As a regular user of Priceline, I always check winning bids at Bidding for Travel before entering my own. This morning, however, the site seems to have disappeared. Somewhere on one of my computers, I have Sheryl's email address, but in the meantime I'm wondering if BFT is a done deal or if there's a temporary glitch. Anyone got any information on this?

I'm getting an error message too. I hope it's not gone! I love it.

The error seems to be with using "biddingfortravel.com" I suspect the URL isn't forwarding correctly.

Try this bookmark:
http://p070.ezboard.com/bpricelineandexpediabidding

I can get in. They are having technical difficulties. Meantime, look at betterbidding.com. A kinder, gentler place.

Better bidding may be kindler and gentler, but it's nowhere near as comprehensive. The alternate URL posted above seems to work. Hope Sheryl gets that problem taken care shortly. Thanks Dan.

I need a hotel for Portland was just looking at BFT yesterday!

I was wondering what the difference was btwn BFT and BetterBidding.com? - they looked very similar.

Enjoy-la!

BFT covers a far broader range of destinations and has many more up-to-date postings of successful bids. Any other site is a far distant second.

If you can get in there's a note saying the site was hacked last night. Dan's bookmark worked for me just now.

BiddingForTravel was the "original" Priceline bidding site and still gets more traffic than BetterBidding. So you are much more likely to find the info you need at BFT than BB. BB does offer both Hotwire and Priceline feedback, however, which BFT does not.

It amazes me that every time BFT has some sort of technical problem people immediately assume it must be gone. Sheesh, people, the internet isn't perfect! If you visit Google.com and something doesn't quite work do you assume Google is gone too? Be a little patient!

Someone evidently "hacked" BiddingForTravel last night and spammed using the BiddingForTravel Domain, resulting in their account being suspended by their domain host. They are working to straighten it out.

Someone "using" your domain to spam doesn't get your account suspended - this happens all the time and happens to me about every day. It's very easy to do and impossible to prevent. If their domain was hacked it was restored before you posted your message because it worked fine for me.

Is this the internet equivalent of having your house egged at Halloween because you are not nice to the neighborhood kids?

Andrew...I just paraphrased what Sheryl said under Administrator Announcements in her post at 9:08 this morning.

You can check it out: http://tinyurl.com/yc73mr

Andrew, instead of getting to their website by clicking on something in "My Favorites" or whatever, type www.biddingfortravel.com in your search cell to get there and you'll see what everyone is talking about. Big message: "This account has been suspended". She just filled in the details.

I visited BFT numerous times through the day (by typing it into my address bar - I don't have it bookmarked) and I never saw the message. Do you have Comcast? I think it's a domain name thing - sometimes the DNS record takes time to propogate through the net, and I've seen Comcast take especially long, probably some other providers too...

I'd be switching domain registars ASAP to be shut down just because someone spoofed my domain! It's incredibly common. Any registar worth its salt should verify that the spam really is originating from its alleged source before shutting down a domain!!!

A cruise website I frequent also gets hacked every so often and they write notes like "hacked by xxxxx". I thought doing those sorts of things were illegal but I guess it's hard to catch the person(s).

Not Comcast, no. I have it bookmarked and could get to it all day that way with no problem. It was only when people here started and continued to talk about not being able to get in that I tried typing into my address bar, then it came up with the message, in big letters, something to the effect of "Account suspended" blah blah. And that continued all day until this morning. Did you read Sheryl's note in Admin Announcements?

I believe what happened is that BFT's domain registar suspended the domain by changing the name servers (DNS) to point to a "SUSPENDED" page. When the registar changed it back, it took a while for some ISPs to re-cache the DNS change. That's why whenever I visited BFT throughout the day I never saw this "suspended" page (I never did see it) because my ISP's cache of DNS changes is quick. Yours must not be.

Comcast for example can take days for its DNS cache to pick up changes. I've seen this when changing web hosts. For a while you have both an old and a new host serving up your website. After you change the DNS, you see that most people pretty quickly get the change and hits to your old site drop off. I noticed hits from Comcast.net for several days after making the changes. Caching is a way to minimize traffic to DNS servers, but if it takes too long to update it can be annoying.

BiddingForTravel's website is not really "hosted" anywhere directly - it's a domain that redirects immediately to ezboard.com as you've probably noticed.

Now you guys had to go getting me all excited that Sheryl had at last met her demise. Don't do that!

Boycott BFT. It sux. Use betterbidding.com.

LOL! BiddingForTravel doesn't suck - it has much more traffic than BB due to being the original Priceline bidding site. BFT merely has a very strict owner/moderator who tends to ruffle people's feathers now and then. The truth is, I wouldn't be able to save as much money if I relied on BB because it doesn't have nearly as much info as BFT.