Reply
Thu 8 Sep, 2005 05:34 pm
Anyone use travelocity or priceline etc etc etc?? Can you tell me a good one? Anyone with advice? Any problems ? I know they have websites, but I want to hear from REAL LIFE customers that use them before. Thanks
I've pretty much only used Orbitz and Expedia and never had any problems probably like 20+ transactions total.
Re: Anyone use this before?
chris56789 wrote:Anyone use travelocity or priceline etc etc etc?? Can you tell me a good one? Anyone with advice? Any problems ? I know they have websites, but I want to hear from REAL LIFE customers that use them before. Thanks
i've used most of them, but most of the time i use Expedia. are you just buying plane tickets, or are you also reserving hotels & car rentals? you get decent prices on Expedia, but you may be able to get better prices if you go to the websites of the airline, hotel, or car rental. one problem i've had with Expedia is their refund policy; if you want to change your itinerary after you've made a purchase, it may cost you a substantial amount, even if it's because an airline changed the scheduled time of your flight by hours.
I'm negative on travelocity. I haven't used any for sometime, but I recall they had a really punitive cancellation policy. I'm thinking it involved hotels more than airlines, but this is something you need to check out and compare.
Also, I had a bad experience involving Budget on car rentals. My best recollection has the problem being a matter of starting and ending a day based on the midnight, rather than your pickup and return times. I did not encounter this with Dollar.
Both are glitches you might consider a fair deal if you know ahead of time. Ambushes are not nice.
I too use Expedia and Orbitz often (well, often for me).
I think priceline could work once in a while, but I've not gone there since once you bid (or whatever, I don't quite remember the procedure) you are hooked in to it, and I like more control.
I don't know anything about travelocity.
On car rental, I've used Enterprise and Hertz, mainly because they've been near me when I've needed them. Have had aggravation with both. Was recently quite pleased with the helpfulness of a fellow at the Hertz place at my old home town of Venice, California - any ad would call it Marina del Rey, but I know better - he worked to get me the best deal, all the time with a heavily bandaged hand, and it was a way better deal than they offered at Enterprise up the street.
I ended up having the car for four days, I liked it a lot, no problems.
One word of caution - both my xbusiness partner and I have despised Chevy Malibu rentals. I will never never never drive one again. I can't remember our reasons now, but I remember the anger.
roger wrote:I'm negative on travelocity. I haven't used any for sometime, but I recall they had a really punitive cancellation policy. I'm thinking it involved hotels more than airlines, but this is something you need to check out and compare.
Also, I had a bad experience involving Budget on car rentals. My best recollection has the problem being a matter of starting and ending a day based on the midnight, rather than your pickup and return times. I did not encounter this with Dollar.
Both are glitches you might consider a fair deal if you know ahead of time. Ambushes are not nice.
Why is travelocity a negative?
I admit to attraction, as I was walking down Lincoln Blvd. in Venice, to a non-chain rental place that featured Morris Minors. Luckily it was closed because I could guess it was expensive... it was sucking me in by the eyeballs as it was.
Oh, and Chris, it is important - I think - to choose to refill the tank before bringing the car back. This saves a lot of dollars on gasoline. But.... only if you do remember to refill it. Even me, memory deficited, always remembers to refill it just before bringing it back.
Once, fairly recently, I was driving from San Francisco to Eureka, and I was doing well on timing, it seemed, to get the car back - I think it was Enterprise that time. A tree fell on the highway not too far in front of me, and (happily not hurt) a lineup of cars waited and waited for the road to be cleared.
I called the rental place by cellphone and they told me they'd give me grace time. That may have just been that one person, or perhaps a company policy, but I appreciated it. As it turned out, I arrived not much later than the deadline time..
ossobuco wrote:Oh, and Chris, it is important - I think - to choose to refill the tank before bringing the car back. This saves a lot of dollars on gasoline. But.... only if you do remember to refill it. Even me, memory deficited, always remembers to refill it just before bringing it back.
Once, fairly recently, I was driving from San Francisco to Eureka, and I was doing well on timing, it seemed, to get the car back - I think it was Enterprise that time. A tree fell on the highway not too far in front of me, and (happily not hurt) a lineup of cars waited and waited for the road to be cleared.
I called the rental place by cellphone and they told me they'd give me grace time. That may have just been that one person, or perhaps a company policy, but I appreciated it. As it turned out, I arrived not much later than the deadline time..
Tell me about San francisco. I want to go there. Is the richmond, sunset, haight, and golden gate park good areas for hotels? I don't plan to go to the busy north part of S.F.
roger wrote:I'm negative on travelocity. I haven't used any for sometime, but I recall they had a really punitive cancellation policy. I'm thinking it involved hotels more than airlines, but this is something you need to check out and compare.
Don't they all have punitive canellation policies because I can imagine it must be bad for them when someone cancels. I heard expedia is negative, too. Oh well, I'll try read more reviews.
roger wrote:
Also, I had a bad experience involving Budget on car rentals. My best recollection has the problem being a matter of starting and ending a day based on the midnight, rather than your pickup and return times. I did not encounter this with Dollar.
Both are glitches you might consider a fair deal if you know ahead of time. Ambushes are not nice.
Oh yah, good idea. Thanks.
I love San Francisco. I've had a few tough personal experiences there, not related to the city itself, and still love it. We had an a2k get together there a couple of years ago, which those of us who were there remember fondly.
On areas - remember, I haven't lived there, I speak as a multiple visitor, with friends there and surrounding area.
So, specifics. My car broke down at the intersection of 19th avenue and I think the street is called ocean. Major intersection. Talk about adrenalin reaction. That's a long story I think I've told on a2k before. However, what matters to you is... that I looked for a hotel around there fast, since I have a night-vision problem, and the only local place was over a hair and nails salon and I decided instead to call a place a friend who has an elevator company had mentioned as a renovated old hotel, in downtown, the Galleria Palace, or a name similar to that. I ended up staying there, as I had not time to fool around, because of my eye thing. It was fine, but something like 107 a night and that was a few years ago.
At the a2k meeting, I got a deal, from either expedia or orbitz, for hotel and flight, and spent something like $400 for both flight and four days of hotel, and stayed at the Adagio on Geary, which I very much liked. I could not recoomend it more. Other a2kers stayed at the Kings Inn, on Mason.
So, hint for you, look at a combo of flight and hotel on those sites, as my hotel deal was extremely good - if you consider the usual air flight price, it came to near nothing a night.
Later in 2004, I stayed at a hotel not too far from Fort Mason. I'm not sure if that hotel counted as being in the Richmond district or not. Probably not, and I don't recommend that hotel.
There may be pros and cons re the Richmond district that I don't know, but I sort of liked it.
I don't remember where the Sunset district is.
Golden Gate Park, lots of people live near the park, what can I say. I am not sure which if any are addresses to avoid. A pal lives close, neighborhood's fine. The Haight, I don't know.
The area everybody says to avoid is the Tenderloin, but us a2kers stayed at the edge of it with no problem. Look up the Tenderloin on google and you can find a map.
I remember from our previous thread on this, that it is hard to link the map.
I'll try to find the links to our threads on the a2k meeting. Be warned, they are long.
Ah, I am remembering.. parking the car costs a lot.
As others have asked, are you so sure you want a car in SF?
They are right, it is much more of a pain than you might imagine. If you want to rent a car, do it before or after SF.
Thus, you save money if you don't rent a car. Stay in the city (see hotels.com). Take buses, or once in a while a cab.
These are the two San Francisco-a2k threads. They will seem to go on forever and ever, but there's lots of info in the pages. The first one goes off on bridges for a while, but those are interesting too.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6079&highlight=san+francisco+a2k
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19053&highlight=san+francisco+a2k
ossobuco wrote:Ah, I am remembering.. parking the car costs a lot.
As others have asked, are you so sure you want a car in SF?
They are right, it is much more of a pain than you might imagine. If you want to rent a car, do it before or after SF.
They do have parking though, as long as you pay right? And you didn't have a parking space at the hotel? Where did you park?
I have been to SF many times. The time my car broke down, it stayed at a Chevron station for the weekend.
Other times, I've stayed with friends in areas near the city - not at all within walking distance - but not in it, say, in Woodside on the peninsula, and left my car there, or Berkeley, or Napa, or Larkspur.
For the a2k meeting, and many other times, I flew. Parking can be 20 - 25.00 a night. Really, forget the car while you are in the city, you will be more free.
When my business partner and I went on buying trips, for example to Oakland's Au Pottery, we stayed overnight at a Days Inn in Rohnert Park, and drove to the city and back witihin a day.
Finding a parking place is difficult and expensive. I am even more pushed by it because I don't dark-adapt normally and can't park in most parking garages, and, ha, cannot afford valets.
My and perhaps other's view would be to turn in your rental car at some likely suburb, and take Bart into the city.
Even for me, a seasoned California freeway driver, it is restful to get off of the main highways around SF. Even consider dumping the car near Emeryville or Martinez, which I think are amtrak stops and probably have plenty of public transportation available.
Well, with luck, some SF locals will pipe in with more help for you.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace