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Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

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Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#121

Post by techcode »

kmarc wrote: post #114
shp0ngle wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will give you a tip. * search hotel at booking.com * find that hotel at google * call them directly, by actual phone You will get a lower price always. Of course, you need to actually manually call them, which people don't want to do; but it always worked for me.

This might work in the US, but the rest 80% of the world... I am aware of booking's dirty tools to make you feel you have to book NOW! However, after around 100+ booking.com booking all around the world (including small villages in Amazonia or Laos) I am eternally grateful that for that extra 1$/night or so I get instant support with whatever probleem I had.

Thanks ♡ And imagine that our mission is to have everyone feel that same way.

Obviously as middle man you take some part of the pie - though idea is that it's worth for everyone.

BTW - it's not that common to meet customer with 100+ reservations. So excuse me for asking - what do you think of the changes in the account area (My Trips)?

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#122

Post by npteljes »

tester34 wrote: post #45
GuB-42 wrote: post #26

It is like all those ".io" games (ex: https://agar.io/ ). You are supposed to play online against other players, but many of these games put you against bots instead. This is evident when you lose internet and the game still runs. The original idea was to first populate the game with bots and progressively replace them with real players as the game become more popular, then developers realized that if they could get…

If you're having fun, then what's wrong with that? It's pretty hard to start game which's fun is based on PvP, yet you have no players so bots are the way to go I guess

Consent is what's missing from these situations. Nothing illegal or major, but I don't think it's a good thing to cheat the people like this.

An approach I liked was with some community Team Fortress 2 servers. They kept a constant minimum player count, say 10, and replaced the missing players with bots. However it was clear to see that they were bots, the TF2 client was explicit about this.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#123

Post by Freak_NL »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #117
grujicd wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using booking for 15+ years, mostly in Europe. I'm a satisfied user. These scare tactics don't bother me since it's easy to ignore. What I care about is that I see exact micro location of property, if I'm going with friends to a mountain cabin it's a real bonus if it's a bit further from other cabins or surreounded by woods. Airbnb burned me more than once with hidding this critical piece of info and only showing…

Do you recommend any mountain cabins? I've used and will be trying more of these https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/ but some of the cabins in the Swiss alps look good, paid and free.

I've used https://www.huetten.com/ successfully a few years ago. It has a decent selection of huts in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Mostly Austria I think.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#124

Post by kmarc »

techcode wrote: post #121
kmarc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work in the US, but the rest 80% of the world... I am aware of booking's dirty tools to make you feel you have to book NOW! However, after around 100+ booking.com booking all around the world (including small villages in Amazonia or Laos) I am eternally grateful that for that extra 1$/night or so I get instant support with whatever probleem I had.

Thanks ♡ And imagine that our mission is to have everyone feel that same way. Obviously as middle man you take some part of the pie - though idea is that it's worth for everyone. BTW - it's not that common to meet customer with 100+ reservations. So excuse me for asking - what do you think of the changes in the account area (My Trips)?

Sorry my bad, on booking.com I only have around 50 (private), the rest are company booking systems. (felt much more!)

Currently I only have the android app (well, traveling again) and I am mostly satisfied with it.

However the web version I always found a disaster. Especially since I had a linked business account too, and the SSO just craps itself into a redirect loop when I try to logout from it.

Everything else seems to be very user-oriented and I am satisfied in general.

(ha, I also happen to know the storage system behind the backend ;-) )

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#125

Post by lowercased »

ratww wrote: post #109
Aeolun wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small claims court?

For me, in the end I disputed the charge with my credit card and they sided with me when I send pictures of the hotel. The single collective bathroom (yes) had no locks on the door (yes).

wife had rented via airbnb in london a few years back. Booked for... 10 days. It was close to $2000. Got there - TV broken. No curtains on window in main room, which faced an office block close enough where people could see you and you could see them. You had to walk between bedroom and bathroom through the main room. Leftover food in the fridge ("you can eat that if you want, previous people didn't finish it"). 2 hangars in a closet. Shower head didn't work - sprayed water out of the top, but not down. After 3 days of 'complaints' (messaged on airbnb and directly), my wife got an extra 6 hangars and the shower 'fixed', sort of. They claimed she must have broken the TV - no one previously had complained.

My wife provided video and picture evidence of this to airbnb - no support. Hosts threatened to provide negative feedback to her and essentially blackball her with other hosts in London. We provided THAT messaging to airbnb - still nothing.

airbnb's position was "well, if it was bad, you should have left and we might have refunded some of your money". Leave $2k with them, go spend another... $2000 on hotel someplace else (assuming you can even get anything short notice), then hope/pray you get some refund? I think we have waived some chargeback ability because of T&C we'd agreed to (I might be misremembering this). We should have pressed chargeback with cc company. It was horrible experience, and we've not used them since.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#126

Post by Freak_NL »

ceejayoz wrote: post #82
Aeolun wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We arrived at a hotel, then found out we could get the room for a cheaper rate than we got on booking. The hotel was very helpful, and we cancelled the booking both from our, as well as the hotel’s side. Nonetheless it took Booking.com days to decide that the refund was legitimate.

Isn’t the hotel screwing Booking.com over in that scenario?

In all fairness, Booking.com is screwing everyone over, so it seems to balance things out.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#127

Post by npteljes »

skilled wrote: post #3

Is the idea that multiple people are looking at a product supposed to inspire me to purchase it? I really struggle to understand the logic.

The idea is that a significant portion of the visitors are undecided, hesitant, or are postponing the purchase. These tactics try to push these people for a decision. I personally react to pushing by closing up, so they lose me if they push too hard. But many people are not like this, or maybe they are just waiting a bit before committing, and that's when these methods can work.

And these are not new either, just old sales tactics, applied to the new context. The pushiness of these counters etc remind me of the Hard sell[0] for example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_sell

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#128

Post by trymas »

ratww wrote: post #105
trymas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there. Consider yourself lucky. For me it was 20eur take it or leave it, on 500eur loss. I consider cancellation/refund policies that end before your arrival technically - a scam. The situation was like that - the apartment was booked with cancellation available 3 (or smth) days before arrival [0]. Upon arrival - the place was cigarette reekin…

Oh, I wonder if we went to the same place. Exact same experience. The funny part is that you can cancel before arriving, but if you're set to stay multiple days, you can't cancel the other days. Might as well make N reservations instead of 1 with N days. About reviews: Booking.com didn't allow me to leave a review, since they claimed I could only spend one day at the hotel. Even though they charged me for a week. The…

> About reviews: Booking.com didn't allow me to leave a review,

We had a feeling about this. So we explicitly did not allow them to cancel, unless they refunded us. I had a hunch if they'd cancel, we also going to lose ability to leave a review. On top of that it would allow host of the apartment to re-rent the place for our days and essentially be paid twice.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#129

Post by flippyhead »

ratww wrote: post #35
dessant wrote: post #28

The 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…

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 totally and, despite spending 3-6 months of most years traveling, we never use them anymore.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#130

Post by brandall10 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #101
shp0ngle wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will give you a tip. * search hotel at booking.com * find that hotel at google * call them directly, by actual phone You will get a lower price always. Of course, you need to actually manually call them, which people don't want to do; but it always worked for me.

* Search a hotel at booking.com * Find them at Google * Call them directly * Get a super expensive price and a tip to book online

This has been my experience the few times I’ve tried it.

I had a gf who was able to get a different experience but it always seemed she had to get the manager on the line to do so.

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