If it was up to me, I would have required all airlines publish their fares in machine readable format.
Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
61–70 of 303 posts
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#62> A jury in the District Court of Delaware unanimously found that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said I imagine this is limited to a scenario where you: 1. Act as a middle-man for the transaction (as this lawsuit was about resale), 2. Interfere with pricing o…
> and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookin…
> Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns.
This lawsuit is not about ryanair's pricing model, so that the company engages in bad practices is irrelevant to the court decision. What matters is that booking.com wants to earn money on selling ryanair tickets while evading using reseller agreements by using the site as if they were a private customer (likely also against the terms of service), with supposedly some bad side-effects like ryanair being unable to communicate with the customer (which could be bad if they wanted to e.g. give you a notice about the flight during the sales process).
You will have to sue ryanair specifically about their pricing to get a decision on that, which of course first requires ensuring that it is unlawful or unfair business conduct within your jurisdiction (which it might not be).
> bookingcom acts as a user agent in my service so why should Ryanair have any legal basis on preventing bookingcom from doing so?!
They are not your useragent, they are acting as a reseller: You buy a product from them which they acquire elsewhere, taking a profit in the process.
If they were in fact entirely transparent in the process, merely allowing you to purchase the product at the best available price directly (e.g., a plugin to find deals/discounts, VPN to get it from the cheapest region, etc.), then the case would have been hard or impossible for ryanair to make.
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#63> A jury in the District Court of Delaware unanimously found that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said I imagine this is limited to a scenario where you: 1. Act as a middle-man for the transaction (as this lawsuit was about resale), 2. Interfere with pricing o…
> and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookin…
Airline websites stick a giant middle finger up at the traditional ecommerce mantra that every extra second costs you N% of sales.
I had to load the desktop version of vueling.com the other day just to have the UI understand that I didn't want to purchase a return flight.
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ryanair's claim was that Booking.com etc was reselling its seats, adding its own charges on top, and providing false passenger details. It's in Ryanair's interest to portray this as basically a screen scraping case (because Ryanair don't like screen scraping in general), but there does seem to be more to it than just that.
Ryanair relies on dark patterns and brainwashing as part of the checkout process to sell you hotels, insurance, car hire, etc. Those feed into their income stream. If you bypass that process they don't make their profit.
I still don't understand, I flew with them last year, and just now I dry-ran booking a flight from Prague to Bologna. The entire thing feels quite streamlined and straightforward. Pick two dates, you're offered flights on or around the dates, you pick the flights, then you pick the "package" (basic, regular, plus, flexi plus) and it shows a HUGE matrix with big fat check marks for stuff you get and no check marks for stuff you DON'T GET (reserved seats, cabin luggage, checked luggage, free check-in at the airport). Honestly, if someone can't navigate the process as it is today, I'd be worried about them traveling to a foreign country. Any additional offers (hotels, insurance, cars) you can safely ignore.
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookin…
Airline websites stick a giant middle finger up at the traditional ecommerce mantra that every extra second costs you N% of sales. I had to load the desktop version of vueling.com the other day just to have the UI understand that I didn't want to purchase a return flight.
Vueling doesn't even comply with GDPR on their marketing sign up. It's a singularly terrible experience.
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#66Pretty light article, does anyone have any more context? Does this set a strong precedent for all these types of sites? Booking.com wouldn't be the only site reselling airline tickets, in fact I wasn't even aware they did flights. Does Booking.com do something particularly bad compared to something like SkyScanner or Google flights? > "We expect that this ruling will end the internet piracy and overcharging perpetrat…
> Does Booking.com do something particularly bad compared to something like SkyScanner or Google flights?
Presumably, given they're fine with Google Flights:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67873695
"In a statement, Ryanair described the online agents as "pirates". It said it would "continue to make its fares available to honest/transparent online travel agents such as Google Flights," which it said "do not add hidden mark ups to Ryanair prices and who direct passengers to make their bookings directly on the Ryanair.com website"."
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said Where was the "defraud" happening here? When Ryanair wants to make money on flights they shouldn't offer flight tickets that only make money when they can lure the consumer to purchase addons via a boatload of dark patterns. For me as someone looking to book a flight, bookin…
Just for rail, I quite like trainline.com. It tries to hide the madness that is very poor national/private rail service and their ticketing regimes, but really there’s only so much you can do, so often I get two or more tickets for legs of travel, some of which change as I remain on the same train?!?
I use Railboard, exactly like trainline but without the booking fee as it's made by national rail
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#68I had always assumed Booking.com had some resale agreement with hotels and airlines - there was always some weird issue where if I called a hotel and asked for a room it was more expensive than booking.com or was not available yet was on booking.com What gets me is why on Earth any provider would allow this - dealing direct is so much more sane 99% of the time, and a package holiday provider already has a reseller ag…
> Just stomp booking.com into the ground - I simply don’t understand why hotels and airlines don’t do it? Classic prisoners dillema. The problem is all the hotels, etc. need to be on the same page.
No that’s the search engine trap - which hotel shall I go to is a map not a search page. It’s a marketing exercise - which influencer, which email drop, which word of mouth.
It’s everything that was before Google captured all the advertising revenue there ever was. And reduced it to a list on a black ink on white page
Airlines are in a race to the bottom because there are only 8 bits in the 1970s booking system so there is only a competition on seat price. Chnage that to be able to have different parameters and we compete on other factors
If hotels are just competing for price on booking.com then they are heading to the same trap - beautiful architecture, fantastic location, smiling staff, 1950s movie stars making films in the courtyard- none of it matters if it’s price per room in NYC.
The only way cows stop being treated like cattle is to make sure every human sees them as individuals - it’s a lot of work. But the struggle is worth the abbatoir.
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#69The reason that Ryanair is against OTAs reselling flights is not the fees, it’s that they’re often resold as a package holiday. Package holidays are flights bundled with hotels etc and are usually sold at much higher margin. Ryanair has its own package holiday business and prefers that they make the margin, not someone else. There are many more package holiday companies than airlines, they want to use this ruling and…
So, basically, Ryanair is against free market. They want to have monopoly, to raise prices. Good for Ryanair, bad for consumers.
Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling
#70I was at a startup event last year where someone that had been very senior and instrumental in Ryanair starting was talking to a small audience (<40 people). He told the story of how they didn't notice booking.com was "stealing" so much of their profit. To rephrase his words: "We gave those guys free advertising on our site and without us realising they were quickly making more profit per head than we were. Before we…
skyscanner would list ryanair traffic on their sites. even though they don't make money from ryanair via click referrals but because of the traffic that ryanair brings.