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The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

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Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#61

Post by twiss »

legitster wrote: post #58
twiss wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? At least Booking.com shows me the total price for an accommodation up front, without any additional fees or surprises coming up later in the booking process. The same cannot be said for AirBnB: if I go to the home page right now it lists a bunch of bookings for e.g. "€ 80 for 2 nights", while when I click through the total price is €160. So apparently what they meant is "€80 per night". I'd call that much mor…

Bookings.com runs some incredibly evil tactics. Generally they take about 20% of the booking fees. But they will do things like delist you if you have lower prices anywhere else, and then undercut your prices on their website. My parents ran a small motel - the only hotel for miles around. But on top of the fees, if they weren't paying for additional promotions Booking would find unrelated distant hotels even when se…

Fair enough, I'm willing to believe it's doing evil things to hosts on the platform, indeed.

But FWIW, the EU is at least making an effort to regulate the company: https://nltimes.nl/2024/09/19/eu-court-says-bookingcom-wrong... (which claims that Booking can no longer prevent hosts in the EU from offering lower prices elsewhere).

Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#62

Post by soared »

nkrisc wrote: post #47
soared wrote: post #10

Reminds me of trying to book an e-bike in Paris in early 2020 - the app would only accept European credit cards so I was never able to get one!

How is that remotely similar to the linked story?

European transportation app not working as expected?

Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#63

Post by robocat »

deepspace wrote: post #60
devilbunny wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "hey, this is Europe, why not try the train?" I have two people and four items of luggage plus a personal bag each. City trains are poor for this and subways are worse, but I am here for two weeks - I do need clean clothes.

> two people and four items of luggage plus a personal bag each Well, there's you problem. I have traveled the world, including many trips of 6 weeks or more, with only a single. carry-on. Laundromats exist everywhere. Snark aside, a bit of planning and organization w.r.t. packing pays off handsomely in terms of flexibility when traveling. Spontaneous weekend trip to a remote island when carrying only a backpack - su…

Please don't tell other people how they should live.

Personally I love travelling light (> Laundromats exist everywhere.

Only if you value your time at nearly $0. They are incredibly annoying when travelling - too often a 10 or 15 minute walk each way to one. Great for backpacking, but a complete waste of time if you only have a limited amount of time for your holiday.

Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#64

Post by rawgabbit »

ghaff wrote: post #54
rawgabbit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife does not pack light either. She loves giant suitcases. It is always an argument that I rather bring four carry on size suitcases so I can manhandle them up the many stairs in Europe. Instead of two jumbo suitcases.

That's still a fair bit of luggage, however subdivided. Can't always be avoided but still hard to navigate on trains, etc.

It is her chance to dress up. She packs ten different outfits…

I can handle the FrecciaRossa and SNAV with all that the luggage. Can’t do it on local bus or train. I was pleasantly surprised by Rome’s buses. Now I tap my credit card. No more having to go to a local shop to buy a ticket or pay by cash.

Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#65

Post by mmh0000 »

robocat wrote: post #63
deepspace wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> two people and four items of luggage plus a personal bag each Well, there's you problem. I have traveled the world, including many trips of 6 weeks or more, with only a single. carry-on. Laundromats exist everywhere. Snark aside, a bit of planning and organization w.r.t. packing pays off handsomely in terms of flexibility when traveling. Spontaneous weekend trip to a remote island when carrying only a backpack - su…

Please don't tell other people how they should live. Personally I love travelling light ( > Laundromats exist everywhere. Only if you value your time at nearly $0. They are incredibly annoying when travelling - too often a 10 or 15 minute walk each way to one. Great for backpacking, but a complete waste of time if you only have a limited amount of time for your holiday.

Having just got back from a 8 week European vacation, with a wife+kid+me.

There's also the small issue of it being was 95F degrees outside at 75% humidity (southern France). This means 1 outfit isn't lasting more than a day (sometimes only 1/2 a day) before becoming unbearably stinky. x3 this means laundry needs to be done every other day or packing a ton of stuff.

Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#66

Post by TMWNN »

twiss wrote: post #17
pclowes wrote: post #12

Sadly I have encountered this on multiple different kinds of European tech platforms. There is some deep cultural disconnect on understanding how/why American tech companies are successful. Most often they seem to ape most of major US tech platforms functionality but critically somehow miss the "make something people want" and instead make something that: - Sort of works? Has all the major screens but the whole exper…

It's interesting to claim that tourism in Europe won't be "durable" at a moment when tourism in the US is sharply declining.. Anyway, Booking.com is a European company and has many more customers than AirBnB.

> It's interesting to claim that tourism in Europe won't be "durable" at a moment when tourism in the US is sharply declining..

Sorry to shatter your illusions, but for April 2025 (most recent month with final data) https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2...>, Canadian visits are down 20% yoy but overall worldwide visits to US are up 1.3% yoy, including 17% yoy rise in Mexican visitors.

Full data https://www.trade.gov/i-94-arrivals-program>

Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#67

Post by devilbunny »

dontlaugh wrote: post #30
devilbunny wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "hey, this is Europe, why not try the train?" I have two people and four items of luggage plus a personal bag each. City trains are poor for this and subways are worse, but I am here for two weeks - I do need clean clothes.

That sounds like a huge amount of luggage for just two weeks.

You have never met my wife.

However, it’s not that much. Two weeks in one carryon is tight for me; she has trouble doing a weekend in one, and that doesn’t include hanging clothes.

Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#69

Post by Gud »

stickfigure wrote: post #53
socalgal2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is an anecdote but I was curious if Europeans can tell me if this is a one-off experience or if there is something more to do this. I was booked to catch a DBS train from Brussels to Berlin at 9:45 am. I get to the station at 9:25 looking for the train, can't find it. I go to the counter and get told the train came early at 9:15 then "Not my fault" (the first words out of the DBS attendant's mouth"). I go…

Wat? Trains departing early? How does that happen? Seems easy to fix, you just need a clock...

Sounds completely made up to me.

I travel a lot by train and I can’t remember once this has happened.

Re: The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

#70

Post by Gud »

rednafi wrote: post #37

Sums up European tech in general. Moving to Germany from the US made me realize how broken basic things are in Europe overall. But I was told Germany has it the worst, and it’s a bit better in other places. I’ve encountered similar issues before and ended up switching to Uber permanently. Luckily, Uber is available where I live. The same goes for banking apps and brokers here. Half of them have a weird mix of German…

There are some countries in Europe that excel at technology.

Switzerland and Sweden for example.

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