Priceline.com

Have you ever made travel reservations through priceline? It's relatively convenient, right? You know what else is convenient? Open-heart surgery. My wife made a reservation through priceline to stay at a hotel for one night this Saturday. Subsequently, she found a nicer hotel and wanted to cancel the priceline reservation. Being a wonderful husband (and a complete idiot), I offered to take care of this problem for her, especially because she bought the $5 "Travel Insurance" that priceline offers. Have you ever tried to change or cancel a reservation made through priceline? I would rather give myself a colonoscopy than have to deal with these people again. I'll summarize the process because it makes no sense to me:

1) When you make a priceline reservation online, you get a confirmation email. In the email, you are given your 11-digit "Request Number", and a phone number to call if you want to speak with a customer service representative. So, I called the toll-free number. The recording gives you two options: press 1 to enter your Request Number; press 2 to enter the seventh circle of hell. After pressing 1, I entered the Request Number. "We're sorry, but we do not recognize that number. Please try again." WHAT? You sent me the number in the first place! How could you not recognize it; you generated it! Do you think I made it up? Are there people out there with nothing better to do than randomly guess at 11-digit Request Numbers in the hope that they might stumble on to someone else's luxury priceline reservation that they can fuck with? The email should say, "here is a toll-free number you can call if you want to get dicked around for an hour and end up completely pissed off because your credit card was already charged, moron."

2) After attemtping to enter the Request Number the fifth time, I hung up and went to priceline.com to look for answers. I was able to find a different toll-free number to call. I got excited as I was dialing, and then realized that the number fed into the same worthless automated system as the first number. Glad you people spent the money to set up a website that was so helpful. Maybe next time you could use some of that cash and hire people with it.

3) Through what I can only describe as a combination of divine intervention and sheer willpower, I actually managed to find the one telephone option that said it would direct me to an operator. After entering my wife's phone number, date of travel, city of travel, birthdate, maiden name, hair color, credit card used for the reservation, preferred pizza toppings, and dental records, I was put in the "queue". Fuck off. How about you say "line" like everyone else from the country I'm calling from. Calling it a "queue" in no way disguises how ghetto your customer service line truly is.

4) When Derrick actually answered the phone, I started crying. The conversation went like this:

Derrick: May I help you sir?
Me: I sincerely doubt it.
Derrick: Let me try.
Me: Can you tell me what "Travel Insurance" covers?
Derrick: We offer Travel Insurance?
Me: Let me ask you something. Does priceline have any living employees?
Derrick: Huh? Look, let me do some checking. (Ten minutes later...) You have to call the insurance company directly and file a claim with them.
Me: Of course I do. Thanks for everything. Really.

What's nice about all of this is that priceline has really gone out of their way to make travel even more agonizing than it already was. In addition to not having food on the plane, being charged for brining luggage and not being able to travel with more than a tablespoon of shaving cream... it's comforting to know that the average traveler can get shat on (obligatory William Shatner reference) in ways they never imagined.