I usually assume that websites with these tactics have a high probability of running scams, so I navigate away.
Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
61–70 of 183 posts
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Booking.com is a terrible company in pretty much every regard. I've had a reservation to a hotel that was pretty full according to the website scare tactics, but when I got there I was the only person to come in weeks. Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stu…
> Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stuck with Booking.com while Booking.com claim the money is in the hotels account. Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there. I'm going through the exact same dispute with VRBO (Exped…
Small claims court?
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#63I implemented this functionality where we work, but we did it properly.
We haven't done the "viewing" one, but we track every "add to cart" and every actual transaction, store them in a backend database and then use this to show badging that simply says "popular" on the top 5-10% of products in a given category, which is based on interactions over the past 24h.
Sure, we could improve it and make it more accurate etc, but I feel comfortable that we did things reasonably properly and it is a true and honest representation of the popular products.
There are SAAS providers that sell this functionality and it's super expensive ($tens to $hundreds of thousands annually) which is an absolute joke compared to how trivial it is to implement.
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stuck with Booking.com while Booking.com claim the money is in the hotels account. Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there. I'm going through the exact same dispute with VRBO (Exped…
Small claims court?
That's exactly the route we're taking now.
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Booking.com is a terrible company in pretty much every regard. I've had a reservation to a hotel that was pretty full according to the website scare tactics, but when I got there I was the only person to come in weeks. Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stu…
I agree with all your points. However, last time I travel for a extended time (hotel everyday at different place for a month), I found Booking has the best UI after some comparison between all the major players (keep in mind lots of them are from the same company), I still used it. Would like a recommandation about what to use instead.
As you point out, the vast majority of hotel booking platforms in the US and Europe are controlled by either Booking Holdings or Expedia Group. Whatever website you use, chances are it's really of one of these conglomerates. But some notable exceptions include:
Trip.com
Tripadvisor
Lastminute
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#66The first time we booked a place on Booking.com, we were anxious the entire afternoon. Not sure if things have changed, but at that time they made it feel like a racing game, flashy countdowns, everything but THAT place sold out in the area, OTHER PEOPLE WERE LOOKING AT IT, several email notifications in the span of hours because we haven't decided yet, and now it might be TOO LATE if we refresh the page. I wouldn't…
Perhaps it is just travel anxiety? I book hotels a few hours in advance and stats like "only 2 rooms left", are usually correct when I check with hotel reception. At least in Europe booking.com is much better than competition. It has loyalty discounts, transparent pricing and consistent experience. Reviews and descriptions are actually useful, not BS. Emails I get are usually "place you looked at become 30% cheaper".
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#67Is the idea that multiple people are looking at a product supposed to inspire me to purchase it? I really struggle to understand the logic.
Same, but if combined with limited stock it can make sense.
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#68This dark pattern is designing for anxiety. While there’s no specific accessibility guidelines around this, you’ll be causing problems for the subset of your users that have less reserve in this area.
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Booking.com is a terrible company in pretty much every regard. I've had a reservation to a hotel that was pretty full according to the website scare tactics, but when I got there I was the only person to come in weeks. Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stu…
As an opposing pov: we mostly use booking.com for our reservations, and have never had an issue with them, and found their support useful the one or two times we needed it. They're the best reservation site that I know (others are way worse), and are fairly customer friendly [+]. I still book directly whenever I can because I don't want the hosts to pay the rather large booking.com fees... but we often find places to…
I think the problem here is that while they may be easy for you to ignore, that’s not universally true.
Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
#70The first time we booked a place on Booking.com, we were anxious the entire afternoon. Not sure if things have changed, but at that time they made it feel like a racing game, flashy countdowns, everything but THAT place sold out in the area, OTHER PEOPLE WERE LOOKING AT IT, several email notifications in the span of hours because we haven't decided yet, and now it might be TOO LATE if we refresh the page. I wouldn't…
The way the pay-per-click machine works, is you pay like 3$ for 'hotels in amsterdam', their average (public info) commission is 15%. Looking at booking.com/amsterdam you can see vague idea about average price, lets say most bookings are 2 nights, then you can get ballpark average reservation of around 200$, 15% of that is 30$. So for each room they sell they can buy 10 clicks on 'hotels in amsterdam'. This is super…
>Thing like 70% off on pair of shoes, that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute, just so there was a record in the database that they actually had higher price, nobody cares that they never sold at the high price.
In my country this is explicitly illegal. A good or service must be sold for a certain period of time (2 weeks I think) before it can be used as the pre-sale price.
I've only heard this in relation to physical stores though, not sure how it works for e-commerce.