Do you have a vested interest in Booking.com? Interesting that you vehemently defend a common negative experience that booking through third parties is garbage, but you only seem to be defending this particular website.
Probably because that's a website they think is good at this. I don't think we need the pitchforks quite yet.
Nope, just a happy customer. I'm sure other booking websites are similar (I used to use Agoda a long time ago), but I don't want to speak outside my own experience.