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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

#151

Post by zaphirplane »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #49
jahnu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They exist for EU users of booking.com And several of the dark patterns don't. Because of fairly mild regulations that protect the consumer. Draw your own conclusions here.

> several of the dark patterns don't The "only x room left with these conditions" false claim is used also in the EU.

I understood that airlines and hotels have a tiered system fist x at this rate next y and rate*y … etc I have booked directly with Marion and IHG last minute and they both had prices change the next day when I took a peak. Assuming the thread isn’t about some random number generator

Beware, Marion had a higher price after I visited trivago

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

#152

Post by nolok »

mrweasel wrote: post #150

Apparently I have the wrong impression of what Booking.com does, because apparently they have WAY more employees than I would have guessed.

Their employees are customer service on one side, and marketing (calling hotels to have them sell through booking) on the other side. So they have a ton of employees for the same reason groupon does.

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

#153

Post by vinay427 »

zwaps wrote: post #126
vinay427 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would tend to agree with this. I’ve rarely received a refund or other compensation at least in Switzerland (not in the EU) for things that would immediately be handled in the US, particularly for retail purchases. The Costco and Amazon effect is far more prominent in the US whereas I feel much more constrained as a consumer in many European countries.

In the EU? For the first 6 months, the legal assumption is that any defect was present at purchase which means - in practice - you can return pretty much any defective item no questions asked. What did you want to return and could not?

> In the EU?

Most instances were in Switzerland as I mentioned, although a few were in the EU. Some weren't defective items but rather unneeded items. Returns based on changing one's mind, even if the item is in unused condition and remains re-sellable, seems to not be a "thing" in at least several European countries whereas American consumers typically expect these consumer protections not by law but by convention.

Another electronic device was defective, and even after selecting this in the online purchase return form I was charged a restocking fee despite returning the item within a few weeks of purchase. Not budging on this and refunding the fee would be unheard of for any serious US retailer.

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

#154

Post by szszrk »

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…

While I'm far from trusting booking I used late cancellation several times in EU. Usually those offers were more expensive, but I was charged late as promised (like a day before reservation date) and if cancelled before it just worked.

Usually I'm more worried that their places usually just get my credit card number in plain text, write it down in a notebook and some frontdesk person simply uses that CC numbers to charge me on my first day there or so, manually entering it into CC terminal.

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

#155

Post by mrweasel »

nolok wrote: post #152
mrweasel wrote: post #150

Apparently I have the wrong impression of what Booking.com does, because apparently they have WAY more employees than I would have guessed.

Their employees are customer service on one side, and marketing (calling hotels to have them sell through booking) on the other side. So they have a ton of employees for the same reason groupon does.

See, that's exactly what I didn't get. I just figured that hotels signed up on Booking.com and that the hotels would handle the customer service side of business.

I worked with a few price comparison sites, and they've all been run by somewhere between a handful and maybe 100 people, so I figured that Booking.com would work the same.

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

#156

Post by alexb_ »

virgilp wrote: post #135
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…

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 j…

Euros are always complaining about tipping and acting like servers don't prefer it because they make way more money...

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

#157

Post by yodsanklai »

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…

> At that point you might as well just call the front desk and wait 20 mins to be transferred to 3 different people.

When they don't tell you to book from booking.com directly...

Booking.com has made hotel reservation much easier.

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

#158

Post by wraptile »

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,…

Booking.com is the _lesser_ evil imho. For one it shows total price 99% of the time right there on the search page where alternatives like Agoda show total at the checkout which is heavily inflated.

Their loyalty program (Genius) is automatic and simple too where's competitors resort to various coupon and other complex "discounts".

I surely hope Booking is not going away.

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

#160

Post by xunn0026 »

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,…

The customer experience has been great but consistently decreasing over the years.

Last time I used them I think they pivoted into fighting with AirBNB so they took on smaller and smaller "venues" up to people (illegally) renting an apartment. The guy straight up threatened me in writing on Booking when I decided to cancel seeing how different the conditions were compared to the pictures.

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