They say on their site that they will "look" for nonstop flights first and then go to 1 stop after that.

I was on one Priceline site that showed 3 nonstop flights. Any of these flights would have worked fine for me. I then had the "name your own price" button curse.

I clicked it and was told to name my own price and that they would look for nonstop flights first and I could save up to 40 percent.

Not wanting to be greedy and having just been shown that there were 3 nonstop flights on their previous site, I bid just 10 dollars less on a flight from Richmond Virginia to New Jersey.

What a shock. What should have been a very short flight in the morning (all nonstops were morning flights) turned in to an evening flight with a significant layover right next door to Richmond in DC.

I called their customer service to ask who was searching for my nonstop flight?

They said sorry, nobody does. This was not just one agent, but three. And actually they didn't say sorry, they were very rude.

I was hung up on three times and spent over 5 hours on the phone with no satisfaction.

I guarantee you won't get to speak with an American or anyone that can follow a story more than 5 seconds long.

It's all Bangalore, India where they are taught to do one thing. "Just say NO".

They'll say you signed off on the contract and agreed to layovers. They don't care that they falsely advertise what they will do. I'll never use Priceline again and I won't use United either for partnering with such shady characters.

Virginia is supposed to have a 7 day right of cancellation no matter what, but Priceline doesn't honor such laws.

Steve Perry, swperry@liberty.edu