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This isn’t surprising to me. I know lots of people who work for this company in the Netherlands, and I’ve heard a lot of inside stories about the questionable b
by jb1991 5y ago
This isn’t surprising to me. I know lots of people who work for this company in the Netherlands, and I’ve heard a lot of inside stories about the questionable business practices that go on there. Starting at the very top, with the fraudulent marketing lies to sell you rooms because there’s only X number of rooms left, which is entirely bogus, and for which the courts have punished them, if I recall. They’re not interested in anything but profit above all else. It is unfortunate, that this is what the tech industry has evolved into.
- kaba0 5y ago> They’re not interested in anything but profit above all else Not disagreeing with you, but why is it a surprise to anyone? Any company that seems to be “nice” is only doing that as a good PR increases their profits, which depending on domain may be very important.
- mckirk 5y agoAny public company, perhaps. Private companies could decide to care about profit not as much and be genuinely 'nice' -- though the invisible hand would probably come along at some point and replace it with something more profit oriented.
- dgb23 5y agoI find it unfortunate that the "invisible hand" is somehow seen as a real force of nature. It's a spooky, ideological term that implies some kind of simple generality describing a system that is everything but simple. Additionally it is used as a bad excuse for exploitative, oppressive or otherwise shitty behavior - which is ironic, because that is exactly the thing that is claimed _not_ to happen by definition. There are real firms in highly competitive markets that have been doing well for decades or even more than a hundred years without putting the profit motive above everything else, but have favored long term stability, cooperation, servicing customers, respecting workers and so on.
- elliekelly 5y agoIt’s not necessarily about PR. Being nice is good business. The problem is being nice is good in the long term while being a greedy bastard generally pays more immediate dividends.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoBooking.com is the poster child of 'dark UX patterns' like that.
- blablabla123 5y agoI cannot recall anything concrete but from HN and other tech news platforms I heard only bad things about the platform.
- DonHopkins 5y agoIt's a common discussion topic -- a few links: Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152155 https://medium.com/@ilyadoroshin/bad-ux-how-booking-com-deceives-clients-5dc9e9485f32 https://medium.com/@ilyadoroshin/bad-ux-how-booking-com-dece... How Booking.com manipulates users (ro-che.info) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15297915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15297915 https://ro-che.info/articles/2017-09-17-booking-com-manipulation https://ro-che.info/articles/2017-09-17-booking-com-manipula... [dupe] Dark Patterns (darkpatterns.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20858714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20858714 https://www.darkpatterns.org/ https://www.darkpatterns.org/ Successful machine learning models: lessons learned at Booking.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182445 https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/10/07/150-successful-machine-learning-models/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/10/07/150-successful-machine-l... Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites (2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968531 https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/ https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/
- DonHopkins 5y agoBooKing.com is one of the biggest Perl shops in the world. They're desperate to hire lots of willing Perl programmers, so they have to set the bar low. And inexperienced programmers cause lots of security problems. Edit: My point is about the moral flexibility of BooKing.com, which is well established and widely known, not good Perl programmers, who are rare, hard to hire, and extremely expensive (especially by Netherlands programmer salary rates). And to jacquesm's point about plants: All any intelligence service has to do to place a plant at BooKing.com is fake them up a good looking resume full of Perl experience, and Bob's your U.N.C.L.E.! Edit2: yes xxs, downvoting's probably from royalists offended at the thought of one of the Netherland's biggest tech companies has been mocking their King. Good Perl programmers can take a joke. ;)
- marginalia_nu 5y agoFor some reason, the hotel business seems pretty shady. My sense from crawling the web is that it's one of the areas that have the most blackhat SEO as well. Straight up linkfarms. This is sheer speculation, but I do think the hotel business is really convenient to get into if you have a questionable side-business and need to launder money. Who is to say if a room was occupied or not that night, if that foreigner who paid in cash really existed. Can pretty much just trickle money into the books. I imagine you could also run contraband out of them fairly easily. Lots of people coming and going with all sorts of luggage. Who is to say if they are as full when they leave as they were when they arrived? Great for prostitution too, trafficking. The girls can tidy up the rooms during the day.
- 101008 5y agoArgentina president Cristina Kirchner is accused of having a hotel chain in Patagonia for money laundery purposes. Investigators say the hotel never received anyone despite the books saying is was full for years.
- mojo74 5y agoI think you have the makings of a new Netflix series there. I propose it be called Check In (or Cheque In for those of us in the UK).
- mjburgess 5y agoI can't tell if you're joking -- but in the UK you "check in" to a hotel. A cheque is, specifically, a type of financial/banking note. cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/check_in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/check_in
- mojo74 5y agoIn the US I believe a Check is the same as a Cheque in the UK. Granted cheque is a homophone but both usages denote money (more so with the US title) with the added benefit of the connotation of arriving at a hotel. I am a big fan of puns.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago> It is unfortunate, that this is what the tech industry has evolved into. My thoughts, exactly. I started off in the 1980s, just as tech was starting to become mainstream. In the early days, we were not the most "socially well-adjusted" crew, but were fairly enthusiastic about the tech, with most of us working for the love of the craft. Then, the money started to pour in. It was inevitable. That brought the sharks and the rapacious bastards. They became heroes and role models. And here we are...
- suction 5y agoI know someone who works in the music industry and recently got a new boss, coming over from Booking.com - and guess what since that guy started, the new priority on the agenda is to introduce dark patterns in the company's online offerings...seems like Booking.com is a real hotbed for that.
- hemloc_io 5y agoWasn't alive for 1980s and it's a controversial take here on HNs but some of the most excitement I've seen has been in the crypto space since the 2010s. Once you get past the scam/hype bullshit anyway.
- DonHopkins 5y agoThe excitement around the crypto space is a lot like all the excitement around the Psychic Hotline space of the 1990's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO50TC6WG8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO50TC6WG8A But psychics didn't burn anywhere near as much coal and cause as much cancer and lung disease as crypto does. >Once you get past the scam/hype bullshit anyway. "Well, aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?" https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/other_than_that_mrs_lincoln_how_did_you_like_the_play https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/oth...
- hemloc_io 5y agoI'll raise you with the 1980s excitement about satanic cults kidnapping children. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/new-podcast-explores-how-satanic-panic-overtook-a-saskatchewan-town-1.5449917 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/new-podcast-explores-how-sa... Otherwise dunk away lol
- maze-le 5y agoThe way I use booking.com: Search for a suitable hotel or apartment and find their name. Then search for them independently and make the reservation directly. I mean: they have a great search interface and all, but I refuse to funnel money to gatekeepers whenever I can... Stories like this just affirm my suspicions about companies like them...
- amirs 5y agoTo play the devil's advocate here - I do the same as you, but last month when I booked a 3 week vacation Booking offered better prices than the hotels themselves. They also didn't pull any stunts like other hotel aggregators do (show you a price and change it when you get to the checkout). I also had a single instance in the past where I wanted to prolong my stay at a hotel, and the hotel clerk told me I'd get a better deal if I booked through Booking, which I did. Generally I think you're right, but I guess it depends.
- fsflover 5y ago> Booking offered better prices than the hotels themselves In this case, you can contact the hotel and ask for a better offer. Works sometimes.
- jhugo 5y agoI've tried this many times and the hotel usually says "I guess you should book it online then"
- notsureaboutpg 5y agoYeah it makes no sense to me but this happens every time I try to book a room directly. I've even offered to pay slightly more just to book directly as it's hard to trust these online sites, they still refuse.
- dep_b 5y agoThat's so weird huh? I really don't understand it.
- b20000 5y agobut that is what all property management companies do as well it seems, in california, tell you there are only 2 units to choose from while 30% of the building is empty?
- Xelbair 5y agoI wonder when will people stop being surprised that any corporation puts profit as it's end goal. Them being nice for a while, it just a coincidence of aligned interests. Court mandated fines are taken into the account - if profit increase is higher than the fine, what's stopping them from going forward with such idea?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- WhyNotHugo 5y agoYeah, there's little regard for legalities as long as it's not _obviously_ bothering clients. Lying to both customers and partners doesn't seem to raise any eyebrows.