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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 w
by virgilp 5y ago
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).
- robin_reala 5y agoI think the problem here is that while they may be easy for you to ignore, that’s not universally true.
- MaxBarraclough 5y agoRight. They presumably do A/B testing. They wouldn't use these manipulative practices if they didn't work.
- grujicd 5y agoI'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.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoDo you recommend any mountain cabins? I've used and will be trying more of these https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/ https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/ but some of the cabins in the Swiss alps look good, paid and free.
- Freak_NL 5y agoI've used https://www.huetten.com/ 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.
- grujicd 5y agoSorry, 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?
- robertlagrant 5y ago> 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!