- despite your rhyming pizazz, your negotiation skills can kiss my ***
Priceline.com is one of the most used internet travel agency sites (Google told me so!) and like its competitors, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc., they offer a somewhat comprehensive listing of airline tickets, hotel options, car rentals and other travel-related goodies.
Anyways, point being, they have this really enticing-sounding service called "Name Your Own Price," which apparently will save you up to 40% on your travel bills. I mean, how could I resist?! I'm Chinese, haggling is in my blood. :) When you combine that with the embarrassment-avoiding anonymity of the internet, hook-line-and-sinker.
What is deceptive about this practice, however, is that you don't really "name your own price." It is more like, "name your own price, and if it matches or exceeds how much priceline paid for the tickets, they will take your price, thereby guaranteeing a profit for them -- oh and there are no refunds, you are given flight times no one wants to have, and you won't get any information about the actual flight until your credit card has been charged. AND they deny you airline mileages you would otherwise normally get!!!"
(I can hear my contract professor's voice in my head right now, "Where are the promissory conditions in this agreement? Where is the procedural and substantive unconscionability?!?) Naturally, you can imagine what I did after I learned how dubious this entire "Name Your Own Price" process was -- I named my own price!
The following resulted:
Times like these, you dig deep and find the gallows humor in the situation.
After being thoroughly rejected by the "Naming my Own Price" service (as seen above!), I decided to find the cheapest listing that was given to me by Priceline and go straight to the airline to buy the ticket. This would in essence deny Priceline the middleman fees it would normally collect from the airlines. (I swear, there was no vindictive motivation behind this move. I just wanted to save an additional $20... I swear!)
As fate would have it, the airline price listing was a good 20% higher than the lowest Priceline listing. (Collusion alert!) I tucked tail and went back to Priceline for the ticket in the end. (as seen above!)
My one claim at a Pyhrric victory stems from Priceline's inability to gouge me into paying more for a ticket than it was worth... (despite my many attempts to let them).
Moral of the Story: The Pacific Ocean needs a bridge so I can drive across.
