I have heard from some people that booking.com takes such a high percentage that you can call some hotels and get a better price going directly.
Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
101–110 of 154 posts
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#102Booking 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…
As opposed to Trivago which is the worse kind of real life spam in existence? Thanks, I'll keep using Booking (Though the flashing things are annoying - but you can discover using booking then go to the hotel page and book there)
> but you can discover using booking then go to the hotel page and book there
Just a shame they often charge the same price so I think why did I bother doing them the favour?
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#103Sadly I fell for the various tricks described here and hastily booked a room on holiday recently.
Having said that, my family of 4 adults with different credit cards made excellent use of their generous £15 referral reward kicking back both ways to save a significant amount on the total booking cost.
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#104I've been burned by booking.com's 'Free Cancellation' UI shenanigans a couple of times. In both instances I swear that I saw the free cancellation banner next to the room I'm reserving. Instantly after reservation, I receive an email saying 'non-refundable', or $400 fee for cancellation. The first time I thought I made a mistake, but when my wife saw the same thing... well, something fishy is going on.
Free cancellation means they don't need your CC. If they get your CC they got you by the balls.
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#105I've been burned by booking.com's 'Free Cancellation' UI shenanigans a couple of times. In both instances I swear that I saw the free cancellation banner next to the room I'm reserving. Instantly after reservation, I receive an email saying 'non-refundable', or $400 fee for cancellation. The first time I thought I made a mistake, but when my wife saw the same thing... well, something fishy is going on.
It is deception at it's finest. My siblings experienced this first hand and I told them, no more booking.com, ever. Also, the cancellation was 1 month away from actual booking but they do not care. They just want to decieve (scam?) you and get your money. Luckily, the bank sided with us. The dispute is a sure process as long as they value you as a customer.
Hm hm. Chrome extension that takes a screenshot of every page you visit on certain sites (and adds the hashes to a blockchain for further proof).
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#106The 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.
This happened to me a couple of months ago. If you contact CS they will help you get a room somewhere else at the hotel expense. :)
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#107Could someone explain to me any reason why it would be better to book through any third party instead of directly through the hotel?
Convenience.
If the service provides value for research and an easy booking process for roughly the same price/advantages then there's little benefit to booking directly.
I like booking.com because the description of the hotel, photos, and conditions are presented in a consistent format which makes comparing options and locations very efficient. The details have largely also matched my experience which is nice.
I started using the site because I found that their cancelation conditions were better than booking with the hotels directly. More recently, this is less of the case as the differential in price for a refundable booking has increased greatly in some cities, at least for my needs.
Their solicitation for reviews process is pretty good. People’s expectations of service an amenity tend to be pretty unreliable but there are enough substantive reviews to filter out the extremes.
It is slightly convenient to have a diverse range of accommodation types booked in one system but not enough to balance the dark patterns. I no longer recommend the site to those who aren’t at least a little savvy with travel and pattern spotting.
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#108Booking 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…
Is there any other company not using these dark patterns? I tried to use many others (big enough to have choices) and it's all the same. Sometimes you're even wondering if it's not just the same website with another branding.
I just go to the hotel website directly.
Booking.com sometimes has more info (e.g. hotel website doesn't mention arrival times but booking.com does), in which case I use it for information purposes only and cringe at the dark patterns every time.
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#109Booking 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…
I did, two years ago. It was okay, one or two skype interviews, including a live coding one, and also a technical challenge on HackerRank. They also want to hear about suggestions and ideas for improving the site, how to implement and measure the impact. It helps to read their tech blogs and learn about the way they do things.
I think dutch also give a tax exemption for employees who were hired abroad.
Re: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
As opposed to Trivago which is the worse kind of real life spam in existence? Thanks, I'll keep using Booking (Though the flashing things are annoying - but you can discover using booking then go to the hotel page and book there)
> but you can discover using booking then go to the hotel page and book there Just a shame they often charge the same price so I think why did I bother doing them the favour?
The hotels are not allowed to offer a lower price than booking.com. To undercut, or offer bonuses, risks then getting pulled from one of their largest sales channels.