Newsgroup: it.hobby.viaggi
Titolo: Priceline.com AIUTATEMI!!

Ho letto su vecchi messaggi che alcuni di Voi sono stati negli USA
utilizzando 
priceline.com
 per prenotare gli hotel a prezzi bassi, così ho
provato ad entrarci ed a registrarmi però non riesco a farlo perché quando
arrivo ad inserire i dati della carta di credito non mi permette di essere
residente fuori degli States.
Potete aiutarmi? Chi ha prenotato con loro come ha fatto?
Aiutatemi vi prego!


wrote:

copio ed incollo da altro NG:
Non-U.S. Resident FAQ 
Q1: Can I use Priceline if I am not a US resident and do not live in
the USA?
A1: In a word: Yes. There is currently no reference in Priceline's
Terms & Conditions to your citizenship or to the place you live;
however, Priceline does reserve the right to modify or change their
Terms & Conditions at any time. Stated in there under the "acceptable
use" heading is that Priceline is for "personal" use only (i.e. not
commercial or business use) and that you need a "major credit card" to
guarantee your offer. For more details on Priceline's terms and
conditions, see
http://www.priceline.com/travel/airlines/lang/en-us/InfoCtr/termsnconditions.asp
However, it may be advisable to check if there is a local version of
Priceline in your country. So far there is a UK-site, and other
European countries are said to follow some time later this year, with
Germany being one of the next countries according to Priceline.
Q2: When I try to submit my offer, I am required to give my credit
card's billing address. Some parts of my foreign address do not match
the fields, however. How can I go on?
A2: In very simple words: Make your foreign address look like a US
one. The address you give there will usually not be needed at all,
since Priceline stopped sending out confirmations by regular mail last
year. It is just asked for the unlikely case that there will be any
problems with your reservation, in which case Priceline will try to
contact you by all possible means, if necessary including regular
mail. Therefore, though, this address should be as correct as
possible. In my experience, usually three fields are problematic for
foreign addresses: The "state" field, the phone number and the missing
country field. People from countries like the UK and Canada that have
alpha-numeric ZIP-codes may also encounter problems with that field as
well. A German address usually looks like this:
First and Last Name: Thomas Mustermann
Street Address: Musterweg 1
Zip and City: 12345 Musterstadt
Country: Germany
Phone: 04711-123456
The name and street address can obviously be used without any
transformation, as well as the ZIP code. In the City field on
Priceline's submit page, I recommend entering the city as above, and
in the absence of a country field, add your country in CAPITAL letters
to that. The state is dropdown-field only, so entering "useful"
information there is slightly more tricky. You have to know that the
addresses Priceline stores are only made up from the two-letter
abbreviation of the state, so e.g. Delaware transforms to "DE" and
California to "CA" in what they store. Coincidentally, "DE" is also
the international two-letter code for Germany, as is "CA" for Canada.
So if possible, choose the state whose abbreviation is equal to your
country's two-letter code. If you cannot find an appropriate state,
choose the closest match. You may have to adapt your phone number also
as in some countries these numbers are made up in a different scheme
than in the USA and sometimes consist of more or less than 10 digits.
If your number does, make sure it fits that ten digits, and either
drop or add digits. Filling the fields on Priceline's submit page with
the data from the sample address above, it looks something like this:
First Name: Thomas
Last name: Mustermann
Billing address: Musterweg 1
Zip: 12345
State: Delaware
City: Musterstadt GERMANY
Phone: 471-112-3456
Q3: When I rent a car through Priceline, is there anything special I
have to look out for?
A3: Most important: Check your insurance! You will need both extended
liability protection (rental cars in the USA are only insured up to
the legal minimum, which can be ridiculously low compared to European
standards) and coverage for damage or loss of the rental car. If you
cannot obtain these coverages through your credit-card or any other
means (which both can be very difficult in Europe), try to find a
different way to rent a car. Buying the additional coverage from the
rental-car company will eliminate any savings you may have and cost
you as much as 30$ a day, independent of car-size! For Germany, the
only credit card I know of offering loss and damage coverage for
rental cars is the "Lufthansa Miles and More Visacard Gold", and the
only place I know where you can buy extended liability coverage at a
reasonable price here is the local ADAC-office (you may want to check
any other automobile club like ACE as well).
Q4: I had some trouble with the hotel/airline/rental car. Will my
money be lost because Priceline does not refund to people outside the
USA?
A4: Again in a word: No. They simply make no difference where you
live. Keeping in mind that purchases through Priceline are
non-refundable/non-cancellable/non-changeable, there have been some
instances where the product/service was misrepresented. I twice had a
problem with my hotel (once a misrating of a still acceptable hotel,
the second time a dump place where I did not stay), and in both cases
I got a refund of my money from Priceline, partially the first time as
I stayed all my nights there and full in the second case because I
moved out after seeing the disastrous state the rooms were in. In the
first case, I even got some Amex-Giftcheques, that time the way of
Priceline to say "sorry" mailed to my German address.
Hopefully this small list will help all those who want to use
Priceline from "the outside" of the USA, ease most of your concerns
you may have and gets you on the way to become Priceline-addicted as
much as I am...;-)!
Just some statistics about my use, in case anybody is interested and
continued to read until here: So far I have reserved about 200 room
nights, about 20 airline tickets and 15 rental car days through
Priceline for us and friends, and in addition to the fact that my wife
and I got slightly spoiled by the hotels we got ("Hey, this time we
only got a Hilton..."), we saved about half of our planned hotel
expenses on average.
So I can only recommend to try your luck with Priceline, and please
come back to this board to ask any questions you may have! If you have
specific questions about using Priceline from abroad that are not
addressed in here, just eMail me. It can take me a while to respond,
but I definitely will. My current email address is stored in my
profile, which you can access by clicking on my username "djohannw" on
the topic entitled "Orlando Hotel List" in the Orlando category in the
Hotels section of this board.
We have had reports that Priceline will not accept a Visa or
Mastercard from a non-U.S. bidder, but they will accept an American
Express card. 
The FAQ says that MasterCard doesn't work from Canada- but it did for
me. I followed the Foreign FAQ instructions and used "California" (for
CA) from the drop down menu at the credit card stage and the city with
no province. I also use "99999" as the zip code, which is what US
stores sometimes do when they need to have one. I paid with MasterCard
and it was accepted. The zip code 11111 didn't work, nor did the
Canadian code, nor did "city, province" for "city" since commas are
not allowed. 
best, 
Jiminy