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How Booking.com manipulates users

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Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#221

Post by superasn »

nradov wrote: post #102
superasn wrote: post #98

They similarly totally lie about matching the lowest price. Had the misfortune of booking through them once, then I found the same hotel for a much lower price on another site (makemytrip) so I sent a screenshot to the support. After a day they outright DENIED to honor this "Lowest Price Guarantee" with some lame excuse. When I told them that I'll go to the small claims court I never heard back from them. Don't belie…

Did you pay for the room with a credit card charge to Booking.com? If so it would be easier to dispute part of the charge with your card issuer instead of going to small claims court.

Yes i did pay with a credit card. Unfortunately unlike US, disputing a cc charge here isn't that easy either. At that time the policy was to take a printout and then go to the bank and submit it there in person (same reason i never went to small claims court too). Seemed like too much hassle.

I instead wowed to never book another hotel on their site (using agoda ever since) and telling friends and posting on forums (it was on the frontpage on reddit india for 1 day) about how they cheated me. I think that must have costed them more money than they cheated me out by not honoring their guarantee.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#223

Post by isolli »

beefsack wrote: post #59

Some airline ticket booking sites still track you and increase the ticket price on return visits, optimised to certain intervals. Many in the industry call it "dynamic pricing." It made the news a few years back[1] but you can still see it sometimes in a few different industries. You can get into arguments with people about whether marketing as a whole is an enterprise built on manipulation, but this is quite clearly…

It's interesting that Amazon tried this in its very first years, but had to give up due to customer backlash. I wonder why the practice survives in travel services.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#224

Post by madshiva »

I only using these sites of booking for getting information. After I double check on the website of the hotel, price, go to the location with Google map to see what is nearby, never had a problem. Nice analyse I would like them more.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#225

Post by thiagoperes »

donkeyd wrote: post #179
eggie5 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am certain that booking pays at least 10k over market in Amsterdam

Market rate in Amsterdam is pretty low compared to the US salaries you see all over the internet. According to Glassdoor for example the average salaries for Software Engineer are: - US: $103k - NL: €45k For somebody who's moving halfway across the world anyway, I can imagine they'd prefer to look for a job in the US. Edit: The comments below are all correct. I didn't mention any of the secondary benefits since the i…

This is a misleading way to compare salaries and cost of life between countries.

A much better metric is to look at net disposable income after tax, if you're focusing on the "making money" aspect.

If you're focusing on the life quality aspect you'll also have to consider mortgage, car ownership and time off.

Example:

- In Netherlands you have 24 business days of time off, where you can take them from the moment your contract begins (not after 1 year working), and you can take them however you want.

- Taking a mortgage in Netherlands is currently cheaper than renting and most houses in the "sweet spot" cost around 300k euros, which is ridiculously cheap. Monthly payments are subsidized by the government (for some years) which makes it cheaper than renting.

To summarise, every country has a lot to offer, and at the end of the day life is not just about money.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#226

Post by rovek »

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #218

Guy books the cheapest hotel he can find, smack in the middle of the "vibrant gay village". Unsuprisingly, it's noisy and he doesn't get any sleep. Blames the UX of the booking website, because somehow the website forced him into trying to sleep in the middle of a permanent Mardi Gras. Suck it up, snowflake.

Does the author's motivation have any bearing on the facts of Booking.com's website behaviour?

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#227

Post by erikb »

flexie wrote: post #132
erikb wrote: post #120

Being a little disillusioned about the world these days I would assume this has a purpose. My guess is this: Booking.com already knows that they are fighting a losing battle against AirBnB. So instead of trying to win it seriously, they go to make the biggest profit they can out of their situation by strongly focussing on the idiots. With idiots you have two advantages: (a) they stay anyways no matter how shitty you…

In Europe, I would say the opposite is happening. AirBnB is being pushed out of or held down in many cities by local authorities. In the last two years I have stayed 50 nights or so in rooms booked through Bookings.com or Hotels.com and only 2 nights in rooms booked through AirBnB, and it's now almost two years ago. I had a good stay in the ArBnB booked apartment but the only reason I used AirBnB in the first place w…

US, China, Germany here. I only stay in AirBnB or the Chinese competitor, after the last 3 attempts with Booking.com were too bad.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#228

Post by koyote »

sAbakumoff wrote: post #208
djsumdog wrote: post #103

I thought about interviewing for them in Amsterdam. The recruiter put me in touch with one of their people and she explained to me everything was in Perl, there were little to no automated tests and developers often pushed straight to production. I said I had only worked in perl shops that were migrating from it to Scala or Python. She said, "Well we have no intention of moving." Like I say with all recruiters, I sai…

I live in Amsterdam do not work for booking but constantly discuss them in IT circles. Recently I heard of a guy who spend 0.5 year working on the calendar control that you can see on the main page. Every fucking day he tried to adjust the control to optimise the booking rate. That must be very boring job. Another ex-booker, back-end developer told that he has the PTSD after working with their Perl code base - it was…

What is the 30% rule?

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#229

Post by adamors »

donkeyd wrote: post #179
eggie5 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am certain that booking pays at least 10k over market in Amsterdam

Market rate in Amsterdam is pretty low compared to the US salaries you see all over the internet. According to Glassdoor for example the average salaries for Software Engineer are: - US: $103k - NL: €45k For somebody who's moving halfway across the world anyway, I can imagine they'd prefer to look for a job in the US. Edit: The comments below are all correct. I didn't mention any of the secondary benefits since the i…

US salaries where? I'm guessing Silicon Valley salaries are not comparable to Midwestern salaries. The Netherlands also has good healthcare.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#230

Post by bvm »

EasyTiger_ wrote: post #126
djsumdog wrote: post #103

I thought about interviewing for them in Amsterdam. The recruiter put me in touch with one of their people and she explained to me everything was in Perl, there were little to no automated tests and developers often pushed straight to production. I said I had only worked in perl shops that were migrating from it to Scala or Python. She said, "Well we have no intention of moving." Like I say with all recruiters, I sai…

How about being a grownup and actually take the damn call? Could you not just tell him you weren’t interested rather than being so ignorant? For a whole month I mean, really?

Recruiters are like the Booking.com of people though.
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