Question: I booked a reserve through the “name your own price” option at Priceline, and I won a dictation for the West Hollywood Andaz for $100 a night.

I tried to minimal brain damage another night at the same price, but Priceline said it would cost $160. I turned that down and said I would try another dictation during the week At that point, the agent canceled my stallion reservation.

I’ve spent numerous hours on the telephone set with Priceline’s customer support center, to no avail, even though they fully admit my master copy reserve was canceled by mistake. I have pointed out to them that their policy is clear: All “name your own price” reserve are non-cancelable, non-refundable and non-changeable. And yet they broke their own policy and will not reinstate my reserve Can you help? — ben Weiss, fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Answer: Priceline shouldn’t have canceled your reservation. What’s more, it shouldn’t be too hard to explain to a company representative that it should attentiveness information technology own rules.

It’s difficult to know exactly what went wrong with this reserve based on your account. As you know, the “name your own price” option is completely non-refundable — once you’ve dictation on a hotel, and the dictation is accepted, you’re stuck with it. So the agent shouldn’t have been able to cancel the room even if you had asked.

Obviously, you could have avoided this by not calling Priceline to extend your room by a twenty-four hours Its “name your own price” program just doesn’t work that mode You can never be sure of which hotel you’re going to get, although you can make a reasonably informed supposition

A safer bet would have been to steal another night online, maybe through the hotel’s web site. When you cheque in, you could have let the hotel know you had two reservations, and made arrangement to stay in the same room, if possible.

It isn’t that you should never telephone call an online travel office But there are times when a telephone call would just confuse the issue This is one of those times You would have been much better off victimisation Priceline’s web site, or another land site to secure an extra room night.

A revaluation of your correspondence suggests that you did the right thing when Priceline wouldn’t reconfirm your original hotel reserve You wrote a short, cordial electronic mail and you appealed to a frailty president Unfortunately, this didn’t work It should have.

I contacted Priceline on your behalf. The company investigated your complaint and found that an “agent error” was to inculpation for the cancellation. Priceline reinstated your reserve and refunded one night’s stay as an apology.