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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

#91

Post by vinay427 »

qeternity wrote: post #52
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.

Consumer travel protections in the US are much stronger than in Europe. I’m not really sure what regulations you’re thinking of. Source: American expat in Europe.

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.

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

#92

Post by krono »

3boll wrote: post #73
MikeDelta wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and 20 people looking at this room, booked 10x in the last hour, last one left. When you go to the hotel website instead, you see plenty of rooms left and sometimes with a nice offer.

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.

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

#93

Post by grogenaut »

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.

This is actually true with many online booking systems, especially the ones people actually use. I've been told this using at least 10 different booking sites at over 20 hotels since 2005. At one major chain in downtown Cincinnati the clerk brought the manager over, who looked at the rate, and proceeded to pick up the phone and contact corporate to adjust the rate up, they manager told me they were losing money at that rate.

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

#94

Post by NumberCruncher »

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?

I did not say, that is illegal to fire people in Germany. Nonetheless as an employer you have to obey the laws making firing cumbersome. Laws, not made by slave drivers...

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

#95

Post by em500 »

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?

It's not illegal to fire people in Germany. But just like most of Europe they need to provide some "just cause [1]", unlike in the US where there are a lot more "at-will [2]" employment contracts.

Left wing economist believe this is a great feature that makes lives much better for employees. Right wing economists believes this a bad feature that only protects incumbent employees and makes employers less inclined to hire in the first place or waste resources on workarounds like temp-agencies. Neither standpoints can be conclusively proven, so is mostly a matter of ideology.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_cause_(employment_law)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

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

#96

Post by herbst »

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 the issue any time within a few minutes.

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

#97

Post by oblio »

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?

Because they're not firing.

They're jerks, trying to force them out by moving them to a crap subsidiary without benefits, maybe forced relocation to another country (!), etc.

Firing people means paying severance.

They want to avoid doing that and for obvious reasons in many countries that's illegal.

I guess they figured possible lawsuits are cheaper.

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

#98

Post by vinay427 »

MandieD wrote: post #43
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.

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.

On the other hand, after growing up in the US I have to do the same when shopping in Germany or Switzerland. It’s almost unheard of for stores here to offer compensation such as a refund or exchange for many situations commonplace in the US, and many customer service interactions for other things like a phone bill have exhibited stubbornness to arbitrary policies that borders on hostility IMO.

I’m not sure sales tax excluded from prices is a matter of vigilance if it’s a nearly-universal national norm. It’s a bit like someone from the US complaining about being charged for bottled water at a restaurant in Spain after assuming they’d receive free tap water.

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

#99

Post by darkwater »

richardfey wrote: post #68
blunte wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several commentors have written this advice, but almost always if I check the hotel website directly I see much higher prices than what are offered on booking. hotels.com, or agoda. However, with flights and flight search websites I do sometimes see close to equal pricing, and in that domain I almost always check the airline website itself and book directly when possible.

Not even once I have seen a higher price on the hotel's website. But I travel mostly to Europe so your experience might be different.

I travel mostly Europe and it happens all the time. Also I have a past working in a travel/booking agency and if you are big enough you can get discount prices from hotels because they know you are going to book them X days of rooms over a month. So, they reduce their margin but gets more exposure/promotion by the travel agency.

With flights it's a different thing, but it can happen as well.

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

#100

Post by durnygbur »

llampx wrote: post #79
durnygbur wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 people are reading this comment right now, 3 people have upvoted it. And it's you, dear HN folks, who implements all this.

Of course the entire rest of the chain is cleared of all wrongdoing, because the CEO, the VP and the product manager didn't write the code. Nice.

We submit to cutthroat and exploitive recruitment processes so we can submit to assholes in the workplace ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Some claim the remuneration package makes it worth it.
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