Priceline Hit With Unreturned Fees Class Action Lawsuit

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The Priceline Group Inc.—owner of the popular travel booking website priceline.com— faces a potential class action lawsuit that alleges the company collects “taxes and fees” for reservations but does not return those fees to customers in the event that the reservations are not used.

Priceline customers can reserve hotel rooms, airfare, rental vehicles, vacation packages, and cruises.  In particular, the Priceline unreturned fee class action lawsuit notes the “Name Your Own Price” feature of the website, which allows users to make an offer on a item, such as a hotel room, which Priceline then submits to various companies in the location chosen by the consumer. If accepted by one of those companies, Priceline charges the consumer that price, as well as “taxes and fees.”

“Priceline Group, in charging ‘taxes and fees’ for a rental or purchase transactions that did not complete, violated various local, state and federal laws regarding the charge and collection of taxes,” according to the Priceline class action lawsuit.

Plaintiff Richard Laquer asserts that he reserved a rental car in San Francisco through the Priceline “Name Your Own Price” feature. He named a price of $35, which was accepted, and he was charged an additional $19.05 for “taxes and fees” by Priceline. Laquer claims that he did not use that reservation, and the charges were not returned to him, even though the $19.05 was never used to pay taxes on the incomplete sale.

The Priceline class action lawsuit argues that when the company charges taxes and fees, Priceline is telling customers that those fees are necessary for the transaction to be completed.

However, “Priceline Group knew when these representations were made, or made them as a positive assertion recklessly, that it would not pay the ‘taxes and fees’ it collected from plaintiff and the putative class members to the various federal, state and local taxing authorities in the event the rental or purchase was not completed,” according to the unreturned fee class action.

This is not the only class action lawsuit Priceline faces regarding its “Name Your Own Price” feature. In July of 2015, a class action was filed alleging that Priceline intentionally hides fees from consumers, making the true price more than the consumer is willing to pay.  The allegations of that class action lawsuit, specifically about hidden resort fees, are separate from this complaint.

The Priceline unreturned fees class action lawsuit seeks to represent a class of “thousands of customers of Priceline Group who reserved and paid for motor vehicles, hotels or air travel online through the Name Your Price option – and other nonrefundable reservation options – and did not use the reservation.”

Laquer asks for restitution “in an amount greater than $5 million” for all the taxes and fees collected by Priceline for unused reservations, as well as punitive damages in excess of $75,000.

The plaintiff is represented by Larry A. Tawwater and Darren M. Tawwater of the Tawwater Law Firm, PLLC.

The Priceline Unreturned Fees Class Action Lawsuit is Richard Laquer v. The Priceline Group, Inc., Case No. CIV-16-15-HE, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.

UPDATE: On Aug. 26, 2016, Priceline filed a motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit stating that the taxes and fees are clearly represented as nonrefundable to customers at the time they make the reservation.

UPDATE 2: On Sept. 19, 2016, Laquer argued that he should have standing in this class action lawsuit because he is not seeking to enforce the tax on Priceline, only to obtain a refund for taxes Priceline did not pay to the government.