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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)

#131

Post by neya »

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…

I booked a hotel room with them and when I arrived there, the hotel said they had no such record of my booking. I showed the receipts and all, but the hotel washed their hands off saying the server was down, etc. I contacted booking.com, but it was useless. I literally spent 2 hours in the hotel lobby trying to figure out what was going on and how I could get my money back. Their support is almost non-existent, especially for money related matters. The unhelpful thing their agent told me was "Oh, if you were wrongly charged, the amount would be credited back to your account in X days". I was so pissed off that I filed a chargeback with my credit card provider that very moment with all the evidence and then booked a room in a different hotel for the night for twice the budget I had. 4 business days later, I get spam calls from random numbers and guess who it was? Booking.com "We apologize, we will give you this credit into your account, bla bla" something along those lines.

Chargeback is the real way to fight such scammy companies. Because, they lose more money than they will make from you. Hit them where it hurts. Lesson learnt. Now, I ALWAYS use my credit card for booking anything online.

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

#132

Post by Reason077 »

lowercased wrote: post #125
ratww wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> ”No curtains on window in main room, which faced an office block close enough where people could see you and you could see them.”

This place sounds terrible, and of course it should have had curtains. But the part about facing onto other buildings is pretty normal in London.

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

#133

Post by datavirtue »

woutr_be wrote: post #52
ratww wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

Almost the exact same thing happened to me. I used a debit card to pay (don't do this) and got refunded because I filed a dispute, which was denied, only because my bank failed to give a provisional credit (violation of federal regulations). VRBO offered no help at all.

You know this happens a lot when they issue 10% refunds. If it were rare and they cared about customers at all they would refund 100% and deal with the owner themselves. They just don't want to get into the business of talking with renters.

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

#134

Post by Reason077 »

ezconnect wrote: post #91
ratww wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

In South Korea all the hotels we booked on booking.com cancels the booking when you arrive and you pay on the desk. That's how they do it not to pay the booking.com tax.

I guess they don’t care too much about staying on booking.com, then?

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

#135

Post by Symbiote »

WilTimSon wrote: post #87
alickz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 rel…

What country is that, if you don't mind saying? I'd love to cite that example when friends who work in marketing start to babble about "cool tricks" they can do next time.

I'm not sure where the rules come from (law, business association regulation etc), but here are a couple of links for the UK.

https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/marketing-and-selling/co...

https://www.lewissilkin.com/-/media/files/main/insights/cmi/...

You'll find similar rules in many European countries, though most won't be available in English. This document is, for Denmark:

https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/media/14560/forbrugerombuds...

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

#136

Post by Fnoord »

ratww wrote: post #107
robertlagrant wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5 of them are already typing in the credit card details? Haha exactly. Two of them have already hit enter! Our service mesh is delaying calling the Stripe API as long as possible in case you want to buy instead!

"Ok they already ordered, but if you buy now we're gonna cancel their order because we like you better!"

At the cost of a few EUR.

Which is basically what Emesa (VakantieVeiligen.nl) do. Scumbags, too.

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

#137

Post by ceejayoz »

Freak_NL wrote: post #126
ceejayoz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps, but a hotel willing to screw over Booking.com to make some extra bucks might be similarly willing to screw me over.

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

#138

Post by PeterisP »

iamben wrote: post #80
terom wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was X some randomly generated number, not based on any actual inventory?

Yup, pretty much literally: Math.floor(Math.random() * (25 - 3 + 1) + 3)

You could just reinitialize the random seed each time based on the item ID and today's date, then the random values would be consistent between reloads.

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

#139

Post by iamben »

PeterisP wrote: post #138
iamben wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, pretty much literally: Math.floor(Math.random() * (25 - 3 + 1) + 3)

You could just reinitialize the random seed each time based on the item ID and today's date, then the random values would be consistent between reloads.

That's a really clever idea! Although I would have much preferred they didn't use it at all... :-/

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

#140

Post by techcode »

dessant wrote: post #72
jankotek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> Perhaps it is just travel anxiety? It was just an illegal consumer practice. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_19_...

Not sure what illegal consumer practice are you talking about.

Reading through the points from the page you posted - I think internally only actions related to that were basically to add more info (e.g. popup/hover or just "on our site") to clarify to people that same as every other marketplace on the Internet ... coughAmazoncough ...

Things we show are just things we know about and have in our "inventory".

And actually after some of those changes - I believe some customers started to complain that reminding them how "X other people are looking at {name of hotel} for your dates" felt much creepier than "X other people are looking at {name of hotel}" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

---

PS. Only reason I wrote a quoted "inventory" is that unlike physical goods with real stock. When you're renting accommodation - on top of physical rooms, there's extra dimensions due to different dates, meals (because in many hotels restaurant can't support everyone having breakfast, half/full board/meals) ...etc.

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