How does Priceline's 'name your own price' work?

How does priceline's name your own price work?

• I understand that you put a bid down, but what happens from there? Is there some kind of waiting period on it? For instance, if I name a price of 200 dollars for tickets that typically cost 400, do I have to wait a certain number of days before I find out if I got tickets? Or is it done instantaneously? What if the bid too low? Will you get a counter offer? Can you decline the counter offer or are you forced to accept it?

• Answer:

  I've only used Priceline for hotels, so I can't speak about airline tickets, but here's my experience. You select the city/region that you would like to book the hotel in -- they have a map with the boundaries of the neighborhoods outlined, so you have a general idea of where you hotel could be located. At that point you select the minimum grade of the hotel you'd like -- 2 star, 3 star, 4 star, etc. In theory you could select a 3 stay and name your price that matched a 4 star -- it's rare, but the possibility that you might get a nicer hotel is there. You name your price (they will tell you what the average *regular* price of hotels in the area usually cost and you guess from there). A good rule of thumb that I use it to divide the regular price in half and add about $10-20. At that point it will ask for your credit card info -- your card is charged immediately if you "win" your hotel. You cannot back out at that point -- the hotel is booked immediately. They ask for your CC info to make sure that you're serious about booking and not just seeing what's out there. Once you put in your price, it searches for a few minutes. If your bid is accepted you will be given the info about the hotel immediately -- if the bid is rejected, there is a time frame (I think 2-3 days, but I'm not for sure) before you can place another bid in that expect city/neighborhood/hotel grade. You *can* place bids in different parts of the city still before that time -- just not the same exact specifications as the original bid. Here are some examples of my successful hotel "wins" in the past: Philadelphia - regular hotel price $250/night -- got it for $90. Washington DC - regular $240/night -- got it for $85. New York -- reg $300/night -- got it for $140. Boston -- reg $200/night -- got it for $80.