Priceline Charged for hotel reservation that they changed check-in date Nationwide

My husband and son were traveling from San Diego to Indianapolis. My son got on Priceline.com to make hotel reservation when they were ready to stop for the night. However, because it was after midnight, Priceline.com changed the check-in date to the next day. As soon as my son received the confirmation on his phone, he tried calling Priceline and kept getting disconnected. This happened 4 times. He finally called the hotel directly (Ramada Palms De Las Cruces) and was told he needed to make the change with Priceline. However, again, he couldn't talk with anyone at Priceline because he kept getting disconnected when going through their system. So he sent me a text and said they were going ahead and stopping at the next hotel they came to and asked if I would call the next morning to cancel the Priceline reservation since I was in an earlier timezone. 

Even though it was @3:00 in the morning, I went ahead and tried to call Priceline to get this cancelled. I, too, kept getting disconnected but finally on the 4th try, was able to speak with someone. This person said he had to call the hotel to get an exception to allow us to cancel the reservation. When he got back on the phone, he said that Miss Shirley, the manager, wasn't in and that's who would need to approve the exception. He said that my son would get an email the next morning after they talked with Miss Shirley. I tried calling the hotel directly and was told that they couldn't do anything; any changes or cancellations needed to be made through Priceline. So hotel is telling me that change or cancellation needs to be made through Priceline and Priceline is telling me that they need to speak with hotel manager. There was nothing further we could do.

The next day my son received no communication from them so I called them again at @2:00 pm my time (12:00 noon in NM). Explained everything again about reservation being made for the wrong night because of it being after midnight when the reservation was made. Person I talked with again said she would call hotel to ask for exception to get refund. She got back on the phone and said she'd tried calling 4 times but Miss Shirley never answered. She would escalate and they would keep calling hotel; I gave her my number and requested that she contact me instead of my son since he was driving.

Three hours later, I had not received a call back. So I got online and held a Chat conversation with Priceline representative. She said my previous calls had been documented. She called the hotel and said she talked with Alfonso, the manager, and he would not allow an exception and refund our money. I told the Priceline representative that Priceline needed to make this right. Their system changed the check-in date because according to her, "For future reference, if it isalready after midnight, our website no longer provide the optionto check in the same day, thus it will automatically check you in attoday's date, 3 PM." I explained to her that I was very frustrated because we had done everything we could to immediately fix the error caused when Priceline's website automatically changed the check-in date but Priceline would do nothing to fix the problem.