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Hey there, you’re reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.
This is the twenty-first post in a monthlong series. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go.
Yesterday we learned about priceline’s “name your own price feature” that allows us to save 60% on booking hotel rooms. I walked you through process of bidding, the pre-bidding preparation of noting all the zones without the quality of hotel we want, and gave a guideline for the first bid amount.
Now make your first bid. If you’re looking for a 4 star hotel in Downtown Los Angeles like in my example, the first bid should be the $40 per night suggested in the last post.
You will be prompted to enter your credit card info. And priceline will show the total amount of your bid including taxes and fees, which is usually about $10 per night higher than the amount you entered.
There are three things that can happen. First the bid may be accepted. It’s unlikely that your first bid will be accepted, but if it is, your card will be charged, and you will have a nonrefundable booking at a hotel in one of the zones you’ve bid on.
Second, the bid may be rejected outright. I’ll explain how to handle this in a moment.
Third, the bid may be rejected, but priceline has counteroffered.
In either the counteroffer or outright rejection situation, you will want to continue bidding with a free rebid. Remember yesterday when I said to write down the numbers of the zones without the quality of hotel you want or a higher quality?
I want a 4 star hotel in Los Angeles, so I wrote down the four zones, which had only 3 and 1/2 star hotels and below. Those zones are the key to free rebids.
You have as many free rebids as you have zones without your quality hotel or higher. (You can actually stretch your rebids much farther if you don’t mind using permutations. See here.)
I have four zones, so four free rebids. I would space out my rebids so that I go from $40 to the highest price I’m willing to pay over the course of those four bids. So if I were willing to pay $80 per night, I would make my rebids $50, $60, $70, $80. If I had a surfeit of free rebids, I would just add $4 or $5 to my bid each time.
How do you use a free rebid? You use a free rebid by adding one of the zones you’ve identified as free rebid zones earlier to a previous bid. When your bid is not accepted, priceline brings you back to the bidding screen and offers the chance to add a zone or a lower quality hotel.
Add exactly one zone during each free rebid. So my second bid will have two zones, Downtown and one free rebid zone. My third bid will have three: Downtown, my first free rebid zone, and a second one.
Why is a free rebid free? Because I am looking for a 4 star hotel. That means priceline will only book me into a 4 star hotel or higher. I am adding zones that don’t have such hotels. That means the only zone I can be booked into is still my desired zone, downtown.
But I am getting free rebids by adding dummy zones that priceline cannot book me into!
As you’re working through your free rebids, one may be accepted! Great. More often though, before one is accepted, priceline counteroffers. The counteroffer looks like this, and claims that if you up your bid to a specific amount, the hotel is yours. Always decline; we’re very close to getting an even better deal!
Common wisdom is that once priceline counteroffers, you can usually get the room for about half the difference between your last bid and the counteroffer.
At this point, decrease the amount between your rebids to a few dollars. Priceline will eventually accept one of these free rebids at a level below their counteroffer, and you’ve probably saved hundreds on a multi-day stay.
Those are the basics of using priceline to get your hotel after you’ve booked your free first class ticket to the exotic locale. If you want to learn more, here’s an entire blog on the subject.
Now that you know how to exploit priceline, get to work saving hundreds of dollars on your next hotel reservation. Let me know your results.
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works alot better when you use a prepaid credit card with 1$ balance on it..
Genius
I could see an account getting banned after doing this often enough.
Good idea bitachu. Does this method work better when your hotel stay is really close to the day you are booking, cuz I imagine if you are looking for a room 6+ months out, there might not be much availability.
I think it works best close to the date if you want a good discount on a 4 star which is what I personally aim for. They are now kinda desperate to get rid of inventory. 6 months out they are better off holding on to their rooms.
Thank you, I figured as much. I’ll bookmark this post and save it for the future.
Bitachu…what happens when you use a prepaid card with only a few dollars on it and your bid is accepted?
I assume you just start over and rebid at that amount (or lower with a real card). I haven’t done this, but I will now.
Milevalue, were you able to test what happens if you use a prepaid card with insufficient funds? what are the results?
I haven’t tested. I’ll ask Bitachu.
Ok thanks. Please update us when you get the answer. I’m trying to bid on a Maui hotel for November after thanksgiving. I’m already on $150 per night for a 4* hotel and still being rejected.
how about using corporate codes…that way you can get a great rate, utilize your elite benefits if you have them, and get loyalty points!
How do I get ’em?
Go to the Hotel Programs forums in FT. All of the major chains have threads discussing many different corporate or gov’t codes and their success rates.
Great post! I do have a question though.
What if I want to narrow down the available hotels in that zone. Would I be able to do this? For example, I’m looking for a hotel in Singapore in zone 5 (Orchard Road). Now looking at their grid on the map and the information that they’ve shown me, i.e. for a 5 Star hotel they include (icons) a swimming pool, business center and Guest Reviews of > 8.0.
I’ve gone back to the normal priceline booking process and have set those criteria; and it seems that there are only 3 hotels I could be potentially bidding for (Regent Four Seasons, Hilton and Marriott).
Is my logic correct on narrowing down the potential options? Will they include any other hotels?
You can never be 100% sure what’s included. You can check priceline forums (betterbidding.com) to see what people have gotten in a star category in a zone. But you can never be 100%
I just booked 2 nights at the JW Marriott in Las Vegas for $80 a night due to your tips: http://i47.tinypic.com/r269o1.jpg
Face value is $143 a night or 50,000 points 🙂
Congrats! Now don’t blow those savings on the craps table.