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Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

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Re: Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

#101

Post by kuu »

charcircuit wrote: post #80
NumberCruncher wrote: post #57

In Germany this isn't a legal move. One of my former employees (global telco everyone knows) tried to do the same, namely moving the contracts of the employees to an other company. 200 of them started a class action and won easily. The company had to terminate their contracts (which means the employees are eligible for unemployment benefits, etc.) and had to pay a good severance. Something like (years of employment)…

Why is it illegal to fire people in Germany?

The thing is that in many countries of Europe (an maybe somewhere else too) we consider that a company is not only a way for the owners to make money, but they have a social value and responsibility.

Therefore you cannot just fire 200 people to hire another 200 cheaper, because that's a way to increase only company's profit but not society benefit. And if you fire them, you need to compensate them properly. Of course companies try to go around these regulations, it's up to each Government how to enforce laws to prevent it.

Re: Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

#102

Post by jonathankoren »

ornornor wrote: post #72
dessant wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a Booking.com employee that was part of the Consumer Psychology Team coming forward and arguing that what they've been doing is not illegal in the EU, after they were forced to change course because what they've been doing was incompatible with the law. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29472233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471213

> not illegal > incompatible with the law This is amazing.

What I find amazing is that @techcode says, "Not sure what illegal consumer practice are you talking about." Dude! I know what the illegal practice his team (He says he was tech lead of the "Consumer Psychology Team" at the time.) did. It was "unduly putting time pressure on users", most likely related to misrepresenting what the "X people are looking at this" and "last available" means. I'm sorry, but you're not paid enough to play dumb for your employer. Especially when it's your team that has been singled out by government regulators.

A much better -- and honest -- defense would have been to state that it wasn't against the law when written, because the law didn't go into effect until January 2020, and the press release was from December 2019, and they would become in compliance within the six months as agreed to.

Re: Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

#104

Post by benjaminwootton »

Booking.com are abysmal.

I used to spend 100-150 nights a year on the road and an ungodly amount of money with them.

One time I turned up late at night to a property that didn’t exist that was listed on their website.

They were absolutely useless in helping to resolve and it took months to get the money back. The fake apartment remained listed on their site for a long time too.

Moved all of my spend to Hotels.com and had a much better experience.

Re: Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

#105

Post by grishka »

quickaskq wrote: post #6

The one time I used booking.com I got screwed over. Their website is riddled with dark patterns and has probably been A/B tested into oblivion. The tactic they used that screwed me over was that they advertised 100% refunds on last minute cancellations. I used booking.com for this exact reason as I didn’t know if I’d be staying the night in the city I was driving past. Well turns out I didn’t need the booking but whe…

Last time I used booking.com, I remember that the cancellation policy differed depending on the specific hotel. Most have free cancellation but only if you cancel more than a day before your booking.

Re: Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

#106

Post by tluyben2 »

krono wrote: post #92
3boll wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, but the hotel will not alocate the all the rooms for booking/other platforms, just N rooms at Y$ price.

Booking doesn't care, though. They'll happily overbook the rooms you assign them sometimes. Edit: It might have gotten better since, but I still remember all those sad/defeated/angry faces of people who had booked trough Booking.com that I had to send away / find alternative hotels for because we were full. Back then when.

I had that in Asia quite a lot with Booking; that's not my problem though; it's theirs. But that's why I do not use them (booking) whenever I can prevent it. Hotels.com has this rarely but when they have it, they make sure you are well taken care off; I got much better and far more expensive hotels for the same price in those cases. I discovered ny favorite hotel in the world (so far) by a double (double double; the overbooked twice for the same room) booking; everything was full so they booked me in a hotel in the middle of a nature reserve which was much more expensive at that point, but I paid nothing more of course. Very nice for a business trip where I was supposed to sleep in a concrete bunker in a city.

Re: Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

#107

Post by Kaibeezy »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #104

Booking.com are abysmal. I used to spend 100-150 nights a year on the road and an ungodly amount of money with them. One time I turned up late at night to a property that didn’t exist that was listed on their website. They were absolutely useless in helping to resolve and it took months to get the money back. The fake apartment remained listed on their site for a long time too. Moved all of my spend to Hotels.com and…

Except hotels.com has been a nightmare lately too. The f-ing penguins! I’ll try to find an article and post it.

Re: Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

#108

Post by pembrook »

quickaskq wrote: post #6

The one time I used booking.com I got screwed over. Their website is riddled with dark patterns and has probably been A/B tested into oblivion. The tactic they used that screwed me over was that they advertised 100% refunds on last minute cancellations. I used booking.com for this exact reason as I didn’t know if I’d be staying the night in the city I was driving past. Well turns out I didn’t need the booking but whe…

Anecdotal, but I’ve canceled booking.com reservations probably 50+ times over the past decade without issue.

They certainly use nefarious UX patterns like “10 people just booked this location!!” But I’ve always found the “free cancellation by” dates to be reliable.

On the other hand, booking hotels directly is an absolute nightmare of interfacing with whatever broken systems the underfunded “IT” departments of said hotel have bolted on. At that point you might as well just call the front desk and wait 20 mins to be transferred to 3 different people.

Re: Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

#110

Post by tluyben2 »

aryou123 wrote: post #12
franczesko wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels.com. You get no dark patterns and shady practices as bonus.

False, we used it, you can't cancel your order unless you talk to some shady agent and then you have to pay some amount of money, also, it's very expensive, booking.com you could cancel your order for free

You probably booked a VRBO accommodation; you have to be careful not to do that. Those really suck service wise. They might be nice and cheap but if something goes wrong, hotels.com isn't going to help you, while with the non-vrbo places they do. Places that are VRBO have a large VRBO logo next to them; they are not hotels.com bookings, just affiliates. Shitty, but I guess they found a way of making some more money.
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