card. That worked very well and using a closed credit card works well too. An expired credit card may not work too well because your card will get charged 90% of the time even if the expiration date is off.
calng said:tante said:I tried using a bad CID/CVV value and it accepted my bid and charged my card anyway so this is YMMV
The wrong CID/CVV is definitely YMMV, but the other option the OP stated is much better.
"bidding using a closed credit card or with the wrong CID/CVV value"
I've tried the strategy above and used a low fund prepaid gift card. That worked very well and using a closed credit card works well too. An expired credit card may not work too well because your card will get charged 90% of the time even if the expiration date is off.
Using wrong security code is bad advise. Security code is not essential for billing a CC. It is just an additional verification piece. You could be billed without a security code at all. But you could not be billed on a closed card with a valid number.
Seems that it would be easy enough to generate a virtual number with Citi for this purpose.
"BbeforeC said: This strategy is fully explained at betterbidding.com. They also have a list of hotels for Priceline & Hotwire, so you know where you'll be staying before finalizing the bid and if the area is not on the list.
As valuable as Biddingfortravel.com and that other site are, there is NO guarantee that you are going to get a hotel on the their lists. I have received new hotels that were NOT on their list on at least ten occasions.
Bidding for an area an expecting a particular property will often lead to major disappointments. "
Well then if you were to sumbit the hotels that you won that WERE NOT on their list as you are supposed to, then the moderators would add those hotels to the list and the next person will not get screwed. That is how the website works. I hope you already did that, and I hope you are not trying to insult their site as biddingfortravel.com has helped me tremendously in the past.
Yes I too have once or twice gotten a hotel that wasn't on their list. I simply submitted my bid, where I won and requested they add it to the list to help future bidders. We all need to help out sites like that for all of our mutual benefits.
Oontis said:"BbeforeC said: This strategy is fully explained at betterbidding.com. They also have a list of hotels for Priceline & Hotwire, so you know where you'll be staying before finalizing the bid and if the area is not on the list.
As valuable as Biddingfortravel.com and that other site are, there is NO guarantee that you are going to get a hotel on the their lists. I have received new hotels that were NOT on their list on at least ten occasions.
Bidding for an area an expecting a particular property will often lead to major disappointments. "
Well then if you were to sumbit the hotels that you won that WERE NOT on their list as you are supposed to, then the moderators would add those hotels to the list and the next person will not get screwed. That is how the website works. I hope you already did that, and I hope you are not trying to insult their site as biddingfortravel.com has helped me tremendously in the past.
Yes I too have once or twice gotten a hotel that wasn't on their list. I simply submitted my bid, where I won and requested they add it to the list to help future bidders. We all need to help out sites like that for all of our mutual benefits.
First, if you are going to quote me, get the quote attributed to the right person.
Second, I would be happy to contribute new properties to Biddingfortravel.com BUT I, like many others, have been banned from the site decause I do not use all of her links to book my Priceline stays (preferring to get the FatWallet Cash Back bonus for using THIS site). The moderator has driven off a substantial number of users with her poor (and usually hostile) attitude. All you need to do is to head over to Flyertalk.com for a litany of issues with the Biddingfortravel moderator.
Third, with the presence of Hotwire and the ability to rebid on Priceline after only 24 hours (as opposed to the old policy of 72 hours), we have found it more advantageous to low-ball for a few days rather than following historical bids, especially in the current economic environment where hotel rates are dropping like a rock.
jlawrence01 said:Oontis said:"BbeforeC said: This strategy is fully explained at betterbidding.com. They also have a list of hotels for Priceline & Hotwire, so you know where you'll be staying before finalizing the bid and if the area is not on the list.
As valuable as Biddingfortravel.com and that other site are, there is NO guarantee that you are going to get a hotel on the their lists. I have received new hotels that were NOT on their list on at least ten occasions.
Bidding for an area an expecting a particular property will often lead to major disappointments. "
Well then if you were to sumbit the hotels that you won that WERE NOT on their list as you are supposed to, then the moderators would add those hotels to the list and the next person will not get screwed. That is how the website works. I hope you already did that, and I hope you are not trying to insult their site as biddingfortravel.com has helped me tremendously in the past.
Yes I too have once or twice gotten a hotel that wasn't on their list. I simply submitted my bid, where I won and requested they add it to the list to help future bidders. We all need to help out sites like that for all of our mutual benefits.
First, if you are going to quote me, get the quote attributed to the right person.
Second, I would be happy to contribute new properties to Biddingfortravel.com BUT I, like many others, have been banned from the site decause I do not use all of her links to book my Priceline stays (preferring to get the FatWallet Cash Back bonus for using THIS site). The moderator has driven off a substantial number of users with her poor (and usually hostile) attitude. All you need to do is to head over to Flyertalk.com for a litany of issues with the Biddingfortravel moderator.
Third, with the presence of Hotwire and the ability to rebid on Priceline after only 24 hours (as opposed to the old policy of 72 hours), we have found it more advantageous to low-ball for a few days rather than following historical bids, especially in the current economic environment where hotel rates are dropping like a rock.
Sorry, I don't post much, so I just copied and pasted your post which included the guy above you.
HOWEVER, I do agree that she is often annoying and has hassled me a time or two about not using her links. Here are a few options. I don't know about the numbers behind the site but I presume she gets frustrated because she provides a decent, reasonably well organized site that has a huge amount of information that has saved me MANY thousands of dollars over the last few years. Either use her links for that to provide her a tiny amount of revenue and then use her forums to get your best price, or LIE TO HER and tell her "as always used the A/B link" and its not like she can ever find out. That way we benefit because you post your new hotel stays, and she doesn't crap her pants because someone didn't follow her instructions to the "t".
Just my opinion meant to help the greater good and not get into squabbles with a grumpy moderator.
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