Follow up to my www.booking.com (represented by Priceline in the US) complaint;

First my complaint:
On a personal note.. when booking hotels online, stay away from anything offered through www.booking.com. We were going to go to Savannah last Friday (Nov 21st) to follow our child's football team engaged in a playoff game, and on last Wednesday decided to make a weekend of it so our daughter could enjoy seeing Savannah. We had stayed at the Marriott Riverfront on other occasions so we went to travago.com and sought out accommodations there. The only "booking" opportunity was through www.bookings.com . It's rates for the Marriott were considerably higher than other areas hotels, but bit the bullet and booked anyway. We got there on Friday and checked in.. the 2-bed room we booked wasn't there, but the effervescent clerk quickly upgraded us to a "Jr Suite" with a sofa bed. Went upstairs, and while a nice room, the sofa bed was not very comfortable, so I went back online to check out current state of rooms available at www.booking.com. I was shocked to see the 2-bed room I wanted was still available.. but.. at less than half of what I was charged 2 days earlier. Called www.booking.com and asked representative Carmen about this as the website "guarantees the lowest available rates". She looked it up and apologized but said she was not authorized to make such a large adjustment, and would talk with her supervisor. Here it is, 5 days later, and no word from www.booking.com. I've sent two follow up e-mails, but have gotten no response. I want y'all to know about www.booking.com not being a good site to use.

Secondly: www.booking.com response:


Dear Hal,

Thank you for contacting the Booking.com Customer Service team.

In response to your inquiry regarding our "Best Price Guarantee," we are sorry to inform you that your claim at Savannah Marriott Riverfront was unsuccessful.

Per Booking.com Best Price Guarantee, all Best Price Guarantee claims must be made while your booking will allow free modification/cancellation. Unfortunately, when you contacted Booking.com, your booking was outside of free modification/cancellation policy (Booking.com was contacted 2014-11-21 1800 hours). Please reference your email confirmation to confirm free modification/cancellation ended at November 19, 2014 11:59 PM [Savannah].

Therefore, Booking.com’s Best Price Guarantee does not apply in this particular case.

For your reference, we are including a link to the Booking.com Terms and Conditions of the Best Price Guarantee. We hope that this helps you to understand our decision:

http://www.booking.com/general.html?tmpl=doc/rate_guarantee

However, due to the delay in getting back to you, I am willing to offer you 25% of the difference, or $39.92.

To provide you with this refund as quickly as possible, we recommend the refund be made by credit/debit card.
This refund can only be processed to cards with the Visa or MasterCard logo.

If you accept this refund method, you will receive an email from customer.care@booking.com which contains a secure link. This link allows you to enter your credit or debit card information. The email will be sent to: gagolfer@aol.com.

Please reply to this email by 11-30-2014 to confirm you accept the credit card refund option as described above.

Once again, I would like to apologize for any inconvenience this situation has caused.

If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

--
Kristen Gladney
Customer Relations Associate
Direct line: 616-254-3656
Booking.com Customer Service Team
Fax : +44 208 612 8005 (Cambridge, UK)
Fax : +31(0) 207 153 073 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

My response to this:

Good morning.. first off, your math is flawed... there was a $250.00 difference in the price you charged than later changed on your site. Secondly, you promised me a room with two beds which the Marriott Savannah failed to keep my contract.

Thirdly.. I'm not interested in a partial settlement as you offer. I'm going to have fun posting my complainnt and your much delayed response on my "Breakfast Club" blogsite (38,000 worldwide viewers) and all over FaceBook.

Good people need to know who they are dealing with when www.booking.com/priceline is involved.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend .. Turkey!

Hal Kirven

The Breakfast Club

Now.. back to the daily grind:

Online story: "Demonstrators temporarily shut down two large malls in suburban St. Louis as rallies were held nationwide to protest a grand jury's recent decision not to indict the police officer in nearby Ferguson, MO. * at least 200 protesters sprawled onto the floor while chanting, "Stop shopping and join the movement" at the Galleria mall" -- You know, if I was still in the retail business, and 200 people laid on the floor to block traffic at opening, I think I'd give the protestors something to think about. I think I'd have placed 2 or 3 70" TVs in the middle of them, taken a bull horn and announced that for the next few minutes, anyone who could get to those TV's and carry them out of the protestor "circle" could have them for FREE. Then I'd anonymously call 911 and report a massacre.

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Online story: "Hundreds of thousands of prisoners are filing phony tax refund claims and the IRS is not doing enough to quash the problem, according to a watchdog report." -- Excuse me, but wouldn't making sure prisoners didn't have access to computers in jail, and monitoring all mail sent out having only "letters" in them sorta solve MOST of the problems? In addition, all prisoners' Social Security Numbers should be in an IRS registry for comparison.

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Oh.. on the above problem.. where are W-2 and 1099 forms coming from?

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Online story: "Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, criticized President Barack Obama over the 2010 health care overhaul. Schumer said the party should have focused on helping more of the middle class than the uninsured, whom he called “a small percentage of the electorate." -- "a small percentage of the electorate"? Didn't Romney get crucified after the release of an illegal video of him writing off the same people Schumer just publicly threw under the bus?

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Online headline: "White House receives official Christmas tree * The 20-foot white fir was hauled up the driveway to the North Portico for inspection on Friday morning." -- mHmmm.. wanna bet the Secret Service shook it out to see if any "fence jumpers" were in it?

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Online story: "Illegal immigrants who apply for work permits in the U.S. under President Obama’s new executive actions will be eligible for Social Security and Medicare, the White House says." -- The Mexican government could bankrupt America by busing all its senior citizens to the border and turn them loose!

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Online story: "Last July, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and thousands of AFT convention delegates joined members of the American Postal Workers Union and other community members in a rally telling the United States Postal Service and the Staples corporation that the “U.S. Mail Is Not for Sale.” They demanded an end to the United States Postal Service’s plan to let Staples employees operate postal counters inside 1,500 stores, ultimately putting 80,000 postal service jobs in jeopardy." -- Good grief.. the US Postal Service recognizes it has a better chance to save its business against other shippers by reaching out to businesses where they shop, and the AFT would just as soon shut down even more Postal jobs.

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Online story: "American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the United States, passed a resolution last week to ban Coca-Cola from its facilities and events. * The teachers union stated its decision was based on human rights violations" -- Wow.. the AFT is a busy group, and has zero interest for teachers it claims to represent. Hey, teachers, isn't this nice to know... you know, how your dues money is being spent so focused on your needs?

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Online story: "Officials at Magpul Industries, firearms-accessories manufacturer, unveiled Wednesday its new facilities in Texas and Wyoming, making good on a vow to leave Colorado in response to the state’s sweeping gun control legislation. * Magpul was the largest and most prestigious firearms company to announce it would leave Colorado after Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed three gun control bills in March 2013. * 200 direct and 400 supplier jobs were "lost"." -- And let's not forget their families. In effect.. 600 hundred families took their paychecks, and numerous "businesses" did likewise, and became taxpayers in other states.

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Online story: "On Tuesday night, Cornell Brooks, president of the NAACP, appeared on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront to discuss the shooting death of Michael Brown and dismissed calls for violence by a member of Michael Brown’s immediate family as inciting violence. Burnett played video of Brown’s stepfather, Louis Head, telling a crowd of protestors to “burn this bi*** down” after the grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson and asked Brooks if “that served as a call for violence?” Rather than condemn Brown’s stepfather’s highly charged rhetoric, the president of the NAACP proclaimed “I don't think that was a call for violence or it caused violence.” -- Good grief.. Obamageddon and Hillewinsky tried to blame Benghazi on a video, and the National NAACP president poo-poos such video as being inciting in nature.

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One final tidbit on Michael Brown.. his "thc" level was TWICE the level of being intoxicated. The man was 6'4" and weighed nearly 300 pounds.. Can you even guess at the amount of marijuana, illegal I might add, that he had to ingest to achieve that level?

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Online story: "Nineteen year-old TK Hancock was a sophomore at the University of Memphis and a new father. He was shot, execution style, while sitting in his car outside of the library. Hancock was not shot as part of a violent altercation on his part and it was not gang related. He was murdered, shot several times in the head and neck, in cold blood, for his cell phone. It’s possible he was targeted because the girl he was dating was also seeing one of the people who ultimately killed him. * His killers were not white. * They were black, just like him. " -- Where was Obamageddon? Where was Holder? Where were Jackson & Sharpton?

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I know Mizzou is still an SEC newbie, so I It has a learning curve for learning about uniform propriety, but Arkansas has been a member for a while. Between the two, the game qualified as the worst dressed of the year..at least do far..Mizzou, in all black -helmet/pants/jersey- and Arkansas, in all red -helmet/pants/jersey- looked like two commercial league women's slow-pitch softball teams.

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Do you reckon because he's working towards closing GITMO, that Obamageddon is not taking new prisoners to send there for interrogation so our intelligence info is suffering?

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You know.. I wonder how the CFO at St Francis filled out the IRS forms and got board approval to submit them without noticing a $30,000,000.00 "accounting error".

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You know.. with what has happened at St Francis, with some juggling of IT personnel between the MCSD and the City, there needs to be immediate and in-depth audits of the MCSD and the City finances.

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L-E "shooting" headlines/stories in today's editions:

1 - "A young Columbus woman was shot during a Baker Plaza Drive home invasion Thanksgiving night, Columbus police report."

2 - "A Steam Mill Road man told Columbus police an unidentified man shot him late Thanksgiving night on Harvest Drive."

3 - "Gunmen rob clerk, south Columbus store on Thanksgiving"

4 - "Columbus man reports robbery outside Buena Vista Road store"

5 - "Columbus police: Three men rob 13th Avenue Lucky Food Mart"

6 - "Columbus police: Man shot in neck at Victory Drive and 30th Avenue"

7 - "Columbus police have issued warrants for an armed robbery suspect after a man demanded money from a Kap's 777 gas station on Fort Benning Road"

--- Hmmm.. Before there was Black Friday.. there was black Wednesday/Thursday. C'mon, Columbus, we can do better that this!

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L-E headline: "Michael Brown’s legacy continues to evolve" -- "continues to evolve"? Evolve is what Obamageddon's lies do...

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There will be lots of fireworks and possibilities in the SEC West today... the Mississippi State Bulldogs tackle the Ole Miss Black Bears (still hard to get out with out giggling). If State wins, it adds a bit of drama for the Iron Bowl later on.. Alabama must then beat Auburn to win the SEC West title and move on to Atlanta against Mizzou. HAIL STATE!

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In a way, Mississippi State can destroy "The Grove" at Ole Miss today... if State buries the Black Bears for their 4th straight SEC defeat, changing the name to "The Grave" will be about right.