It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency.
"9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!"
Yeah, right.
"9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!"
Yeah, right.
When you open the listing, it should wait a few seconds and then show you a number between 8 and 20 of people who are actively looking at this listing. If it was night-time, it shouldn't really be that much, so let's put in a number between 2 and 8.
This was of course all fake since the platform didn't launch yet. There was also a lot of other "building fake anxiety" tactics, but this one and all other got buried way in the backlog and never actually implemented thankfully.
I'm not saying that Booking.com is doing this, but I definitely hate this pattern.
I never worked in a brick and mortar store but I wonder if they purposely only place 1 or 2 items onto a shelf to create a false sense of scarcity. Meanwhile they have a whole pallet of them in the back. As a customer you would never know but if it came down to taking legal action, it would probably be pretty hard to prove without a doubt this was done on purpose.
Scarcity or feeling like you're going to miss out on something (especially a deal) is a really powerful trigger. I generally ignore most advertising but man when you see that there's only 2 left of something you want on an online site, I would be lying if I said it didn't affect me. Luckily this tactic is less potent now for a number of things because so many online stores sell the same items.
So technically, it's not. But I agree with you that it should be labeled as such.
Also, this functionality has received significant amount of scrutiny from some regulators, so last I looked, there was a mouse over that gave the actual definition.
That being said, in no way am I trying to convince anyone that it's not a "dark pattern" or that you have to think it's a good idea on any way. Just looking to preempt some comment that claims Booking.com is actively lying about this. They weren't ~5-6 years ago when I read the implementation and I don't they could've started doing that systematically since then due to regulatory attention.
It would just make the web a little more serene place if the said websites did away with these kind of pernicious practices which only induce stress and agony.
What I was trying to do was to preempt the allegations that Booking is lying to its users. None of the allegations I'd seen while I was there actually checked out on that front. I, like most others, severely disliked the urgency messaging, but as is with ethics discussions, it was never clear cut. I did not perceive that there was a widespread culture of trying to trick users into purchasing something they didn't want. For most of my tenure, I managed the infrastructure department, not product, so was a bit removed. Experimentation infrastructure fell into my scope, though. We invested significant effort into both education and countermeasures for things like p-hacking.
I just did a search for nearby rooms for the end of September 2020. It shows me a bunch of listings with a bright red “Only 1 left!” As far as I can tell, these are Airbnb style listings where the property is really just a single apartment. The message is technically correct (there is only one left) but incredibly misleading (there’s only one to even be available at all, it’s not because of high demand).
Every listing I checked also shows me “Lowest price today!” Obviously that’s because the price has remained constant. In fact, I’m likely the first person today to check these particular dates at all. The claim is technically correct, but easily creates the impression that you’ve caught a price decrease and that it’s likely to go back up soon.
I didn’t see it in this search, but I’ve seen many times before where sites will say something like “5 rooms left for this date” and “12 people booked this today.” They mean 12 people booked this hotel in general today, but it’s easily interpreted as 12 people booked the dates you’re looking at where there’s only 5 left, so you’d better grab it now.
It’s misleading and they know it’s misleading. That is lying even if the statements are technically correct. After all, lying is about intent; making a false statement sincerely is not a lie, and making a true statement with the intent to deceive is.
There's booking.com mentioned at 3min 30sec into the video on the main page.
So, why? In me it creates a sense of "no thanks, I'll wait".
Maybe... at this exact price. Maybe the next available will be higher. Maybe not.