Discount internet shopping

* When I shop online, old predigital images keep getting in the way.

Travelwise, I'm feeling pretty cocky these days Flew round-trip on United from Washington to Los Angeles in October for $286. Last summer I did even better: a $198 D.C.-L.A. round-trip on discount airline Southwest.

Now I'm playing for Master's Points: A D.C.-LA. flight on the heavily traveled Sunday after Thanksgiving, with a return on the Saturday before Christmas. This is for my son, James, the college student.

Off I go. I call United. It's asking $597.50. Southwest wants $500. I'm thinking that this is a lot to spend on a college kid.

I suppress the urge to suggest that James go surfing during Christmas break and decide instead to try Priceline.com, the new service on the Web that says you can name your own price for an airline ticket (or a hotel room). If an airline agrees to your price, you win. With my moxie, I'm sure to get a great deal.

I find Priceline.com and begin entering my travel-request information.

Going about this task, I wonder what it's like out there at Priceline.com. One side of my brain imagines the Priceline.com computer talking digitese with all the airline computers, but this image is so boring that the other half of my cranium offers up an alternative that I like much better. A bunch of Korean War vets are working around a big table, loyally shuffling through stacks of travel-request forms. They shake their gray heads over steaming mugs of percolator coffee and toss offer after ridiculously low offer onto the floor, to be swept up that night.

My home computer freezes up. Its brain is too small to handle Priceline.com. These vets may be old but they sure know how to hustle. I borrow a fast, sleek office computer. Then I start reentering the Priceline.com ticket information and begin dickering with the vets.

WILL I BE ON THE TEAM? Priceline.com flights are supposed to depart and arrive on the same day, with no more than one stop or connection. But the vets seem to want me to loosen up, to be a team player for cripes' sake. They want me to agree to take overnight, red-eye flights. They want me to make more than one connection per flight and to land in airports unknown to me. I say no, thanks. The vets also want to give me stuff. For example, $10 in "free bonus money" will be added to my bid if I take a free trial subscription to Sports Illustrated.

I skip all the freebies and name the price I'm willing to pay for a round-trip ticket. Call me a dreamer, but I offer only $198, Southwest's special from last summer.

Oops, I have everything backward on my ticket order: L.A. to D.C. on the first leg of the trip instead of the reverse, and so forth. I try to correct this error but find that the information is already encrypted. I get a very unfriendly warning that I have "requested an insecure document." I turn the computer off and start over.

This time I get the travel details right and send off my $198 bid. The yes or no answer is supposed to come back within an hour by e-mail.

The answer is right on time. And it is no. I imagine the vets grimly smiling, tossing my bid under the table atop an untidy heap of other cheapskate dreamers'. "Get wise to yourself," one vet says in disgust.

MY TOTAL CAPITULATION. The following day I raise the bid to match my previous $286 bargain on United. The answer is still no. "A wise guy," one of the vets mutters. "Trying to pull a fast one," he sniffs. "Won't work with us on this problem."

That night I make a third bid. I offer $325 of my own money, plus I agree to take a fancy new Visa card in exchange for $50 more of the "free bonus money," which raises my bid to $375. The vets also ask me to loosen up on the travel times, airports and connections. I work with the vets on red-eye flights. By now there's nothing I won't do.

Something in this last offer catches one vet's rheumy old eye. "Wait, fellas," he says, "it's Giese again. But this time he's working with us. And," says the vet, wiping away a tear, "he's trying to get young James home for the holidays." Nobody speaks but there is much nodding and clearing of throats.

Somebody quietly takes my application and stamps it Approved.

REPORTER: SEAN O'NEILL