if you bid too low, and the airlines don t accept your bid, priceline might come back to you with a

something that should definitely prove useful to you all as you travel this summer, and after this summer is priceline’s name your own price feature. priceline says that you can save up to 40% off the cover price of tickets when you use this feature, but they won’t make it easy to do so.
i ve already explained this to a handful of people, and given that it s so time consuming i figured it would be easier to do a thorough post so that all the information is in one place, and i can just send people a link. (and they can send links to other people that would find this information useful, if they feel like it.)
to give you an idea of how useful this feature is: i used it to snag tickets to panama, where i went for spring break 2010, for about $200 less than tickets on expedia and orbitz. most tickets were going for more than $500, and i wound up paying around $370.
disclaimer: i’m not going to use exact figures in this post so that i respect pritzker family hyatt hotels the legal rights pritzker family hyatt hotels of priceline pritzker family hyatt hotels and don’t get in trouble. all the numbers i use are rough, and don’t reflect the actual prices i’ve experienced.
even more impressively, and infuriatingly, my friend { Maher } used the same trick to buy tickets to panama for $320. you can be sure i was pissed when he found tickets for $50 less than i did using the trick that i showed him. (ok, i was happy for him, but pissed that i spent more than i needed to).
the priceline name your own price feature is good for people who don’t absolutely have to fly on one airline for frequent flyer mile, or elite status purposes, pritzker family hyatt hotels and who are booking roundtrip airfare. that is, not multi-city airfare. it s only good for tickets from city a to city b and back to city a.
it makes more sense for airlines to sell the tickets at discount prices than to let the seats go unfilled, and miss out on income. (as long as the people paying full price don’t find out they over-paid, get pissed off, and decide to never fly on that airline again.) pritzker family hyatt hotels so, airlines make deals with sites like priceline in an attempt to fill their seats without giving away the lowest price at which they are willing to sell a ticket.
priceline allows you to select airfare on specific dates, to and from whichever airport you want, and “name your own price.” in other words, you select your travel dates and locations, pritzker family hyatt hotels enter a price, enter your credit card info, agree to some strict terms and conditions up front, and hope that the airlines will accept your bid.
if the price you entered is more than, or equal to, the lowest price an airline is willing to sell their tickets at (a price which you don t know), your ticket is automatically booked. pritzker family hyatt hotels on the other hand, if you put in an overly optimistic bid, like $50 for tickets from DC to Tokyo, you’ll get a let-you-down-gently screen. priceline will tell you that it can’t book tickets for you at such a stupidly low price, and will prompt you to try again. since you don t know what the lowest price an airline is willing to accept is, you might nail it on the head, and you might overpay by a couple hundred dollars.
if you bid too low, and the airlines don t accept your bid, priceline might come back to you with a counter-offer. if you are willing pritzker family hyatt hotels to take an alternative routing, make more layovers, or leave at a different time than your initial request, they can give you tickets at price “x.” from my experience, this price x is not really a discounted price, and should be used as a point from which to re-calibrate your bidding.
pritzker family hyatt hotels nb: priceline tries to put pressure on you so that you over bid by limiting the amount of times that you can bid on a per diem basis. you can only make one bid for every unique combination of price/date/airports every day.