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Comment by ratww | Hacker News Reader

Booking.com is a terrible company in pretty much every regard. I've had a reservation to a hotel that was pretty full according to the website scare tactics, but when I got there I was the only person to come in weeks.

Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stuck with Booking.com while Booking.com claim the money is in the hotels account. Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there.

It also happened twice to me that they "double charges" me, with a pre-charge (that is deleted in a few weeks) and then with a real pay, which might leave you without money in your credit card if you have a small credit limit.

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As an opposing pov: we mostly use booking.com for our reservations, and have never had an issue with them, and found their support useful the one or two times we needed it. They're the best reservation site that I know (others are way worse), and are fairly customer friendly [+]. I still book directly whenever I can because I don't want the hosts to pay the rather large booking.com fees... but we often find places to stay through them, and use them for 1 night stays, or places that don't necessarily inspire lots of confidence (e.g. have custom-implemented payment methods), or places that require payment in advance while offering cancel-able options on booking.com.

[+] Yes they use scare tactics but come on, they're easy to ignore. Who cares it's the only available room and 500 people are looking at it right now and 5 of them are already typing in the credit card details? Not me. If I can't get that particular room, I'll get another one, whatever. (I guess it also helps that we often book ~1year in advance, so we're reasonably confident that we'll eventually find something).

I think the problem here is that while they may be easy for you to ignore, that’s not universally true.

Right. They presumably do A/B testing. They wouldn't use these manipulative practices if they didn't work.

I'm using booking for 15+ years, mostly in Europe. I'm a satisfied user. These scare tactics don't bother me since it's easy to ignore. What I care about is that I see exact micro location of property, if I'm going with friends to a mountain cabin it's a real bonus if it's a bit further from other cabins or surreounded by woods. Airbnb burned me more than once with hidding this critical piece of info and only showing general area.

Do you recommend any mountain cabins? I've used and will be trying more of these https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/ but some of the cabins in the Swiss alps look good, paid and free.

I've used https://www.huetten.com/ successfully a few years ago. It has a decent selection of huts in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Mostly Austria I think.

Sorry, trips with friends were all in Serbia, I guess that’s not what you have in mind. EU based bookings were for family trips. Point still stands, if you want exact micro-location Booking.com gives it, while airbnb doesn’t. Are there any other EU booking sites comparable to Booking, meaning all kinds of properties, hotels, private apartments, etc, not limited to single region?

> 5 of them are already typing in the credit card details?

Haha exactly. Two of them have already hit enter! Our service mesh is delaying calling the Stripe API as long as possible in case you want to buy instead!

"Ok they already ordered, but if you buy now we're gonna cancel their order because we like you better!"

At the cost of a few EUR.

Which is basically what Emesa (VakantieVeiligen.nl) do. Scumbags, too.

> Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stuck with Booking.com while Booking.com claim the money is in the hotels account. Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there.

I'm going through the exact same dispute with VRBO (Expedia Group). The apartment that we rented wasn't at all what was advertised, so we left after one night. VRBO first said that because we left voluntarily, there was nothing they could do. After pointing out that we still have our booking as active, they said we need to talk to the owner directly. After pointing out that the owner is just ignoring our messages, they just said that they handle as a middle-man between us and the owner.

After pointing out that the apartment isn't what is advertised, and that the reviews don't even match the property, they said that we agreed to their terms and conditions. I then spend a couple of hours looking at their other terms and conditions, and pointing out that the owner had agreed with these, but that they had broken several of their terms and conditions by apparently using the same listing for multiple properties.

VRBO finally agreed and refunded us their 10% service fee, but claimed that the rest of the money is already with the owner, so we need to talk to them for a refund. (They have ignored us for weeks now)

I'm still baffled that they would handle it this way. First completely dodging any responsibility, only taking some responsibility after highlighting that the owner had broken several of their rules, and only refunding us their service fees. I never paid any money directly to the owner, so I have no clue how the owner will ever refund me.

At this point I don't even really care about the money that was lost, but the fact that both VRBO and the owner are willing to just take my money (1500 EURO), for a single night in their falsely advertised property infuriates me to no end. And I'm doing anything in my power to make their lives as difficult as possible.

Small claims court?

That's exactly the route we're taking now.

For me, in the end I disputed the charge with my credit card and they sided with me when I send pictures of the hotel. The single collective bathroom (yes) had no locks on the door (yes).

wife had rented via airbnb in london a few years back. Booked for... 10 days. It was close to $2000. Got there - TV broken. No curtains on window in main room, which faced an office block close enough where people could see you and you could see them. You had to walk between bedroom and bathroom through the main room. Leftover food in the fridge ("you can eat that if you want, previous people didn't finish it"). 2 hangars in a closet. Shower head didn't work - sprayed water out of the top, but not down. After 3 days of 'complaints' (messaged on airbnb and directly), my wife got an extra 6 hangars and the shower 'fixed', sort of. They claimed she must have broken the TV - no one previously had complained.

My wife provided video and picture evidence of this to airbnb - no support. Hosts threatened to provide negative feedback to her and essentially blackball her with other hosts in London. We provided THAT messaging to airbnb - still nothing.

airbnb's position was "well, if it was bad, you should have left and we might have refunded some of your money". Leave $2k with them, go spend another... $2000 on hotel someplace else (assuming you can even get anything short notice), then hope/pray you get some refund? I think we have waived some chargeback ability because of T&C we'd agreed to (I might be misremembering this). We should have pressed chargeback with cc company. It was horrible experience, and we've not used them since.

> ”No curtains on window in main room, which faced an office block close enough where people could see you and you could see them.”

This place sounds terrible, and of course it should have had curtains. But the part about facing onto other buildings is pretty normal in London.

sure - my wife used to live in london years back, so isn't a complete stranger. but... seeing pictures of a room that has curtains, then getting there and not having curtains is just nuts.

> well, if it was bad, you should have left and we might have refunded some of your money

Heh, VRBO said the exact opposite to us. Essentially "you should've stayed at the property, but since you left, we can't help you". One of our major complaints was that you had to walk through he first bedroom in order to get to the second. For two adults, that's just a stupid arrangement, and should've been mentioned up front.

At this point I believe they'll use any excuse not to refund you. Had you stayed they would have asked the question above.

Like I said, they've refunded the 10% service fee that they normally take, and this was only after pointing out that the owner had broken their TOS. The other 90% is still lost, and they claim there's nothing they can do about it.

I already disputed the charges weeks ago, but from talking to the credit card company, it seems that VRBO just claimed that nothing was wrong. Luckily in their last email to me, they admitted the owner broke their TOC, and that they had asked the owner to change their listings. I personally think that should be enough evidence for my credit card company to provide a charge back.

I am very careful never to book vrbo via hotels.com (which i usually use); there is 0 support once you do. Both are selling via Expedia (hotels.com and vrbo) but with vrbo you have no recourse. Doesn't matter what is wrong, good luck to you. Hotels has it's flaws but even in the weirdest places on earth where we booked hotels and the hotel owners had no clue what Expedia is or why we turned up, they always find a similar or better accommodation for you. We found our favorite hotel (unfortunately on the other side of the world) that way. They couldn't find anything close so they asked if we would mind an extra drive but the hotel is 2x the price: they would pay the difference. We said yes and ended up in a fabulous place we immediately stayed 3 weeks at. It is all about the service. Booking has more inventory and vrbo is often cheaper but screw that; peace of mind is definitely better for me.

Normally I would just book through a hotel directly. But this was a 6 week trip, through multiple countries and multiple cities, with a friend. So instead of us both spending $120 each, we could spend $120 a night on an apartment. We had 4 reservations through VRBO, and the other 3 were perfect for us. But that 1 bad experience really put me off of ever using their platform again. They could've just accepted responsibility and refunded our money, but they decided against it.

I'm now traveling alone, and am paying around $80 a night for a decent hotel. I agree, peace of mind is worth paying for, traveling these days is already stressful enough.

Almost the exact same thing happened to me. I used a debit card to pay (don't do this) and got refunded because I filed a dispute, which was denied, only because my bank failed to give a provisional credit (violation of federal regulations). VRBO offered no help at all.

You know this happens a lot when they issue 10% refunds. If it were rare and they cared about customers at all they would refund 100% and deal with the owner themselves. They just don't want to get into the business of talking with renters.

That's what I still don't get, they admitted the owner broke their TOS, and used the same listing for multiple properties. Especially after they said they're just the "middle man", you would think they would just issue a full refund, since they essentially just let stuff like this happen.

Them issuing a 10% refund just felt like an insult to me. Hence why we're taking it further as well.

> Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there.

Consider yourself lucky. For me it was 20eur take it or leave it, on 500eur loss.

<rant> I consider cancellation/refund policies that end before your arrival technically - a scam. The situation was like that - the apartment was booked with cancellation available 3 (or smth) days before arrival [0]. Upon arrival - the place was cigarette reeking, bedbug infested, with 30 year old completely worn out mattresses disgusting place. Owner says - "sorry - no refunds" [1], booking says - "we talked to the owner, cancellation policy has ended, the reviews are above average" [2][3]. Upon other calls they gave me 20eur. Bank could not issue a refund, because everything was up to policy.

Though I still use booking.com. I learned to ignore those dark patterns, because it's obvious that 1 spot is left for an apartment, there are no more to it :) . I had only 1 horrible experience with them, but had much worse with AirBNB. Booking.com is great to search all types of accommodation and it's often possible to find a way to book directly and for cheaper, so using it sort of as a search engine. </rant>

[0] from my experience it's usually like that, cancellations/refunds until your arrival usually add exorbitant amounts to the price

[1] though owner suggested ordering cleaning services, but that place needed crime scene level cleaning and complete refurbishment

[2] lesson learned: always sort reviews by newest and translate from foreign languages, because newest 3 reviews were horrifying. But I have not read them, because have not translated them, or have not seen them. Because default sorting shows by "relevant", i.e. foreign language reviews are on the bottom and the other sort order is a mystery to me.

[3] it seams that people do not know how to vote in reviews. If you returned from vacation and infested your own home with bed bugs, and had multitude of other problems - do not give 7 or 8 as a review score - give it a 1. Booking.com used those reviews against me - "if it's above 8 - we cannot do anything about it".

Oh, I wonder if we went to the same place. Exact same experience.

The funny part is that you can cancel before arriving, but if you're set to stay multiple days, you can't cancel the other days. Might as well make N reservations instead of 1 with N days.

About reviews: Booking.com didn't allow me to leave a review, since they claimed I could only spend one day at the hotel. Even though they charged me for a week. They are as crooked as it gets.

> About reviews: Booking.com didn't allow me to leave a review,

We had a feeling about this. So we explicitly did not allow them to cancel, unless they refunded us. I had a hunch if they'd cancel, we also going to lose ability to leave a review. On top of that it would allow host of the apartment to re-rent the place for our days and essentially be paid twice.

In South Korea all the hotels we booked on booking.com cancels the booking when you arrive and you pay on the desk. That's how they do it not to pay the booking.com tax.

I guess they don’t care too much about staying on booking.com, then?

They politely ask you to cancel your own booking. I think we only experience a couple of hotels that cancel it themselves after informing us that they will cancel it. Maybe booking.com don't want to reduce their inventory so most are not penalize.

I agree with all your points.

However, last time I travel for a extended time (hotel everyday at different place for a month), I found Booking has the best UI after some comparison between all the major players (keep in mind lots of them are from the same company), I still used it.

Would like a recommandation about what to use instead.

As you point out, the vast majority of hotel booking platforms in the US and Europe are controlled by either Booking Holdings or Expedia Group. Whatever website you use, chances are it's really of one of these conglomerates. But some notable exceptions include:

  Trip.com
  Tripadvisor
  Lastminute

(Trivago used to be another major independent, but Expedia Group now owns the majority of it's shares)

I still use their UI but I just call the hotels directly.

When I can't find anything, I use AirBnB.

We arrived at a hotel, then found out we could get the room for a cheaper rate than we got on booking.

The hotel was very helpful, and we cancelled the booking both from our, as well as the hotel’s side. Nonetheless it took Booking.com days to decide that the refund was legitimate.

Isn’t the hotel screwing Booking.com over in that scenario?

In all fairness, Booking.com is screwing everyone over, so it seems to balance things out.

Perhaps, but a hotel willing to screw over Booking.com to make some extra bucks might be similarly willing to screw me over.

If you go down that route of thinking - any online marketplace (e.g.: Amazon, mobile app stores, Steam ...) and even offline your local green market and groceries store are all screwing everyone over.

After snatching that alleged last apartment in a 3 story cabin, we ended up being the only guests, and the owner was snoring in the attic.

I also have quite a few bad experiences with them, including some surprises with the actual hotel room, however I have had worse ones with other services, so I keep using them.

I agree totally and, despite spending 3-6 months of most years traveling, we never use them anymore.

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