Priceline.com Bought travel insurance in case of cancelation and was refused refund when canceled due to illness. Internet

"Everyone knows that if someone cancels a room someone else will be taking it, meaning the hotel gets paid twice."

They might.

The contract the customer is asked to initial, when they name their own price, states "Rooms purchased through priceline cannot be cancelled, changed or transferred and refunds are not allowed." (that's copied directly from the Priceline webpage) When you put in your initials, you are saying "I have read, accept and agree to abide by priceline.com's terms and conditions and privacy policy.". (Once again, taken directly off the Priceline webpage) 

 If you have travel insurance and a valid claim is made ... WITH THE TRAVEL INSURANCE PROVIDER ... they will reimburse you directly. Priceline would not be refunding you anything, as stated in the contract, and the hotel would not be the one doing it either, the travel insurance provider would be the one reimbursing you!

The hotel doesn't know, or even care, if you bought travel insurance with your reservation. They get paid for the room/night whether the guest shows up to use it or not. That's why they allow Priceline to sell rooms at their hotel so cheaply. It's guaranteed income for them! Priceline gets a contract to buy XXX number of rooms from a hotel chain for XX.XX amount per room (much much lower than the public can get usually due to a HUGE bulk discount) and is then allowed to sell those rooms to customers at whatever price the customer names (as long as it's more than Priceline paid the hotel chain for it). Is it any wonder why Priceline doesn't like to allow a refund for a room they've already agreed to pay the hotel for?

 The insurance company that Priceline used to use for travel insurance was A.I.G., but it has recently switched to a company called BerkleyCare. Both of these companies are huge corporations that have lots of smaller subsidiaries to handle these "1 time payment" type of insurance policies, and I'd be willing to bet that some of their subsidiaries do provide home, auto, life and medical insurance policies. If you purchased travel insurance with a reservation, and an issue comes up, all priceline agents will direct you to contact the travel insurance provider so you can speak with a licensed insurance agent. Priceline does not have any licensed insurance agents employed to sell, discuss, or process insurance claims.

 By the way ... if you call Priceline, before your check in date has passed, and you DIDN'T buy the travel insurance, the Priceline agent you speak to will ask you to provide the name and phone number of the doctor that can verify the illness issue, and then someone at Priceline will contact the hotel on your behalf (often while you're still holding on the other line) to ask them to allow a cancellation! Simple as that! The hotel owner/manager can still deny it, because that's part of HIS contract with Priceline, but if travel insurance is involved the Priceline agent cant help you, and according to company policy, they MUST direct you to contact the travel insurance provider! It's part of the script provided to the agents you speak with. "Did customer purchase travel insurance? If yes, direct customer to contact travel insurance provider".

 "highly recommend calling your credit card and having them reverse the charge. Let priceline deal with it."

Priceline deals with that sort of thing all day long, every day!

What generaly happens in those cases, is (1) your bank will put the money back into your account while the dispute is being processed, and will notify Priceline that it is being disputed. (2) Priceline will cancel your reservation due to non-payment and then provide a copy of the contract you initialed to your bank. (3) The bank will see the terms and conditions clearly state "no refunds" and will take the money back out of your account to pay Priceline. End result ... you still end up paying for the reservation, but because your actions forced Priceline to cancel the reservation, you dont get to use it anyway.

Over several years, I've spoken with literally hundreds of bank reps. I've walked them through the same process the customer went through, to get them to the exact same contract page. I've pointed out the same clearly written terms and conditions along with the customers initials. I've spoken with customers begging to have their reservations reinstated after their bank rep notified them that their dispute claim had been denied.

Honestly, at least 80% of the calls to Priceline customer service are caused by people not reading the information on the page before they agree to buy something. After they end up buying something they dont want, they feel like the contract shouldn't apply to them because they didn't read it, or they didn't understand it.

The greatest tip I could ever give to anyone considering buying ANYTHING from ANYONE online is "READ EVERYTHING before you agree to ANYTHING, and if you dont understand it, dont agree to it"!

If everyone had to show "proof" of an illness or reason for cancellation (and we're talking about an illness and a one-night stay at a hotel, not a car accident) there would be no need for travel insurance.

- Please tell us how the insurance company knows you were sick. All they have is that you were not sick enough to see a doctor, but were too sick to travel.  You can swear on your Great-Great-Grandmothers grave that you are sick.  But that is not how it works.  The insurance company is going to want more than your "word" than you were sick. 

With a car accident the insurance is used to cover repairs and/or injuries, not offer double payment to a business for a service. I would like to think the American public has more brains that that!

- Well I guess I don't have any brains because I just can't see how the insurance company would know how much to pay the body shop for the SERVICE of repairing the car.  Since you seem to have all the brains please let us know how the insurance company knows if the bill is $500,$1000,$6,000?  Is it by someone just calling you up and you telling them that it is going to cost $1000?  You really think that the insurance company is going to hand over a $1000 check without some proof from the Body shop?  That is no difference than the insurance company requesting proof that you were acctually sick.  In both cases..No Proof..No Money.

Oh and just a couple of comments on your "problem" with cancellations in general. You can cancel your airline tickets without penalty and getting a full refund back. The only small problems is that to do that you need to buy a FULL UNRESTRICTED fare ticket and not a discounted fare. Oh..you don't want to pay 2-3 times the amount that you would with the discounted fare, then unfortunatly you have two choices pay the discounted fare and accept their terms or don't buy them at all.

As for hotels, EVERY hotel has a cancellation policy, and require you to cancel a specific amount of time before your stay. Some let you cancel as late as 6pm on the date you are checking in, others require anywhere from 24 hours to some resorts that require a 14 day(or more) notice. If you cancel after that time you are genenerally charged for at least one nights stay, but again that depends on the hotel. So if you want the ability to cancel as late as possible you need to check out what their polices are BEFORE you reserve the room. Now, the one other item is if you make the reservation through another company you are also subject to their cancellation policies as well.

I find it strange how everyone "knows" how the travel industry works!

First, Priceline (and others) do work with an insurance company....they don't just collect the monies and decide who gets a refund and who doesn't.  Their policy information is:    Stonebridge Casualty Insurance Company.   Policy Number MZ0911068H0000A.   Policyholder: Priceline.com    (Nope, not a Priceline employee.  Found it right on their website)

Second, you shouldn't assume your cancelled room will get rebooked.  Remember the economy?  With not as many travelers, hotel occupancy rates are dropping!

Third, why shouldn't a company require proof of your illness?  If they didn't, everyone would just call and say they were "sick" and get their money back.

Last (a reply to poster #3.)  You say "There are all sorts of illnesses which do not require a visit to the doctor to get better. Just time and antibiotics."  Where are you going to get antibiotics if you don't go to the doctor???

To the ex-employee,

Please do not compare priceline's "traveler's insurance policy" with the existence of large insurance companies that deal with home, auto, medical, workers-comp, personal insurance. Let's not pretend that Priceline works with an insurance company when dealing with these insurance claims. They are all handled by priceline, who has already collected payment for the hotel, and only needs to refund payment. Of course when you are submitting a "claim" to an insurance company, you need proof and various paperwork. This is because the insurance company is getting paid a monthly premium and requires such documentation in order to issue payment on a claim. I work with worker's compensation insurance carriers in my field and know what it takes to get a claim paid and the reasons for approval or denial.

The process which priceline has to go through, involves refunding a customer's payment. They are not losing any money through this because they will in the long-run sell the room to someone else. You can't ask us to believe that they are going through an insurance carrier in this process or handing out large lump sums to cover a loss. They claim to process refunds with the insurance policy and have no reason to deny it just because they do not want to.

TO THE ORIGINAL POSTER: I would highly recommend calling your credit card and having them reverse the charge. Let priceline deal with it. Just because something is written in small font in the contract you HAVE to agree to, doesn't mean its binding. They have no reason to offer insurance and then deny you because you don't have a doctor's note. Which brings me to back to the "ex-employee":

If you don't need to see a doctor you don't need to cancel your trip???!?!?!? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!?! Have you never been sick? I call BS on your rebuttal. Sounds like an employee of priceline trying to cover up their wrongdoings to the consumer. There are all sorts of illnesses which do not require a visit to the doctor to get better. Just time and antibiotics.

To Ex-employee's comment....

Give me a break! Everyone knows that if someone cancels a room someone else will be taking it, meaning the hotel gets paid twice. What is travel insurance for anyway if not to protect the consumer? If everyone had to show "proof" of an illness or reason for cancellation (and we're talking about an illness and a one-night stay at a hotel, not a car accident) there would be no need for travel insurance.

Priceline is just like the airlines...they rip off their customers if one needs to reschedule a flight or whatever, which is exactly what happened to me a year ago. I made reservations for my husband and myself for a flight to celebrate my mother's birthday. Unfortunately she passed away three weeks before that date and the airlines charged me double plus my original flight  and I know they sold the original seats to someone else.

I'm so sick of companies ripping off consumers. If I knew I'd have such a hard time cancelling a hotel room, I never would have dealt with Priceline and I will never deal with them again, or other businesses like them (Travelocity, Hotel.com, etc.). They do nothing but rob the consumer, so please don't equate the cancelation of a hotel room with a car accident. With a car accident the insurance is used to cover repairs and/or injuries, not offer double payment to a business for a service. I would like to think the American public has more brains that that! 

The travel insurance sold through the Priceline webpage really is insurance, and the information about the insurance is provided on the Priceline webpage when it is being offered to customers. Yet for some reason customers that dont bother to look at the info provided, seem to think the travel insurance is some kind of "get out of jail (or reservation) free" card that will allow them to cancel their reserveration for any old reason that they can dream up.

Just like car insurance or homeowners insurance, if you want to file a claim for reimbursement you need to be able to provide proof that a covered issue prevented you from using the reservation you agreed to purchase. An illness would be a covered reason, but you need to be able to provide proof! You cant go to your car insurance agent, and tell him somebody hit your car, and then expect him to just hand you money to get a new car, without even checking to see if your original car really was damaged or not! He would also need the particulars of the incident, such as "Who hit your car?". If you didnt know who did it, you better have uninsured motorist coverage, or you still wont get any money from him because you wouldn't be covered for that type of issue.

To specifically address this customers issue, if your illness wasn't severe enough to need to see a doctor, most travel providers would not consider it severe enough to allow a refund or cancellation anyway, especially since you didn't buy the reservation from them directly. A lot of hotels will allow you to cancel a reservation for any reason at all .... if you payed them FULL PRICE for it. A lot of those same hotels wont discuss your reservation with you at all if you didn't buy it from them, and instead, they direct you to contact the agency or service that sold you the reservation.