MileValue is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more.
Note: Some of the offers mentioned below may have changed or are no longer be available. You can view current offers here.
Hey there, you’re reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.
This is the twenty-fifth 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 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!
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.
Just getting started in the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best card for you to start with.
With a bonus of 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first 3 months, 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel℠ and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
Editorial Disclaimer: The editorial content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuers. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of the credit card issuers, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuers.
The comments section below is not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all questions are answered.
Thanks for these Priceline writeups! I’ve never used Priceline, mostly because I wasn’t exactly sure how it worked. Now I might give it a shot sometime.
Any plans to do a writeup on using Hotwire (with tips from sites such as http://www.betterbidding.com)?
Hadn’t planned on it. Do you know a lot about using Hotwire? I’d be open to a guest post on the subject.
I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means but I do know how to use betterbidding.com to narrow down to 2 or 3 possible hotels and sometimes even determine which hotel it is you are looking at on Hotwire before purchasing.
If you’d like me to write up more info on it I’d be glad to.
[…] Continue to Part 2. […]
Just wanted to say thanks for the info! I’m new to frequent flyer miles, bidding on priceline, etc. and I’ve learned a ton perusing through here. I appreciate the work you’ve done to share your knowledge and expertise. Thanks again!
I’m new to travel hacking and have found your blog to be a great read. Thanks for all your work!
[…] pointed me to MileValue’s posts: Using Priceline to Save Hundreds on Hotel Rooms Part 1 and Part 2. I didn’t get the chance to look at them until the next day, but needless to say, it worked […]