It is often said that cancelling a Priceline reservation is impossible. In general, this is absolutely true. When using Name Your Own Price, reservations are final and cannot be changed or cancelled. Priceline actually does a pretty good of notifying customers before they purchase, and despite this, I hear dozens of complaints per year against Priceline because customers are not allowed to cancel or change their reservation.
Recently, however, I have learned that cancelling a Priceline reservation is possible in some very rare instances. This is according to the website Schmidt Happens, a blog written by a former Priceline customer service representative. [Note to reader: In the Schmidt Happens blog, the author actually goes so far as to suggest you fake an excuse to get out of a Priceline reservation. HotelDealsRevealed.com does not condone this, and quite honestly, this technique is pretty low and immoral. The purpose of this article is to inform travellers in dire circumstances to cancel their reservation]
Cancelling A Priceline Flight: Using Name Your Own Price, you can cancel your reservation within 24 hours if you entered the wrong name. There is a small fee of around $8 for the cancellation. The exception airlines are: Jet Blue, Spirit, ExpressJet, and Air Tran. If after 24 hours, you can cancel if you cancel due to miscarriage or a missing child.
Cancelling A Priceline Hotel Reservation: Priceline will let you cancel due to the death of a loved one. According to Schmidt, they will ask for the name and number of the funeral home but they typically do not call to validate the death.
Rental Car Cancellations: If you’ve booked a rental car, you can cancel if you made meant to reserve a car with a different pick up and drop off location.
Quite honestly, if you are using Priceline you should not make your reservation expecting to have to cancel, and you should attempt to avoid the need to cancel. The best way to mitigate your risk is to use the Priceline hotel lists before booking your hotel. This lists will help you reveal your hotel or, at least, give you some expectation of the types and calibre of hotel you’ll get.