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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

#131

Post by danuker »

bin_bash wrote: post #115
MandieD wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After spending most of my adult life in Germany, I have to be extra-vigilant when doing anything with money back in the US - from remembering that the prices on the shelves are several percent lower than what I’m actually going to have to pay (while being way lower than VAT, sales tax is not included in prices!) to anything to do with cellphones, and then stuff like this.

What's so alarming about us not putting sales tax on products? I grew up in the US but in a non sales tax state so my experience until I was 25 was the same as yours. When I later moved to a sales tax state I knew the price was going to be ~5-10% higher than what was printed but I got used to it very quickly. I hate to stereotype but I've found Germans in my experience to take particular offense to this practice. I'm…

> if I asked most Germans their least favorite thing about the US this is would be the MOST common response

Either this or the Imperial units.

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

#132

Post by bin_bash »

pgeorgi wrote: post #129
bin_bash wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so alarming about us not putting sales tax on products? I grew up in the US but in a non sales tax state so my experience until I was 25 was the same as yours. When I later moved to a sales tax state I knew the price was going to be ~5-10% higher than what was printed but I got used to it very quickly. I hate to stereotype but I've found Germans in my experience to take particular offense to this practice. I'm…

Maybe due to the German fondness for cash? A few percent higher prices aren't as much of a deal when paying with credit card, the transaction works exactly the same, but when paying cash, it might look very different (up to "don't actually have enough with me. oops.")

This stands to reason, credit card use in the UK is very high. So high in fact I recall several times before I had a chip card having trouble paying at cashless kiosks.

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

#133

Post by cvak »

culturestate wrote: post #47
dazc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Booking.com is a great site for finding hotel rooms, provided you use it only for this reason and then go direct to the hotel's own site.

I used to do this, but recently I (somehow) got kicked into the upper tier of Booking.com’s genius program. The 20% discount you get by using B.c in that tier is unbeatable - I’ve actually had hotel front desk staff in multiple countries over the last few months tell me straight-up that they can’t price match that low and I’d be better off just using B.c.

Yeah, I used similar site to booking.com last week, and asked the hotel if they can price match (they had best price guarantee on their site), and they straight face told me they can't ... baffling

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

#134

Post by mschuster91 »

gingerlime wrote: post #119
pembrook wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Or just pick up the phone and call? found it to be a better option in some cases. Got better prices than booking.com too. The only problems we had with booking.com is that they give you no protection whatsoever. One case, the hotel clearly gamed the reviews and posted false info. It was so bad that we had to leave. But we were still charged the full amount, and booking.com just stood aside. Just recently, my wife boo…

> OT: but are there any banks or credit card companies in Germany that actually help you when you're in this situation or need a chargeback?

In my experience the Sparkasse is pretty decent, but since they're regional institutions YMMV.

> it seems like the low card fees in EU means much worse customer service compared to the US, or is it just my wishful thinking?

We just don't have much credit card usage since SEPA-ELV works pretty well. SEPA Direct Debit stuff you can chargeback at almost all institutions via online banking or self-service ATMs, credit card depends on your institution.

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

#135

Post by virgilp »

bin_bash wrote: post #115
MandieD wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After spending most of my adult life in Germany, I have to be extra-vigilant when doing anything with money back in the US - from remembering that the prices on the shelves are several percent lower than what I’m actually going to have to pay (while being way lower than VAT, sales tax is not included in prices!) to anything to do with cellphones, and then stuff like this.

What's so alarming about us not putting sales tax on products? I grew up in the US but in a non sales tax state so my experience until I was 25 was the same as yours. When I later moved to a sales tax state I knew the price was going to be ~5-10% higher than what was printed but I got used to it very quickly. I hate to stereotype but I've found Germans in my experience to take particular offense to this practice. I'm…

How can you not get it? It's completely annoying - stores show a price that is not the real price. So I have to now look up what is the sales tax before I can make an informed decision.

You may be fine with it if you live there and have learned to instinctively add 9% - but to a foreign traveler, one doesn't even know what percent they should add! _Of course_ it's annoying.

P.S. I am not German.

edited to add: It's just like the insane tipping culture in US. If you don't tip, somehow _you_ are the monster. It's not a problem that restaurants don't pay a living wage, it's not a problem that they don't even have to pay the minimum legal wage (!!!) - no, the problem is not with America. It's with the monsters that don't tip, because how else are those poor servers going to survive? Basically, when you look at the price in a US menu, you have to remember that the real price is at least 130% of that. And somehow, americans seem to be fine with it, and consider that it's the foreigners that are the oddballs here.

Do note, I don't have a problem with tipping, and I do tip even in my country, quite generously so sometimes (e.g. 50% at barbershops because I feel their prices are just too low, and also the person providing the service is actually doing most of the work too). But I don't like being forced to do it. It's one thing to tip as a sign of "thank you, good job!"; and it's a completely different feeling to tip as "here, this will give you something to eat this month"

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

#136

Post by [deleted] »

vondro wrote: post #65

Just skimming through the comments, there is some negative sentiment about Booking.com. So I came to say, that over the years, I've used Booking.com numerous times, without any single problem. Yes, there are dark patterns (13 people are looking at this offer right now, etc.), but free cancellation was always free for me, reviews matched my experience, information matched the reality. Sorry to hear about the layoffs,…

[deleted]

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

#137

Post by nottorp »

dtech wrote: post #120
bin_bash wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so alarming about us not putting sales tax on products? I grew up in the US but in a non sales tax state so my experience until I was 25 was the same as yours. When I later moved to a sales tax state I knew the price was going to be ~5-10% higher than what was printed but I got used to it very quickly. I hate to stereotype but I've found Germans in my experience to take particular offense to this practice. I'm…

It's a real-life dark pattern. The benefits of showing the price with taxes for consumers vastly outweigh the minor problems for stores, other than makes them look cheaper.

I'd call it "fraud". The store is basically hiding the real price from me.

Are there "service charges" too? :)

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

#138

Post by soco »

herbst wrote: post #96

On contrary what most people have experienced booking helped me multiple times to get my money back. When travelling SEA for cheap I ended up in hotels that were lying about the rooms more than once. A room without windows, described as balcony room for 2 weeks and shit like that. Shady hotel owners don't care, and discussions can go on forever. However simply calling booking and have them call the hotel for me fixed…

For me it didn't work. They said it's the decision of the appartment owner to not refund and that was it - even after dozens of calls.

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

#139

Post by wdb »

Worst website to deal with when needing to books rooms as a travelling consultant. False claims hotel is full etc. Can’t claim points of hotel chain (thanks IHG). Better to talk to the hotel if your re planning to stay at the hotel Effie days a week for a year and get yourself f a great deal :)

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

#140

Post by notpushkin »

pembrook wrote: post #108
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 h…

Perhaps it's cheating a bit, but most of the time they don't check credit cards you use for "booking confirmation". A friend of mine used to use 4242 4242 4242 4242 for quite some time, and when they've blocked it, he switched to his own debit card with spend limit set to $1.
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