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Comment by quickaskq | Hacker News Reader

The one time I used booking.com I got screwed over. Their website is riddled with dark patterns and has probably been A/B tested into oblivion. The tactic they used that screwed me over was that they advertised 100% refunds on last minute cancellations. I used booking.com for this exact reason as I didn’t know if I’d be staying the night in the city I was driving past. Well turns out I didn’t need the booking but when I went to cancel I didn’t get a refund. When I went to go back to booking.com to see what their policy was, it was clear they carefully worded the last minute cancellation policy to really mean something completely different from what they knew they were advertising.

Lesson learned: never use any third party service when you can book the place directly. Also last minute cancellations probably just don’t exist

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Anecdotal, but I’ve canceled booking.com reservations probably 50+ times over the past decade without issue.

They certainly use nefarious UX patterns like “10 people just booked this location!!” But I’ve always found the “free cancellation by” dates to be reliable.

On the other hand, booking hotels directly is an absolute nightmare of interfacing with whatever broken systems the underfunded “IT” departments of said hotel have bolted on. At that point you might as well just call the front desk and wait 20 mins to be transferred to 3 different people.

If you're booking with a major chain like Marriott, Hilton etc, it's always worth booking directly, because it's much better to at least interface directly with those broken systems. If/when things break down, their own customer support can usually sort you out (esp if you have elite status), plus they're much more willing to comp you to better rooms etc. If you book through a proxy, the odds of breakage increase and support on both sides will just point fingers at each other.

Or just pick up the phone and call? found it to be a better option in some cases. Got better prices than booking.com too.

The only problems we had with booking.com is that they give you no protection whatsoever. One case, the hotel clearly gamed the reviews and posted false info. It was so bad that we had to leave. But we were still charged the full amount, and booking.com just stood aside.

Just recently, my wife booked a hotel in Tel-Aviv. The hotel charged her card twice (booking.com seemed to have passed the card info to the hotel). We cancelled, and still waiting for the refund/release of the funds. Booking.com does nothing to help. We have to bounce between the unhelpful hotel and the slow-as-hell bank/credit card company.

OT: but are there any banks or credit card companies in Germany that actually help you when you're in this situation or need a chargeback? it seems like the low card fees in EU means much worse customer service compared to the US, or is it just my wishful thinking?

> OT: but are there any banks or credit card companies in Germany that actually help you when you're in this situation or need a chargeback?

In my experience the Sparkasse is pretty decent, but since they're regional institutions YMMV.

> it seems like the low card fees in EU means much worse customer service compared to the US, or is it just my wishful thinking?

We just don't have much credit card usage since SEPA-ELV works pretty well. SEPA Direct Debit stuff you can chargeback at almost all institutions via online banking or self-service ATMs, credit card depends on your institution.

not sure why you were downvoted, even though SEPA offers a terrible UX in my opinion, and in no way close to using cards. (both for the merchant and payer in my limited experience).

For the cherry on top, the hotel would cancel your booking on their side - then you won't be able to leave reviews either.

yes exactly! in this case we cancelled, but because it was an already bad experience before even checking in. And we have no way of sharing the bad experience with others. Both the hotel and booking.com seemed completely disinterested resolving the issue.

Perhaps it's cheating a bit, but most of the time they don't check credit cards you use for "booking confirmation". A friend of mine used to use 4242 4242 4242 4242 for quite some time, and when they've blocked it, he switched to his own debit card with spend limit set to $1.

Using a fake CC or setting a spending limit doesn’t in any way absolve you from your contractual obligations.

Yes. But in practice they ynot suing for breach and you don't have to get your money back

You know the most effective pattern on booking.com to screw your guest? If you have something odd, you cancel their reservation. The guests will NEVER be able to give you a rating, nor booking.com will move a finger to refund them.

> At that point you might as well just call the front desk and wait 20 mins to be transferred to 3 different people.

When they don't tell you to book from booking.com directly...

Booking.com has made hotel reservation much easier.

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.

Yes indeed - I'm a pretty frequent user from Germany and I have used the free cancellation feature a few times without trouble. You can tell that it's real from the fact that offers with free cancellation, especially when close to the arrival date, are a few percent more expensive ;)

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.

No, I think this is about mental exercise. Do I have to go shopping with a calculator to know how much I am spending?

To me personally it's weird. I come to shop with $5 but I don't know what I can actually buy...

Yeah, I understand. It's definitely not ideal and I don't want to sound like I'm condoning it because it really should be improved. I'm just not sure there's an obvious solution given the US/Canadian regional/local autonomy over sales taxes, but I'm glad to hear ideas. Most towns in California, for instance, have their own sales tax rates and while this could obviously be accommodated in retail spaces (at the cost of confusing national advertising?) it makes displaying prices rather complicated on online marketplaces which currently add taxes once a shipping address is entered during the checkout process. In contrast, despite the reasonable regional autonomy in Switzerland (not too dissimilar from states in the US) a national VAT rate avoids this issue.

The obvious exception is for marketplaces that sell to other markets. For instance, the prices on Amazon.de (Germany) change if a Swiss shipping address is entered due to the different VAT rate.

What's so alarming about us not putting sales tax on products? I grew up in the US but in a non sales tax state so my experience until I was 25 was the same as yours. When I later moved to a sales tax state I knew the price was going to be ~5-10% higher than what was printed but I got used to it very quickly.

I hate to stereotype but I've found Germans in my experience to take particular offense to this practice. I'm married to someone from the UK and British people complain about this as well but probably only 1/10 as much. I feel like if I asked most Germans their least favorite thing about the US this is would be the MOST common response. I don't get it.

It's a real-life dark pattern. The benefits of showing the price with taxes for consumers vastly outweigh the minor problems for stores, other than makes them look cheaper.

I'd call it "fraud". The store is basically hiding the real price from me.

Are there "service charges" too? :)

Maybe due to the German fondness for cash?

A few percent higher prices aren't as much of a deal when paying with credit card, the transaction works exactly the same, but when paying cash, it might look very different (up to "don't actually have enough with me. oops.")

This stands to reason, credit card use in the UK is very high. So high in fact I recall several times before I had a chip card having trouble paying at cashless kiosks.

> if I asked most Germans their least favorite thing about the US this is would be the MOST common response

Either this or the Imperial units.

How can you not get it? It's completely annoying - stores show a price that is not the real price. So I have to now look up what is the sales tax before I can make an informed decision.

You may be fine with it if you live there and have learned to instinctively add 9% - but to a foreign traveler, one doesn't even know what percent they should add! _Of course_ it's annoying.

P.S. I am not German.

edited to add: It's just like the insane tipping culture in US. If you don't tip, somehow _you_ are the monster. It's not a problem that restaurants don't pay a living wage, it's not a problem that they don't even have to pay the minimum legal wage (!!!) - no, the problem is not with America. It's with the monsters that don't tip, because how else are those poor servers going to survive? Basically, when you look at the price in a US menu, you have to remember that the real price is at least 130% of that. And somehow, americans seem to be fine with it, and consider that it's the foreigners that are the oddballs here.

Do note, I don't have a problem with tipping, and I do tip even in my country, quite generously so sometimes (e.g. 50% at barbershops because I feel their prices are just too low, and also the person providing the service is actually doing most of the work too). But I don't like being forced to do it. It's one thing to tip as a sign of "thank you, good job!"; and it's a completely different feeling to tip as "here, this will give you something to eat this month"

Euros are always complaining about tipping and acting like servers don't prefer it because they make way more money...

> I hate to stereotype but I've found Germans in my experience to take particular offense to this practice.

That's kinda funny to hear, as these hilarious comedy clips have been some of the most popular on YouTube the last months:

German Learns about U.S. Sales Tax - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CYokP6YIKw

German learns about Tipping in the U.S. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEQhA-JJlH0

Both are worth a watch, just 1 min each.

> several of the dark patterns don't

The "only x room left with these conditions" false claim is used also in the EU.

Yep, cannot understand people still fall for that though. But I guess if you are a first time user…

As it is a lie, it should not be allowed.

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.

This is true, but I remember reading an article where the journalist compared the "only X rooms left with these conditions" claim to the system of the given hotel in real time. Well, as it turned out, the hotel had more than X free rooms with those conditions allocated to booking.com...

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.

I had that in Asia quite a lot with Booking; that's not my problem though; it's theirs. But that's why I do not use them (booking) whenever I can prevent it. Hotels.com has this rarely but when they have it, they make sure you are well taken care off; I got much better and far more expensive hotels for the same price in those cases. I discovered ny favorite hotel in the world (so far) by a double (double double; the overbooked twice for the same room) booking; everything was full so they booked me in a hotel in the middle of a nature reserve which was much more expensive at that point, but I paid nothing more of course. Very nice for a business trip where I was supposed to sleep in a concrete bunker in a city.

I understood that airlines and hotels have a tiered system fist x at this rate next y and rate*y … etc I have booked directly with Marion and IHG last minute and they both had prices change the next day when I took a peak. Assuming the thread isn’t about some random number generator

Beware, Marion had a higher price after I visited trivago

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.

How so? Afaik you don't even have proper laws for normal online purchasing returns. It's kinda hard to believe that in this section the US somehow managed to actually protect their people better than Europe.

> It's kinda hard to believe that in this section the US somehow managed to actually protect their people better than Europe.

Well, I don't know what to tell you. For instance, in the US you have 24 hours to cancel a flight booking for any reason if booked more than 7 days out. In Europe, you might get a 4 hour window if you're lucky, but often times not (especially with the vicious European LCCs).

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.

I've lived in NY, CH and UK (where I'm from) and think Switerland is the odd one out in this respect.

Quality of life is highest in most respects there, but only really so long as you're happy to go along with things and not rock the boat. Get paid well, enjoy the contryside, but know your place were the vibes I got ha.

In the EU?

For the first 6 months, the legal assumption is that any defect was present at purchase which means - in practice - you can return pretty much any defective item no questions asked.

What did you want to return and could not?

> In the EU?

Most instances were in Switzerland as I mentioned, although a few were in the EU. Some weren't defective items but rather unneeded items. Returns based on changing one's mind, even if the item is in unused condition and remains re-sellable, seems to not be a "thing" in at least several European countries whereas American consumers typically expect these consumer protections not by law but by convention.

Another electronic device was defective, and even after selecting this in the online purchase return form I was charged a restocking fee despite returning the item within a few weeks of purchase. Not budging on this and refunding the fee would be unheard of for any serious US retailer.

You have, by law, two weeks to return any item you bought online for any reason whatsoever, and you have 6 months essentially "no questions asked" return for defective items - on top of the actual warranty periods (that, again, are by law).

As far as conventions go, I check some larger retailers from Europe, like Zalando, and they offer a 100 day return policy [1] by convention.

Maybe Switzerland is the outlier here?

[1] https://en.zalando.de/faq/Returns-and-Refunds/About-our-100-...

Zalando is famously an exception in multiple countries I’ve been in, to the extent that some shop there because of their lenient return policies. I’m not sure how unique Switzerland is here. It seemed relatively similar in Germany, for instance.

Just to check, the parent was talking about online purchases but did you mean physical retail? There you indeed have no legal right for a return, all sales are final as you had a chance to inspect the wares before the purchase.

In practice some stores do accept returns if you have a receipt, but personally I have never done that, didn't know it was even an option before an expat was asking about this online. The default is to sell forward in online second hand marketplaces. Especially gifts you receive, those are never returned (as apparently happens in the US said that expat).

Can you be specific then? Like, you are aware that you have a 2 week period minimum, and a 6 month period for defective wares. There's also many shops that have more than a 2 week period because it's good customer policy. It's not just Zalando, I checked the next biggest German store (Otto) and they have a 30 day free return policy.

By contrast, in the US it all depends on store policy and, apparently, luck. I had some pretty bad customer experiences in the US, and there was nothing I could do then.

For example, this whole Saga on GamersNexus (check other videos) is a good indicator that the US system may not be perfect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fnXsmXzphI

As Steve says in the video, in the US you have no recourse. There's no law. The shop in question didn't feel like being "nice" and the person is out of 500$. For Steve, this amounts to a scam, but the burden of proof is on him. For specifically this reason, the EU has a law that says otherwise.

I personally prefer the EU setup, but I can explain what the GP is talking about.

Back when I was in the US, I could have bought a wetvac from a major chain store, shampoo my carpets, then returned it for a full refund. It would have been a fully functioning item that I gained beneficial use from, but the store would still take the used item back and return all my money.

This comes with a huge caveat. It’s a semi-official store policy, but not a legally binding requirement. If the manager doesn’t like you, then you’re on your own. Granted, the manager doesn’t care that much, because they’re just going to put the used wetvac and sell it to someone else. That person might discover that I broke the unit and they legitimately can’t use it. However, if they don’t have the same magic sprinkles I have (e.g. a title, a midwestern accent, white skin), the store might decide not to give them a refund, even though I’m the one that broke the appliance in the first place.

Since leaving the US, I haven’t had a store try to unload used merchandise on me and I like that I don’t have to put on a performance to get a refund on faulty items, but I’ve encountered other expats who found it a culture shock.

I don't know how many of the dark patterns I don't get to see as an EU user (not that I want to see them), but there are plenty still there: only showing positive reviews or stressing the positive features of an accommodation ("very quiet" because it's in the middle of nowhere etc.), pressuring you into booking by showing accommodations that are already fully booked, showing how many users are allegedly looking at the same offer "right now", showing that they only have 0.5 rooms left etc. etc. etc.

Not related to Booking.com, but these types of companies sometimes screw you over in ways you didn't even imagine.

On my first trip to the USA (traveling from South Africa), Travelstart managed to somehow inject the word "DOCUMENT" into my name that was on the tickets.

So my name e.g. "JOHN DOE" became "JOHN DOCUMENT DOE". At the customs/border control in Atlanta they noted that my ticket's name didn't correspond to my passport, which was actually a huge problem. Luckily they eventually let me into the country because the TSA agent was super friendly and "vouched" - which is bizarre on its own.

Needless to say, I always order tickets directly from the airliner now.

Here's a Booking.com employee that was part of the Consumer Psychology Team coming forward and arguing that what they've been doing is not illegal in the EU, after they were forced to change course because what they've been doing was incompatible with the law.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29472233

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471213

> not illegal

> incompatible with the law

This is amazing.

I can't find the second quote :-(

What I find amazing is that @techcode says, "Not sure what illegal consumer practice are you talking about." Dude! I know what the illegal practice his team (He says he was tech lead of the "Consumer Psychology Team" at the time.) did. It was "unduly putting time pressure on users", most likely related to misrepresenting what the "X people are looking at this" and "last available" means. I'm sorry, but you're not paid enough to play dumb for your employer. Especially when it's your team that has been singled out by government regulators.

A much better -- and honest -- defense would have been to state that it wasn't against the law when written, because the law didn't go into effect until January 2020, and the press release was from December 2019, and they would become in compliance within the six months as agreed to.

not illegal != decent, acceptable

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.

Just remember that they will list hotels as «full» if they don’t have any rooms out on booking.com. Many hotels never do, and some hotels only do when they have a lot of free rooms.

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.

Same here. I often tried to get s better price by just asking, but more than once the booking price was already far better than anything they could offer.

I never, and I mean never, got the genius welcome cocktail they always advertised for. No hotel ever heard of that

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.

I wonder how they can be losing money on a room that would be otherwise vacant?

Turning over a room (to make it habitable for a next guest) costs wages, and that's just the bare minimum cost that I can think of. There are probably a dozen hidden costs associated with allowing someone to stay in a room.

Yeah, I used similar site to booking.com last week, and asked the hotel if they can price match (they had best price guarantee on their site), and they straight face told me they can't ... baffling

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

Are you referring to the "x people has looked at this room in the last y" scam message?

yes

Clearly producing value for shareholders needs to come before ethics, morals and general decency.

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.

This kind of thing is exactly what an ombudsman would be good for. Screwing a million people for a little bit of money each.

They should have the power to fine a firm that's found to not actually be checking whether other people are online, whether a hotel is actually empty, etc.

While I most often use hotels.com, I have used booking many times. I have never had any trouble nor complaint with the website, but perhaps that's because I'm in the EU and there are more regulations (as another commentor noted).

Many times booking directly from the hotel has benefits like more relaxed cancellation rules, which conveniently booking.com and others charge money for.

I got burned by the opposite: I booked a nice place for my brother's wedding 4 months ahead. At that time the prices were quite good. Fast forward a week before the weeding and I receive an email that the host is unable to process my credit card. So I try to contact the host - by phone, email, all possible ways, telling them I have several other cards, I can also pay by Paypal or wire transfer - but they don't reply. I notice the prices rose by 100% in the meantime and the host is trying to cancel my booking in an innocuous way. I wrote to booking.com - no reply. After that a second email arrived that the host was unable to charge my credit card (with a limit 50x more than the value of the booking...) and booking.com cancelled my reservation. Of course when I read the comments online it turned out I was not the first victim of this scheme.

So, if booking.com cannot guarantee the very basics, why should I use them as an agent? It makes no sense to me - it's much better to book directly.

Book directly with the hotels if possible. Lots of hotels will forgo the 24-hour cancellation charge if you ask nicely. Hotels can't do much if you book with a 3rd party since you're a customer of the 3rd party, not with the hotel.

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.

In the past I've called and asked the hotel if they are willing to price match as I much rather want to be a customer of them, rather than Booking.com, and I think only around two times have they denied my request. Probably because those were very large hotel chains and didn't really care about one customer here and there. But smaller hotels have always accepted price marching for me.

Hotel websites aren't typically that great for good prices, nor for the ease of use. But talking to someone on the phone and quoting the booking.com (esp. genius) price can give you a good anchor, and many hotels will at least match it.

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 travelled mostly Europe and SEA and ask directly for everything longer than a night or two. Yes, listed prices on websites are almost always higher, and no I couldn't get a better price than with booking in the majority of cases.

Usually booking maximal a week before arrival. So maybe that's why?

Maybe it depends on where exactly, or what kind of hotels, how late you are with your booking, or the booking genius I have, however I had the exact opposite impression.

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.

Hotels.com and some others have reward schemes; while travelling for business, I got 50+ free nights. Booking the hotel directly would need to be at least 10% cheaper and it just is not unless you are a regular or stay very long stretches.

While I'm far from trusting booking I used late cancellation several times in EU. Usually those offers were more expensive, but I was charged late as promised (like a day before reservation date) and if cancelled before it just worked.

Usually I'm more worried that their places usually just get my credit card number in plain text, write it down in a notebook and some frontdesk person simply uses that CC numbers to charge me on my first day there or so, manually entering it into CC terminal.

Last time I used booking.com, I remember that the cancellation policy differed depending on the specific hotel. Most have free cancellation but only if you cancel more than a day before your booking.

They did the same thing to me and I never used them again. Don’t they realise they are losing repeat customers?

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