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Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

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Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#111

Post by petre »

lucaspiller wrote: post #56
moondev wrote: post #26

The only time I used booking.com, the hotel wouldn't honor my reservation, even though I showed them the booking confirmation number. They were sold out and simply said "not my problem, third party and we never got it". Who knows who's fault it was but with something as crucial as a hotel in a specific location/date I tend to just book through the actual hotel site from now on.

If you are booking with a chain you usually get better perks by booking through their site, especially if you are a loyalty member (even the most basic level often gives perks so it's worth signing up). Some are even cheaper by booking directly (e.g. Accor group). The place where booking.com really shines is for individual hotels and smaller properties like bed and breakfasts - often they only use one provider and it…

They're cheaper directly because booking.com takes 15 or 18% comission.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#112

Post by sAbakumoff »

justboxing wrote: post #77
jakub_g wrote: post #6

Booking is the website with the highest density of dark patterns per pixel I've ever seen. Red texts hurrying you to make a reservation in virtually every on the page ("only 2 rooms left", "someone just made a booking", "12 people looking", "Booked N times today", "You're lucky to see this room, normally it's booked!", "You're lucky to see it for $50, normally it's more expensive" etc.). All of those texts are flashi…

I see booking.com's BOT posting the same multiple jobs on @whoishiring's thread every month. Ex: Sept 2017 => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148950 Looking at all the negative observations about booking.com here, I'm curious. Has anyone from here actually applied to any of their job postings on @whoishiring ? How has your experience been? The one positive thing I've seen is that they mention that they sponsor…

booking.com hiring process is very well established, there is nothing wrong with it.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#113

Post by tome »

collyw wrote: post #96
developer2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're only booking a hotel, rather than picking a travel vacation package, you're better off calling the hotel directly to make a reservation. The reservation staff almost always have sole discretion to negotiate prices within limits. If you are polite, and have checked for the best price you can find online, they will often match or beat that price. The trick is truly the politeness factor - "I SEE IT ONLINE FOR…

Out of interest how would you negotiate? "I SEE IT ONLINE FOR $50 LESS ONLINE, YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT CHEAPER!!!" seems to be the classic style of negotiating car prices. It seems to be the only bargaining chip that you have available to you.

"I see it online for $50 less, could you possibly make it cheaper? If so I'll pay right away. "

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#114

Post by brianwawok »

oskarth wrote: post #73
BillinghamJ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you initiate a chargeback?

No. Booked with debit card, not credit card, which as far as I know makes the requirements for chargebacks higher.

This is why us Americans always use credit. So much protection.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#115

Post by brianwawok »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #66

These dark patterns are the result of successful A/B tests. They don't do it because they enjoy it. They do it because the data says the platform performs better. And I know this because I met dozens of Perl developers at conferences and I asked them explicitly about the FOMO spreading. The question is: how can one measure the long term impact these dark patterns have on future sales? I do my best to avoid using book…

You let the backend stack of a site determine if you visit it or not?

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#116

Post by chrisper »

oskarth wrote: post #68

I was booking a place in Budapest this summer on Booking.com, and there was a specific area I wanted to be in. I searched for that area and found a place that was marked as having a certain location that was perfect for me. Upon arriving, it turns out this was just where their "main office" was, and the specific apartment I was renting was situated in a different area, several tram rides away. I tried to get my money…

When you reserve with Booking.com, they don't even charge your credit card. At least that's how it has been the last 100 times when I used them. How come it was different this time?

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#117

Post by kakarot »

wikibob wrote: post #91
kakarot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what we're hoping to solve. The state of affairs with online booking is disgusting and the customer is too far removed from the process, while hotels are being strong-armed into price fixing.

Who's we?

The startup I work for. Can't talk too much about it right now.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#118

Post by diegoallen »

justboxing wrote: post #77
jakub_g wrote: post #6

Booking is the website with the highest density of dark patterns per pixel I've ever seen. Red texts hurrying you to make a reservation in virtually every on the page ("only 2 rooms left", "someone just made a booking", "12 people looking", "Booked N times today", "You're lucky to see this room, normally it's booked!", "You're lucky to see it for $50, normally it's more expensive" etc.). All of those texts are flashi…

I see booking.com's BOT posting the same multiple jobs on @whoishiring's thread every month. Ex: Sept 2017 => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148950 Looking at all the negative observations about booking.com here, I'm curious. Has anyone from here actually applied to any of their job postings on @whoishiring ? How has your experience been? The one positive thing I've seen is that they mention that they sponsor…

Recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn. Went through the process. It was a Hacker Rank challenge, technical phone interview with coding, on-site interview with coding, systems design and culture fit interviews.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#119

Post by emn13 »

user5994461 wrote: post #97
wikibob wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-

Europeans can charge back just fine.

Not always. If a firm wants to avoid that, it's not too hard to do so - it's got to make sure that the transfer was customer initiated, because those aren't necessarily reversible. There are other exceptions too, some of which are probably regional, non-EU-wide. SEPA isn't implemented identically across the EU, incidentally, so not just are the rules locally interpreted, the tech is too; so none of this is quite as simple as it seems it should be.

And then of course there's the fact that reversing charges doesn't change legal liabilities, so this isn't a protection you can rely on if the receiver feels they're in the right and are willing to take (sometimes fairly simple) legal steps.

It's definitely still a nice protection to have, since at least it places some burden of proof on the recipient.

Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients

#120

Post by balladeer »

jakub_g wrote: post #6

Booking is the website with the highest density of dark patterns per pixel I've ever seen. Red texts hurrying you to make a reservation in virtually every on the page ("only 2 rooms left", "someone just made a booking", "12 people looking", "Booked N times today", "You're lucky to see this room, normally it's booked!", "You're lucky to see it for $50, normally it's more expensive" etc.). All of those texts are flashi…

Their price match thing is a textbook farce.

Their support is so pathetic that they made me regret couple of bookings I made. Days, weeks - no response. You send follow up emails, no response. You escalate no response. Radio silence.

The GPS locations of properties are so deceiving that you have to check every single hotel on Google Maps and it was during on of these map searches that I realised they had been ripping me off all these months.

Immediately uninstalled the app and I started searching for hotels on Google Maps and TripAdvisor.

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