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Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an outsourcing company

327 points by sid6376 5y ago

oars 5y ago
How does their app have a 4.6 star rating on the Google Play store? Are these real votes?
- distances 5y ago
  While maybe not worth 4.6, it is sadly the best of the big apps at least on Android. AirBnb is nigh useless with the dysfunctional map view, and Hotels.com is just pain to use.
stefan_ 5y ago
@dang: why was this title changed?
- sid6376 5y ago
  I think the title was changed correctly, I tried to follow HN's guideline of having the same headline as the source, but this is more accurate.
  - stefan_ 5y ago
    That's the point, the policy is to retain the original title, no matter how nonsensical. And here the original title was perfectly correct and concise.
    - dang 5y ago
      That's not the policy, as you'll soon see if you read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- dang 5y ago
  A mod changed it - I guess probably because they thought the original was linkbait, but I'm not sure.
intsunny 5y ago
A non-reddit news source: https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/10/bookingcom-cut-thousands-workers-new-reorganization https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/10/bookingcom-cut-thousands-worke... I rarely use booking.com, and now I'm sure I never will.
onion2k 5y ago
They're outsourcing their customer services. Thia is actually quite annoying, because the one time I've used their customer services they were really good. I needed to cancel half of a reservation (booked for 2 nights, needed to leave early), and the hotel staff said they couldn't do that as I'd booked through a third party. I called Booking.com and they made it happen. Hopefully whoever they outsource to can continue the good work.
- cehrlich 5y ago
  I’ve had the same experience in the past. I travel to Japan a lot and outside the big cities many hotels there just don’t have anyone who speaks English, which obviously makes direct interaction with the hotel difficult. Booking.com customer service was always excellent. Never took too long to get connected to a real person, and that person was usually able to solve my problem or at least find a good compromise. If their service declines I hope a new service gets created that replicates what they do, but I worry that if someone was to build a company like this nowadays they’d just not hire phone support staff.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  This may be one of the reasons for the uproar. The CS employees far outnumber the rest of the company, and the in-house customer service was one of the moats B.com had against the competition. To have them suddenly transferred to a third party is shocking. It’s hard to imagine the same level of service can be provided by call centers tending to multiple brands/products at the same time.
  - bertil 5y ago
    I’ve worked there and I can confirm that the customer service was very impressive and able to deal with particularly gnarly problems, in so many languages and cultures. It was a very large part of the company. It was under-utilised to understand customers’ concerns. There was some effort to include them: dedicated product org, include impact on CS metrics in A/B test results, but it often felt like the ugly duckling. I was thinking or re-investing since the pandemic looked like slowing down and travel stock migth take over but that move tells me unequivocally not to bother.
88840-8855 5y ago
I'm using booking as it has a great UI and genius + Amazon Prime give me by far the best prices. I haven't found any alternative yet.
- cozzyd 5y ago
  I just use Google maps. That way I see where the hotel is too, which is one of the most important factors.
  - laegooose 5y ago
    there is a 'show on a map' button at booking.com search results page
- franczesko 5y ago
  Hotels.com. You get no dark patterns and shady practices as bonus.
  - aryou123 5y ago
    False, we used it, you can't cancel your order unless you talk to some shady agent and then you have to pay some amount of money, also, it's very expensive, booking.com you could cancel your order for free
    - shrikant 5y ago
      I've used Hotels.com dozens of times and have never had to speak to anyone, shady agent or otherwise, to cancel. And I've also cancelled for free where "Free Cancellation" was mentioned as part of the fare rules.
    - tluyben2 5y ago
      You probably booked a VRBO accommodation; you have to be careful not to do that. Those really suck service wise. They might be nice and cheap but if something goes wrong, hotels.com isn't going to help you, while with the non-vrbo places they do. Places that are VRBO have a large VRBO logo next to them; they are not hotels.com bookings, just affiliates. Shitty, but I guess they found a way of making some more money.
jl6 5y ago
Hurry, 5000 people are being fired right now!
- durnygbur 5y ago
  20 executives fired would be enough
quickaskq 5y ago
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
- samuli 5y ago
  Many times booking directly from the hotel has benefits like more relaxed cancellation rules, which conveniently booking.com and others charge money for.
- durnygbur 5y ago
  10 people are reading this comment right now, 3 people have upvoted it. And it's you, dear HN folks, who implements all this.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Are you referring to the "x people has looked at this room in the last y" scam message?
    - durnygbur 5y ago
      yes
  - fennecs 5y ago
    Clearly producing value for shareholders needs to come before ethics, morals and general decency.
NKosmatos 5y ago
tldr; Almost all of booking.com customer support employees are having their contracts transferred (outsourced) to another company, Majorel. This Luxembourg based one, will offer 6 months contracts but it’s unclear what will happen next and also it’s not stated what will happen to those employees that don’t accept the transfer. Corporate tactics at work once more in order to reduce costs :-(
durnygbur 5y ago
Majorel website > Majorel came into being in January 2019 when Bertelsmann and Saham joined hands to create a leading customer experience organisation. Majorel brings together Arvato CRM Solutions, Phone Group, Bertelsmann, Arvato, et al. Who ever tried their chance in Germany know these sweatshops. Working for them will impact one's mental wellbeing. Amazon receives all the hate in Germany meanwhile domestic slavers are allowed and doing well.
dataengineer56 5y ago
I once booked a room in a reputable international chain hotel through booking.com. My sister (living in a different country) booked the same hotel for the same night for a different price and paid with her card in a different currency. The only "link" between the two bookings was that we booked rooms in the same hotel for the same nights, the bookings were made within an hour of each other, and we share a surname. A few days later I checked my credit card statement and I had two charges. My sister hadn't been charged at all, but one of the amounts I was charged corresponded to what she paid. Booking.com said "talk to the hotel" and the hotel said "talk to booking.com". We ended up getting free breakfasts but I'd have loved to know what really happened there.
- jan_Inkepa 5y ago
  > Booking.com said "talk to the hotel" and the hotel said "talk to booking.com". I got trapped in a loop there as well, it was pretty wretched. Hotel would only except credit card details sent via plaintext emails (on the phone I couldn't reach anyone at the purported hotel, just a call center, where they couldn't deal with processing), nobody would release me from the obligation to pay, neither booking.com nor the hotel hotline. I just ignored their emails after a certain point, deleted my account, and hope nothing ever comes of it.
  - INTPenis 5y ago
    > Hotel would only except credit card details sent via plaintext emails This seems very common issue in hotel business. I regularly travel with Amex business travel and our travel agency sends a temporary cc# to the hotel so I don't have to pay for the room. So that's a temporary cc# which is a little safer, but it's e-mailed in cleartext to the hotel regularly for thousands of guests.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      It is because the major hotel brands franchise their brands, and want the franchisees to take on all the merchant account risks of chargebacks and whatnot. Marriott/Hilton/Hyatt/IHG/Choice/Wyndham/etc collect 5% to 20% of top line revenue from the hotel, and do not want to deal with losses from things like chargebacks and whatnot.
baby 5y ago
I despise the experience so much that I can’t feel bad about the demise of that website. They’re are guilty of all the dark patterns imaginable. The day you stop providing a useful tool to your users is the day you can start counting til you close shop. On the other hand google hotel is providing a top service. This is actually my biggest worry with facebook. Even though I own their stocks, I’m scared that they are following a path where they maximize engagement versus providing utility. Facebook back in the days was definitely an amazing tool that you’d be crazy not to use. Today, not so much.
- dmarchand90 5y ago
  I'm not necessarily a huge fan but I'm not sure what the alternative there is. They're pretty comprehensive. If you have any suggestions by the way I'm very happy to jump ship!
  - pcardoso 5y ago
    I use Destinia.com. They usually have the same hotels as other sites but prices are usually much cheaper. Sometimes not just slightly cheaper, but €500+ cheaper. Been using them for more than 10 years.
    - blunte 5y ago
      Thanks, this is a new one for me. I've been happy with hotels.com for a very long time, but now I'll start comparing here. I'm amazed that Destinia appears to still be independent. Usually by this age of successful travel company, they would be owned by Expedia or Booking (Holdings).
  - MandieD 5y ago
    I’ve had a decent 15 years or so of using Expedia (.de and .com, depending on where I was traveling and which credit card I wanted to use). Prices and availability generally in line (maybe slightly higher prices) as Booking.com, without the in-your-face FOMO inducements.
microtonal 5y ago
Meh. They are just terrible. We once booked a hotel with a children's bed, which was advertised as an option on Booking.com . When we go there, no bed, and they could provide one. After much discussion, they allowed us to cancel the room and they would refund the 125 Euro. Except the refund never came. So, we contacted booking.com and have been passed between support personnel for months. At some point they wanted months of our bank transcripts (which I rejected because of privacy issues, I don't trust such a company to securely handle/erase them). After five months, we just accepted the loss. (Customer service can be good. E.g. recently Apple double charged Apple Care. I had someone on the phone within minutes and I got a personal contact within their financial department that I could message or leave voice mails for. They were very helpful in the whole process of getting the money back.)
- Taurenking 5y ago
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Not to say you’re lying but I find this extremely unlikely. Speaking as somebody who works in fintech but despises booking.com. The reason they wanted your bank statements is legitimate: you’re claiming you didn’t receive money they are convinced they refunded. Did you yourself look at your bank statements? A refund doesn’t always show up as a refund, it sometimes shows up as a cancelled charge. A bank might not notify you of that. I have even used a bank which straight up would show a mathematically incorrect calculation in its app when this type of refund came through, and the only way to get to the bottom of it was by trawling through the statements.
  - microtonal 5y ago
    Did you yourself look at your bank statements? A refund doesn’t always show up as a refund, it sometimes shows up as a cancelled charge. A bank might not notify you of that. Yes. My wife keeps a meticulous administration, the 125 Euro showing up again would be noticed immediately. My impression was that Booking.com wasn't going to refund the money, but was pressuring the hotel to do the refund, and they either transferred it to an incorrect account or didn't transfer it all and was feeding Booking.com false information. However, you can't be the middle man when it suits you (get a certain percentage for every reservation), but not be the middle man when it doesn't suit you. The proper approach would be for Booking.com to refund the money and then settle things with the hotel. But they are clearly not very customer-oriented.
cube00 5y ago
Book direct and support your local accommodation providers. Most providers will match any rate you see on these aggregator sites because they still are getting more money then if you booked through the site after they take out their fee.
- dannyw 5y ago
  Most but not all. I once had a mechanic try to not match their AutoGuru advertised rate that we agreed to over the phone, because "I don't remember having that conversation".
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > support your local accommodation providers Well the whole point of a hotel is that it isn’t local to you, so this doesn’t make any sense.
rajishx 5y ago
never had problems with them while traveling in europe, back in the states I usually just go to the hotel directly
dudeinjapan 5y ago
Any Booking.com engineers reading this are welcome to apply to join us a TableCheck (https://www.tablecheck.com/en/company/jobs/ https://www.tablecheck.com/en/company/jobs/) We see Booking.com's online travel agent ("OTA") model as fundamentally predatory/parasitic to hospitality operators. Our business is designed to cut-out of the likes of Booking.com and other middlemen--let the operators own the guest data and build direct relationship with their guests.
- em500 5y ago
  They're not firing thousands of engineers. They're transferring most of their thousands of call centre workers to a different company. Are you hiring lots of call center workers? Q. to all you off the cuff commenters: did you even realise that they had thousands of call centre workers?
  - dudeinjapan 5y ago
    I'm putting out this message to Booking.com engineers/PMs/etc. who have wisened up to their employer's shenanigans. We aren't in the call center business so don't have any openings there (and yes, was aware of their call center ops, have called myself in the past.)
- Hakashiro 5y ago
  Booking.com employees are bound by non-compete clauses so you will never get anyone directly from Booking.com in your company.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Non-compete clauses aren't always enforceable; they have to be "reasonable". That means that the employer must be imposing the clause in furtherance of a "legitimate business interest". You can't use these clauses as simply a way to bully disgruntled staff.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
NumberCruncher 5y ago
In Germany this isn't a legal move. One of my former employees (global telco everyone knows) tried to do the same, namely moving the contracts of the employees to an other company. 200 of them started a class action and won easily. The company had to terminate their contracts (which means the employees are eligible for unemployment benefits, etc.) and had to pay a good severance. Something like (years of employment) * 2 monthly salaries. Some of the employees took the money and went into early retirement.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  Why is it illegal to fire people in Germany?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - NumberCruncher 5y ago
    I did not say, that is illegal to fire people in Germany. Nonetheless as an employer you have to obey the laws making firing cumbersome. Laws, not made by slave drivers...
    - GhostVII 5y ago
      In the US this would probably be constructive dismissal, so similar to what would happen in Germany. And referring to slavery when talking about the current US laws seems somewhat irrelevant
  - em500 5y ago
    It's not illegal to fire people in Germany. But just like most of Europe they need to provide some "just cause [1]", unlike in the US where there are a lot more "at-will [2]" employment contracts. Left wing economist believe this is a great feature that makes lives much better for employees. Right wing economists believes this a bad feature that only protects incumbent employees and makes employers less inclined to hire in the first place or waste resources on workarounds like temp-agencies. Neither standpoints can be conclusively proven, so is mostly a matter of ideology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_cause_(employment_law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_cause_(employment_law) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
LittlePeter 5y ago
Devil's advocate: I booked through booking.com probably on 20+ occasions. Never had a an issue.
olalonde 5y ago
It's weird to see all those negative anecdotes about Booking.com. As a counter anecdote, I've used them several times and they always seem to have much cheaper prices then the competition. I was also able to cancel my booking once without issue after talking to customer support. PS: Not in any way affiliated with them other than being a satisfied customer.
- em500 5y ago
  It's not weird at all, most forum threads involving huge companies attract largely negative comments (Google, Amazon, even Apple). By and large I'm happy with the services of these companies, but if you go by HN I can get my gmail shutdown with no reason or recourse and half the stuff I bought from Amazon is probably fake.
  - pwython 5y ago
    It's not just huge companies, it makes sense that reviews for anything usually skew negative. Because if someone orders a product/service that worked out great, not many people take the time to write a "thank you letter." But if something was amiss, the user will have no problem venting their (warranted) frustration. I would be livid if Gmail locked me out of my account for no reason, or I received a fake product from an Amazon seller, and would certainly let people know. However, on the same note, I hate when I see someone blasting/suing Walmart or similar for what one cashier did to them. No amount of corporate training can prepare someone for a bad day.
- devilbunny 5y ago
  I've used them - and will in the future - because my wife likes being able to take a bath, not a shower (long hair is hard to keep dry in a shower, but in a bath she just puts it in a ponytail), and curiously enough booking.com is the only site I've ever found that let you use that as a search criterion. Never had to call customer support, though.
k8sToGo 5y ago
I always use booking.com to find hotels and then just book directly at the hotel. Normally, I would not do such a thing, but considering booking.com's shady practices I do not feel bad.
vondro 5y ago
Just skimming through the comments, there is some negative sentiment about Booking.com. So I came to say, that over the years, I've used Booking.com numerous times, without any single problem. Yes, there are dark patterns (13 people are looking at this offer right now, etc.), but free cancellation was always free for me, reviews matched my experience, information matched the reality. Sorry to hear about the layoffs, but customer experience has been great for me.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  Same for me. The website has some dark patterns that really do suck, but their prices often beats the hotel directly and many hotels even refer you to booking.com I'm not a happy user, but also not a sad or angry one. I do consider their service trustworthy, though their salesmen ship is a bit slimy
- kraag22 5y ago
  Exactly. I have been using booking for years without single issue. Dozens of stays in many countries. Why it should be a problem to move some employees to different company? This is happening often...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- corford 5y ago
  Have to agree. I've had an account for years and booked hundreds of properties all over Europe (hotels, self-catering apartments, houses), often travelling with a pet too. Never had an issue with free cancellation; places I've stayed at matched the photos and reviews; prices are generally competitive. Yes the UI has some dark patterns but on the flip-side it's also pretty good at what it does (i.e. making it very easy to quickly find and filter accommodation). For getting things done, I much prefer booking's UI to e.g. Airbnb's.
- wraptile 5y ago
  Booking.com is the _lesser_ evil imho. For one it shows total price 99% of the time right there on the search page where alternatives like Agoda show total at the checkout which is heavily inflated. Their loyalty program (Genius) is automatic and simple too where's competitors resort to various coupon and other complex "discounts". I surely hope Booking is not going away.
lbriner 5y ago
The most annoying dark pattern for me was not being able to give 0 stars for something and then averaging across completely dissimilar topics so that it was impossible for most hotels to score less than about 2 out of 5. So the location was great, 5 out of 5 but that doesn't make up for the terrible service and the noise 0 out of 5. Another thing that got me was the window dressing. They show the nicest room of the hotel on the site but the room you get when you arrive is nasty. Booking.com were famous for this kind of stuff and probably helped AirBnB get to where they are.
charlieyu1 5y ago
Inevitable I guess. People just can't really travel much these days
ls15 5y ago
One of the most unpleasant companies that I ever interacted with. It baffles me how hard it is to avoid them when booking hotel rooms online. The first time when I tried to avoid them (because I was so mad at them for screwing me over), I booked the same room on another website that I found by searching, only to get a confirmation email from booking.com...
- em500 5y ago
  Most of the online hotel platforms are owned by either Booking Holdings, Expedia Group or AirBnB. So choose your own poison, as the saying goes.
zuhayeer 5y ago
Timely and relevant: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1492046480328523777?s=20&t=hkSYrFsm_qc351gQ_uqyIA https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1492046480328523777?s=20... Apparently booking sites have the worst rooms reserved for their platforms. So its worth just booking directly through a hotel's website instead of using an aggregator.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- greenSunglass 5y ago
  If true, I'm wondering how those are assigned. Do they have rooms reserved for from those aggregators?
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    No, the hotel staff just know which hotel guests are worth more. Reservations for guests that stay with the hotel brand frequently are designated with various tiers in the rewards programs. There are arrival reports that detail how much they stay at specific hotels and what their preferences are. It is also trivial to sort through people coming via travel agents such as Priceline, booking.com, or Expedia, which means the hotel has to pay commission, which makes those guests worth less than those who reserve directly.
hericium 5y ago
I find this service good for one thing: if a hotel assigns you a crappy room (loud neighbors, loud construction site outside, similar drawbacks), they'll upgrade it with zero issues. I have never had an issue with getting room replacement in such cases and never had to say anything but stating the issue. Some hotels seem to be terrified of getting bad reviews on this site.
greenSunglass 5y ago
Anyone has the percentage of rooms booked via those booking websites compared to booking it via their own platform?
nolok 5y ago
Disregarding how horrible it is to do that this way, ... The employee says he's french, so either he didn't have a french work contract, or what he is saying is untrue. While you can transfer an employee from one company to another, it must protect every employee advantage, his history, etc ... So he has the same severance as on his original contract, with the original timeline (his time of employment isn't reset to now). I'm French, I own several companies, I have done it several times. If he was on some sort of a self employed organisation working for a non french company, then he should have added that clarification and not having those rules in the way is the whole point of hiring more expensive freelance instead of employees.
- paulcole 5y ago
  > The employee says he's french, so either he didn't have a french work contract, or what he is saying is untrue. Or someone ignored the contract? This is like that Top Gear clip. “You can’t do that, there’s a contract!”
- pyb 5y ago
  Agree that what he's describing is not legal in France. His account of being transferred to another employer is probably inaccurate or incomplete.
- quantum_mcts 5y ago
  Seconding that as someone who was both employed and self-employed in France. Companies cannot do such frivolous stuff with their employees here.
- bertil 5y ago
  > The employee says he's french, so either he didn't have a french work contract, or what he is saying is untrue. Most likely he is employeed in Amsterdam, where Dutch law applies. There’s local contract (for sales) but CS are concentrated in Amsterdam.
  - ricardobeat 5y ago
    It was said that NL and UK are not affected, so that can’t be it. Also the move would definitely be illegal in the Netherlands too.
herbst 5y ago
On contrary what most people have experienced booking helped me multiple times to get my money back. When travelling SEA for cheap I ended up in hotels that were lying about the rooms more than once. A room without windows, described as balcony room for 2 weeks and shit like that. Shady hotel owners don't care, and discussions can go on forever. However simply calling booking and have them call the hotel for me fixed the issue any time within a few minutes.
- soco 5y ago
  For me it didn't work. They said it's the decision of the appartment owner to not refund and that was it - even after dozens of calls.
  - netsharc 5y ago
    I wonder how viable it'd be to issue a chargeback. I guess in grandparent poster's case, the hotel owners were afraid of booking.com and caved into their demands, while in your case, the owners knew booking.com and you can't do anything.
aaron695 5y ago
benjaminwootton 5y ago
Booking.com are abysmal. I used to spend 100-150 nights a year on the road and an ungodly amount of money with them. One time I turned up late at night to a property that didn’t exist that was listed on their website. They were absolutely useless in helping to resolve and it took months to get the money back. The fake apartment remained listed on their site for a long time too. Moved all of my spend to Hotels.com and had a much better experience.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  Except hotels.com has been a nightmare lately too. The f-ing penguins! I’ll try to find an article and post it.
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    Penguins?
    - Kaibeezy 5y ago
      Penguins. Suddenly, I have to do a double captcha not only on the website but on the iOS app too, every time. Find the penguin. Find another penguin. Congratulations, you're human.
      - Freak_NL 5y ago
        Ah in captchas, I see! That one's new to me. Not sure what type of AI we're training with that one; not sure I want to know either. > Congratulations, you're human. Or a penguin.
thematrixturtle 5y ago
PSA: Booking Holdings operates not just Booking.com, but also Priceline, Agoda, Kayak, Cheapflights, Rentalcars.com, Momondo, OpenTable, and many more niche engines.
- tomhoward 5y ago
  Booking Holdings is the Nasdaq-listed corporation that was originally called Priceline.com Incorporated, when it was formed and listed in the late 90s. It acquired Booking.com in 2005, but renamed the whole corporation to Booking Holdings in 2018, I gather as Booking.com had become such a dominant part of the business. That said, this post seems to pertain to the Booking.com business (which is still a somewhat independent division, as are all the properties/brands in the group), rather than the entire Booking Holdings corporation.
petre 5y ago
I got screwed over by their car rental division. Basically any mistake on your part voids any refund. I complanied to the European Consumer Centers network to see if I can recover at last part of my funds, but it gets more complicated as their transport division is registered in Manchester, UK which is no longer part of the EU. Needless to say, I am never going to rent any car through an agency again.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Card dispute?
  - petre 5y ago
    Yes
wdb 5y ago
Worst website to deal with when needing to books rooms as a travelling consultant. False claims hotel is full etc. Can’t claim points of hotel chain (thanks IHG). Better to talk to the hotel if your re planning to stay at the hotel Effie days a week for a year and get yourself f a great deal :)
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
So with everyone offering remote work isn't it an advantage to work in a country that offers real social security like most of europe?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
nottorp 5y ago
That was sort of announced earlier in the first summer of the pandemic when suddenly most free cancellation offers were gone in my corner of the world...
mrweasel 5y ago
Apparently I have the wrong impression of what Booking.com does, because apparently they have WAY more employees than I would have guessed.
- nolok 5y ago
  Their employees are customer service on one side, and marketing (calling hotels to have them sell through booking) on the other side. So they have a ton of employees for the same reason groupon does.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    See, that's exactly what I didn't get. I just figured that hotels signed up on Booking.com and that the hotels would handle the customer service side of business. I worked with a few price comparison sites, and they've all been run by somewhere between a handful and maybe 100 people, so I figured that Booking.com would work the same.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hardlianotion 5y ago
I used Booking.com for the first time last year. It was OK. But I won't use them again, and I find quotes like this all too believable: "... Also, last year Booking have to their employees 2.5 days off to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the company. You might think it's a nice move from them. During that day, only outsourced employees were working. They were just testing if they could carry the work without their employees."
- iLoveOncall 5y ago
  That's conspiracy levels of bullshit right here.
rmbyrro 5y ago
Too bad these companies handle customer support employees as third-class citizens within the corporation.
tinyhouse 5y ago
With remote work so popular, it's just the beginning. If your skill is not in high demand and can be done remotely, it's going to be outsourced (or just transferred within the company) to a lower cost of living region.
rurban 5y ago
Also known as the company who single-handedly killed perl.
- durnygbur 5y ago
  Now they seem to be mostly Java, let them continue their job...
golergka 5y ago
I can see how this is bad for Booking.com users (quality will likely go down) and current employees. But it's a good thing for a lot of people from third world countries that Majorel will inevitably hire: what might be a bad salary for this person from France is likely a great deal for the places where this jobs go. So, from a bystander viewpoint — is this ethically a bad thing? People from poor countries out-competing their counterparts from developed countries? I'm not sure.
nkmnz 5y ago
I once booked the worst hotel room on earth via booking.com - I spare you the details, but when I picked the lowest rating on every single scale on the booking.com feedback form, the resulting score was something like ~3.5 out of 10 – instead of 0 points! So, whenever you're looking for a a place on booking.com, keep in mind that the places are rated on a scale from 3.5 to 10, not 0 to 10.
- stewx 5y ago
  What's important to know about Booking.com review scores is that customers do not choose the scores, per se. They ask you a series of questions like "was the bed comfortable?" and if you say "yes" to all of them, that's scored as a 10/10.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  I think any Booking user knows that 8+ - awesome, 7+ - okay, less than 7 - handle with care. At least it's more consistent than "star ratings"
  - listenallyall 5y ago
    Seems every online star system is heavily weighted to the upside. Your assigned Uber driver has a 4.6? Likely going to be a nightmare. An Amazon product at 4.2? Probably garbage.
  - Jenk 5y ago
    That's known as the Net Promoter Score. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score In summary: 1-6 are demoters (will talk negatively of their experience to others), 7-8 passive (probably won't talk about their experience), 9-10 promoters (will talk positively about their experience).
    - vdqtp3 5y ago
      Real world summary for anyone graded by NPS: if you got a 10, you're meeting expectations. Anything else and you're getting a write-up.
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supergeek133 5y ago
My first large employer was Best Buy, and at the time (and I believe still?) a large majority of their phone customer service operation was outsourced. I will still never understand why companies do this. Your quite literal last line of defense (and sometimes first) with a customer is people that aren't directly accountable other than a corporate contract? Never made sense to me. Also, the fact that they are generally the lowest paid is also bizzare.
- olalonde 5y ago
  > I will still never understand why companies do this. Specialization and economies of scale. Best Buy's core competence isn't phone customer service. A phone customer service can specialize and develop tools and processes that Best Buy couldn't. They can also serve multiple companies with a smaller workforce due to increased utilisation rate (a bit similar to why cloud hosting has become so popular). > Also, the fact that they are generally the lowest paid is also bizzare. It doesn't require skills or training, almost anyone who can talk is qualified to do phone customer service. I had many friends in high school whose first job was phone customer service.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > A phone customer service can specialize So then outsourced CS should be better than in-house. But it doesn't seem to work like that. > almost anyone who can talk is qualified to do phone customer service That's not consistent with my own experience; for example, many third-world telephone CS outfits employ staff with accents so thick that I can't understand them. I mean they may be able to talk in some language; but they're not that good at talking English. Outsourced CS reps are much more likely to just hang up on the caller if it looks like it might be a difficult call. Also, "qualified" is doing quite a lot of work there. Anyone that can talk (the customer's language) is qualified to pick up the phone and follow a script. But good customer service means reps that know the product, and don't need a script.
  - supergeek133 5y ago
    Having worked there, the sheer volume of phone interactions was crazy, and I haven't worked there in almost 10 years. Regardless of the volume, it was very shocking to me how many situations that ended up being escalated to even the executive level were caused simply by the interaction with the phone customer care channel. These situations "cost" the company quite a bit in highly paid people time to solve. Granted that cost is never quantified, but it is real. You also see this pattern replicated in the ISP industry quite heavily.
jimthom 5y ago
Damn, they really did their employees dirty over a pre-recorded call.
gryzzly 5y ago
Just now? In my experience, their support has been useless for some time now. Caused more stress than help several times now.
oversocialized 5y ago
not surprising. they lure programmers to Amsterdam and then work them to death on their ancient perl system. we used to laugh about this back in the late 2000s. all these big tech booking companies are scum anyway, like expedia too. the base databases they all connect to are ancient and use regex to parse out of giant text fields. previously they could see each others booking info so prices would stay more competitive but then some airlines started pulling out to make their own about ten years ago (they were all jealous of southwest who started after these databases were created so they have their own). lots of dumb tricks in the airline industry, like sometimes two one ways cheaper than round trip, how soon before flight to book to get best deals, which airports are cheaper on certain days, etc. company i worked at had former travel agents that got paid lots of money to help us program these things. it's completely arbitrary.
jlengrand 5y ago
To me, deciding to outsource customer support and hiring are huge red flags. People / Customers are not at the center of the company any more, but behind a wall. Incentives get shifted, and core business becomes a service. Not a good news.
- mingusrude 5y ago
  I worked as a consultant with a phone operator who were insourcing their inhouse sales (telemarketing) after having it outsourced. What they had discovered was that by outsourcing that function they had lost a large chunk of their overall talent pool that they could recruit from to almost any other function (especially sales of course).
  - jlengrand 5y ago
    A past company I worked for decided to outsource recruitment. Went from having a dedicated human to talk to knowing me, and being aware of what kind of team people were running to having generic folks on the phone crawling linkedin profiles for me. Who do you think was having a better success rate at finding the right candidate? In companies where there are many roles open, someone needs to be aware of what kind of team would fit the profile to ensure success. A couple years later, half the teams were using under the radar private hiring firms to help find talents. A loss on all sides.
- glanzwulf 5y ago
  Yep! I agree with you 100%. The way I see it is once you move away from internal CS teams it means the customer is no longer your priority. Outsourced teams will never care about their work as much as an internal team does and because of that everything else suffers. Such a shame.
cultofmetatron 5y ago
booking.com's service is easy to use but I've had several issues with them in latin america 1. had a hotel cancal on me because I didn't "call ahead" ffs: I don't speak spanish 2. showed up to the "resort" looks like it had been abandoned for months. literally no one there. total ghost town 3. show up in town, try to contact the hotel to get directions. they told me they cancelled because I didn't show up on time despite me messaging them ahead of time that the only tow busses for the town arrive either in the early morning or late at night 4. showed up, price was suspiciously good. Yea the actual hotel was terrible. dangerous part of town and the rooms were one step above prison grade. of course I had already booked and poid so I ate the loss as I took an uber to a better hotel in a good part of the city. It had a 9 rating.
cannabis_sam 5y ago
Lol, booking.com sold me lodgings in Malibu, at a place that had clearly been shut down for months.. We ended up going to a motel in Thousand Oaks, BUT the customer service is what actually allowed us to deal with the fraudulent booking. I’m gonna take a wild guess here, but this kind of outsourcing does not generally improve the service..
gw67 5y ago
It's a good opportunity for a new startup to enter in their market when they will start going down.

327 points by sid6376 5y ago

oars 5y ago

How does their app have a 4.6 star rating on the Google Play store? Are these real votes?

distances 5y ago
While maybe not worth 4.6, it is sadly the best of the big apps at least on Android. AirBnb is nigh useless with the dysfunctional map view, and Hotels.com is just pain to use.

stefan_ 5y ago

@dang: why was this title changed?

sid6376 5y ago
I think the title was changed correctly, I tried to follow HN's guideline of having the same headline as the source, but this is more accurate.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  That's the point, the policy is to retain the original title, no matter how nonsensical. And here the original title was perfectly correct and concise.
  - dang 5y ago
    That's not the policy, as you'll soon see if you read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
dang 5y ago
A mod changed it - I guess probably because they thought the original was linkbait, but I'm not sure.

intsunny 5y ago

A non-reddit news source: https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/10/bookingcom-cut-thousands-workers-new-reorganization https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/10/bookingcom-cut-thousands-worke... I rarely use booking.com, and now I'm sure I never will.

onion2k 5y ago

They're outsourcing their customer services. Thia is actually quite annoying, because the one time I've used their customer services they were really good. I needed to cancel half of a reservation (booked for 2 nights, needed to leave early), and the hotel staff said they couldn't do that as I'd booked through a third party. I called Booking.com and they made it happen. Hopefully whoever they outsource to can continue the good work.

cehrlich 5y ago
I’ve had the same experience in the past. I travel to Japan a lot and outside the big cities many hotels there just don’t have anyone who speaks English, which obviously makes direct interaction with the hotel difficult. Booking.com customer service was always excellent. Never took too long to get connected to a real person, and that person was usually able to solve my problem or at least find a good compromise. If their service declines I hope a new service gets created that replicates what they do, but I worry that if someone was to build a company like this nowadays they’d just not hire phone support staff.
ricardobeat 5y ago
This may be one of the reasons for the uproar. The CS employees far outnumber the rest of the company, and the in-house customer service was one of the moats B.com had against the competition. To have them suddenly transferred to a third party is shocking. It’s hard to imagine the same level of service can be provided by call centers tending to multiple brands/products at the same time.
- bertil 5y ago
  I’ve worked there and I can confirm that the customer service was very impressive and able to deal with particularly gnarly problems, in so many languages and cultures. It was a very large part of the company. It was under-utilised to understand customers’ concerns. There was some effort to include them: dedicated product org, include impact on CS metrics in A/B test results, but it often felt like the ugly duckling. I was thinking or re-investing since the pandemic looked like slowing down and travel stock migth take over but that move tells me unequivocally not to bother.

88840-8855 5y ago

I'm using booking as it has a great UI and genius + Amazon Prime give me by far the best prices. I haven't found any alternative yet.

cozzyd 5y ago
I just use Google maps. That way I see where the hotel is too, which is one of the most important factors.
- laegooose 5y ago
  there is a 'show on a map' button at booking.com search results page
franczesko 5y ago
Hotels.com. You get no dark patterns and shady practices as bonus.
- aryou123 5y ago
  False, we used it, you can't cancel your order unless you talk to some shady agent and then you have to pay some amount of money, also, it's very expensive, booking.com you could cancel your order for free
  - shrikant 5y ago
    I've used Hotels.com dozens of times and have never had to speak to anyone, shady agent or otherwise, to cancel. And I've also cancelled for free where "Free Cancellation" was mentioned as part of the fare rules.
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    You probably booked a VRBO accommodation; you have to be careful not to do that. Those really suck service wise. They might be nice and cheap but if something goes wrong, hotels.com isn't going to help you, while with the non-vrbo places they do. Places that are VRBO have a large VRBO logo next to them; they are not hotels.com bookings, just affiliates. Shitty, but I guess they found a way of making some more money.

jl6 5y ago

Hurry, 5000 people are being fired right now!

durnygbur 5y ago
20 executives fired would be enough

quickaskq 5y ago

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

samuli 5y ago
Many times booking directly from the hotel has benefits like more relaxed cancellation rules, which conveniently booking.com and others charge money for.
durnygbur 5y ago
10 people are reading this comment right now, 3 people have upvoted it. And it's you, dear HN folks, who implements all this.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Are you referring to the "x people has looked at this room in the last y" scam message?
  - durnygbur 5y ago
    yes
- fennecs 5y ago
  Clearly producing value for shareholders needs to come before ethics, morals and general decency.

NKosmatos 5y ago

tldr; Almost all of booking.com customer support employees are having their contracts transferred (outsourced) to another company, Majorel. This Luxembourg based one, will offer 6 months contracts but it’s unclear what will happen next and also it’s not stated what will happen to those employees that don’t accept the transfer. Corporate tactics at work once more in order to reduce costs :-(

durnygbur 5y ago

Majorel website > Majorel came into being in January 2019 when Bertelsmann and Saham joined hands to create a leading customer experience organisation. Majorel brings together Arvato CRM Solutions, Phone Group, Bertelsmann, Arvato, et al. Who ever tried their chance in Germany know these sweatshops. Working for them will impact one's mental wellbeing. Amazon receives all the hate in Germany meanwhile domestic slavers are allowed and doing well.

dataengineer56 5y ago

I once booked a room in a reputable international chain hotel through booking.com. My sister (living in a different country) booked the same hotel for the same night for a different price and paid with her card in a different currency. The only "link" between the two bookings was that we booked rooms in the same hotel for the same nights, the bookings were made within an hour of each other, and we share a surname. A few days later I checked my credit card statement and I had two charges. My sister hadn't been charged at all, but one of the amounts I was charged corresponded to what she paid. Booking.com said "talk to the hotel" and the hotel said "talk to booking.com". We ended up getting free breakfasts but I'd have loved to know what really happened there.

jan_Inkepa 5y ago
> Booking.com said "talk to the hotel" and the hotel said "talk to booking.com". I got trapped in a loop there as well, it was pretty wretched. Hotel would only except credit card details sent via plaintext emails (on the phone I couldn't reach anyone at the purported hotel, just a call center, where they couldn't deal with processing), nobody would release me from the obligation to pay, neither booking.com nor the hotel hotline. I just ignored their emails after a certain point, deleted my account, and hope nothing ever comes of it.
- INTPenis 5y ago
  > Hotel would only except credit card details sent via plaintext emails This seems very common issue in hotel business. I regularly travel with Amex business travel and our travel agency sends a temporary cc# to the hotel so I don't have to pay for the room. So that's a temporary cc# which is a little safer, but it's e-mailed in cleartext to the hotel regularly for thousands of guests.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It is because the major hotel brands franchise their brands, and want the franchisees to take on all the merchant account risks of chargebacks and whatnot. Marriott/Hilton/Hyatt/IHG/Choice/Wyndham/etc collect 5% to 20% of top line revenue from the hotel, and do not want to deal with losses from things like chargebacks and whatnot.

baby 5y ago

I despise the experience so much that I can’t feel bad about the demise of that website. They’re are guilty of all the dark patterns imaginable. The day you stop providing a useful tool to your users is the day you can start counting til you close shop. On the other hand google hotel is providing a top service. This is actually my biggest worry with facebook. Even though I own their stocks, I’m scared that they are following a path where they maximize engagement versus providing utility. Facebook back in the days was definitely an amazing tool that you’d be crazy not to use. Today, not so much.

dmarchand90 5y ago
I'm not necessarily a huge fan but I'm not sure what the alternative there is. They're pretty comprehensive. If you have any suggestions by the way I'm very happy to jump ship!
- pcardoso 5y ago
  I use Destinia.com. They usually have the same hotels as other sites but prices are usually much cheaper. Sometimes not just slightly cheaper, but €500+ cheaper. Been using them for more than 10 years.
  - blunte 5y ago
    Thanks, this is a new one for me. I've been happy with hotels.com for a very long time, but now I'll start comparing here. I'm amazed that Destinia appears to still be independent. Usually by this age of successful travel company, they would be owned by Expedia or Booking (Holdings).
- MandieD 5y ago
  I’ve had a decent 15 years or so of using Expedia (.de and .com, depending on where I was traveling and which credit card I wanted to use). Prices and availability generally in line (maybe slightly higher prices) as Booking.com, without the in-your-face FOMO inducements.

microtonal 5y ago

Meh. They are just terrible. We once booked a hotel with a children's bed, which was advertised as an option on Booking.com . When we go there, no bed, and they could provide one. After much discussion, they allowed us to cancel the room and they would refund the 125 Euro. Except the refund never came. So, we contacted booking.com and have been passed between support personnel for months. At some point they wanted months of our bank transcripts (which I rejected because of privacy issues, I don't trust such a company to securely handle/erase them). After five months, we just accepted the loss. (Customer service can be good. E.g. recently Apple double charged Apple Care. I had someone on the phone within minutes and I got a personal contact within their financial department that I could message or leave voice mails for. They were very helpful in the whole process of getting the money back.)

Taurenking 5y ago
scrollaway 5y ago
Not to say you’re lying but I find this extremely unlikely. Speaking as somebody who works in fintech but despises booking.com. The reason they wanted your bank statements is legitimate: you’re claiming you didn’t receive money they are convinced they refunded. Did you yourself look at your bank statements? A refund doesn’t always show up as a refund, it sometimes shows up as a cancelled charge. A bank might not notify you of that. I have even used a bank which straight up would show a mathematically incorrect calculation in its app when this type of refund came through, and the only way to get to the bottom of it was by trawling through the statements.
- microtonal 5y ago
  Did you yourself look at your bank statements? A refund doesn’t always show up as a refund, it sometimes shows up as a cancelled charge. A bank might not notify you of that. Yes. My wife keeps a meticulous administration, the 125 Euro showing up again would be noticed immediately. My impression was that Booking.com wasn't going to refund the money, but was pressuring the hotel to do the refund, and they either transferred it to an incorrect account or didn't transfer it all and was feeding Booking.com false information. However, you can't be the middle man when it suits you (get a certain percentage for every reservation), but not be the middle man when it doesn't suit you. The proper approach would be for Booking.com to refund the money and then settle things with the hotel. But they are clearly not very customer-oriented.

cube00 5y ago

Book direct and support your local accommodation providers. Most providers will match any rate you see on these aggregator sites because they still are getting more money then if you booked through the site after they take out their fee.

dannyw 5y ago
Most but not all. I once had a mechanic try to not match their AutoGuru advertised rate that we agreed to over the phone, because "I don't remember having that conversation".
chrisseaton 5y ago
> support your local accommodation providers Well the whole point of a hotel is that it isn’t local to you, so this doesn’t make any sense.

rajishx 5y ago

never had problems with them while traveling in europe, back in the states I usually just go to the hotel directly

dudeinjapan 5y ago

Any Booking.com engineers reading this are welcome to apply to join us a TableCheck (https://www.tablecheck.com/en/company/jobs/ https://www.tablecheck.com/en/company/jobs/) We see Booking.com's online travel agent ("OTA") model as fundamentally predatory/parasitic to hospitality operators. Our business is designed to cut-out of the likes of Booking.com and other middlemen--let the operators own the guest data and build direct relationship with their guests.

em500 5y ago
They're not firing thousands of engineers. They're transferring most of their thousands of call centre workers to a different company. Are you hiring lots of call center workers? Q. to all you off the cuff commenters: did you even realise that they had thousands of call centre workers?
- dudeinjapan 5y ago
  I'm putting out this message to Booking.com engineers/PMs/etc. who have wisened up to their employer's shenanigans. We aren't in the call center business so don't have any openings there (and yes, was aware of their call center ops, have called myself in the past.)
Hakashiro 5y ago
Booking.com employees are bound by non-compete clauses so you will never get anyone directly from Booking.com in your company.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Non-compete clauses aren't always enforceable; they have to be "reasonable". That means that the employer must be imposing the clause in furtherance of a "legitimate business interest". You can't use these clauses as simply a way to bully disgruntled staff.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

NumberCruncher 5y ago

In Germany this isn't a legal move. One of my former employees (global telco everyone knows) tried to do the same, namely moving the contracts of the employees to an other company. 200 of them started a class action and won easily. The company had to terminate their contracts (which means the employees are eligible for unemployment benefits, etc.) and had to pay a good severance. Something like (years of employment) * 2 monthly salaries. Some of the employees took the money and went into early retirement.

charcircuit 5y ago
Why is it illegal to fire people in Germany?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- NumberCruncher 5y ago
  I did not say, that is illegal to fire people in Germany. Nonetheless as an employer you have to obey the laws making firing cumbersome. Laws, not made by slave drivers...
  - GhostVII 5y ago
    In the US this would probably be constructive dismissal, so similar to what would happen in Germany. And referring to slavery when talking about the current US laws seems somewhat irrelevant
- em500 5y ago
  It's not illegal to fire people in Germany. But just like most of Europe they need to provide some "just cause [1]", unlike in the US where there are a lot more "at-will [2]" employment contracts. Left wing economist believe this is a great feature that makes lives much better for employees. Right wing economists believes this a bad feature that only protects incumbent employees and makes employers less inclined to hire in the first place or waste resources on workarounds like temp-agencies. Neither standpoints can be conclusively proven, so is mostly a matter of ideology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_cause_(employment_law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_cause_(employment_law) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

LittlePeter 5y ago

Devil's advocate: I booked through booking.com probably on 20+ occasions. Never had a an issue.

olalonde 5y ago

It's weird to see all those negative anecdotes about Booking.com. As a counter anecdote, I've used them several times and they always seem to have much cheaper prices then the competition. I was also able to cancel my booking once without issue after talking to customer support. PS: Not in any way affiliated with them other than being a satisfied customer.

em500 5y ago
It's not weird at all, most forum threads involving huge companies attract largely negative comments (Google, Amazon, even Apple). By and large I'm happy with the services of these companies, but if you go by HN I can get my gmail shutdown with no reason or recourse and half the stuff I bought from Amazon is probably fake.
- pwython 5y ago
  It's not just huge companies, it makes sense that reviews for anything usually skew negative. Because if someone orders a product/service that worked out great, not many people take the time to write a "thank you letter." But if something was amiss, the user will have no problem venting their (warranted) frustration. I would be livid if Gmail locked me out of my account for no reason, or I received a fake product from an Amazon seller, and would certainly let people know. However, on the same note, I hate when I see someone blasting/suing Walmart or similar for what one cashier did to them. No amount of corporate training can prepare someone for a bad day.
devilbunny 5y ago
I've used them - and will in the future - because my wife likes being able to take a bath, not a shower (long hair is hard to keep dry in a shower, but in a bath she just puts it in a ponytail), and curiously enough booking.com is the only site I've ever found that let you use that as a search criterion. Never had to call customer support, though.

k8sToGo 5y ago

I always use booking.com to find hotels and then just book directly at the hotel. Normally, I would not do such a thing, but considering booking.com's shady practices I do not feel bad.

vondro 5y ago

Just skimming through the comments, there is some negative sentiment about Booking.com. So I came to say, that over the years, I've used Booking.com numerous times, without any single problem. Yes, there are dark patterns (13 people are looking at this offer right now, etc.), but free cancellation was always free for me, reviews matched my experience, information matched the reality. Sorry to hear about the layoffs, but customer experience has been great for me.

wodenokoto 5y ago
Same for me. The website has some dark patterns that really do suck, but their prices often beats the hotel directly and many hotels even refer you to booking.com I'm not a happy user, but also not a sad or angry one. I do consider their service trustworthy, though their salesmen ship is a bit slimy
kraag22 5y ago
Exactly. I have been using booking for years without single issue. Dozens of stays in many countries. Why it should be a problem to move some employees to different company? This is happening often...
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corford 5y ago
Have to agree. I've had an account for years and booked hundreds of properties all over Europe (hotels, self-catering apartments, houses), often travelling with a pet too. Never had an issue with free cancellation; places I've stayed at matched the photos and reviews; prices are generally competitive. Yes the UI has some dark patterns but on the flip-side it's also pretty good at what it does (i.e. making it very easy to quickly find and filter accommodation). For getting things done, I much prefer booking's UI to e.g. Airbnb's.
wraptile 5y ago
Booking.com is the _lesser_ evil imho. For one it shows total price 99% of the time right there on the search page where alternatives like Agoda show total at the checkout which is heavily inflated. Their loyalty program (Genius) is automatic and simple too where's competitors resort to various coupon and other complex "discounts". I surely hope Booking is not going away.

lbriner 5y ago

The most annoying dark pattern for me was not being able to give 0 stars for something and then averaging across completely dissimilar topics so that it was impossible for most hotels to score less than about 2 out of 5. So the location was great, 5 out of 5 but that doesn't make up for the terrible service and the noise 0 out of 5. Another thing that got me was the window dressing. They show the nicest room of the hotel on the site but the room you get when you arrive is nasty. Booking.com were famous for this kind of stuff and probably helped AirBnB get to where they are.

charlieyu1 5y ago

Inevitable I guess. People just can't really travel much these days

ls15 5y ago

One of the most unpleasant companies that I ever interacted with. It baffles me how hard it is to avoid them when booking hotel rooms online. The first time when I tried to avoid them (because I was so mad at them for screwing me over), I booked the same room on another website that I found by searching, only to get a confirmation email from booking.com...

em500 5y ago
Most of the online hotel platforms are owned by either Booking Holdings, Expedia Group or AirBnB. So choose your own poison, as the saying goes.

zuhayeer 5y ago

Timely and relevant: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1492046480328523777?s=20&t=hkSYrFsm_qc351gQ_uqyIA https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1492046480328523777?s=20... Apparently booking sites have the worst rooms reserved for their platforms. So its worth just booking directly through a hotel's website instead of using an aggregator.

deleted 5y ago
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greenSunglass 5y ago
If true, I'm wondering how those are assigned. Do they have rooms reserved for from those aggregators?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  No, the hotel staff just know which hotel guests are worth more. Reservations for guests that stay with the hotel brand frequently are designated with various tiers in the rewards programs. There are arrival reports that detail how much they stay at specific hotels and what their preferences are. It is also trivial to sort through people coming via travel agents such as Priceline, booking.com, or Expedia, which means the hotel has to pay commission, which makes those guests worth less than those who reserve directly.

hericium 5y ago

I find this service good for one thing: if a hotel assigns you a crappy room (loud neighbors, loud construction site outside, similar drawbacks), they'll upgrade it with zero issues. I have never had an issue with getting room replacement in such cases and never had to say anything but stating the issue. Some hotels seem to be terrified of getting bad reviews on this site.

greenSunglass 5y ago

Anyone has the percentage of rooms booked via those booking websites compared to booking it via their own platform?

nolok 5y ago

Disregarding how horrible it is to do that this way, ... The employee says he's french, so either he didn't have a french work contract, or what he is saying is untrue. While you can transfer an employee from one company to another, it must protect every employee advantage, his history, etc ... So he has the same severance as on his original contract, with the original timeline (his time of employment isn't reset to now). I'm French, I own several companies, I have done it several times. If he was on some sort of a self employed organisation working for a non french company, then he should have added that clarification and not having those rules in the way is the whole point of hiring more expensive freelance instead of employees.

paulcole 5y ago
> The employee says he's french, so either he didn't have a french work contract, or what he is saying is untrue. Or someone ignored the contract? This is like that Top Gear clip. “You can’t do that, there’s a contract!”
pyb 5y ago
Agree that what he's describing is not legal in France. His account of being transferred to another employer is probably inaccurate or incomplete.
quantum_mcts 5y ago
Seconding that as someone who was both employed and self-employed in France. Companies cannot do such frivolous stuff with their employees here.
bertil 5y ago
> The employee says he's french, so either he didn't have a french work contract, or what he is saying is untrue. Most likely he is employeed in Amsterdam, where Dutch law applies. There’s local contract (for sales) but CS are concentrated in Amsterdam.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  It was said that NL and UK are not affected, so that can’t be it. Also the move would definitely be illegal in the Netherlands too.

herbst 5y ago

On contrary what most people have experienced booking helped me multiple times to get my money back. When travelling SEA for cheap I ended up in hotels that were lying about the rooms more than once. A room without windows, described as balcony room for 2 weeks and shit like that. Shady hotel owners don't care, and discussions can go on forever. However simply calling booking and have them call the hotel for me fixed the issue any time within a few minutes.

soco 5y ago
For me it didn't work. They said it's the decision of the appartment owner to not refund and that was it - even after dozens of calls.
- netsharc 5y ago
  I wonder how viable it'd be to issue a chargeback. I guess in grandparent poster's case, the hotel owners were afraid of booking.com and caved into their demands, while in your case, the owners knew booking.com and you can't do anything.

aaron695 5y ago

benjaminwootton 5y ago

Booking.com are abysmal. I used to spend 100-150 nights a year on the road and an ungodly amount of money with them. One time I turned up late at night to a property that didn’t exist that was listed on their website. They were absolutely useless in helping to resolve and it took months to get the money back. The fake apartment remained listed on their site for a long time too. Moved all of my spend to Hotels.com and had a much better experience.

Kaibeezy 5y ago
Except hotels.com has been a nightmare lately too. The f-ing penguins! I’ll try to find an article and post it.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  Penguins?
  - Kaibeezy 5y ago
    Penguins. Suddenly, I have to do a double captcha not only on the website but on the iOS app too, every time. Find the penguin. Find another penguin. Congratulations, you're human.
    - Freak_NL 5y ago
      Ah in captchas, I see! That one's new to me. Not sure what type of AI we're training with that one; not sure I want to know either. > Congratulations, you're human. Or a penguin.

thematrixturtle 5y ago

PSA: Booking Holdings operates not just Booking.com, but also Priceline, Agoda, Kayak, Cheapflights, Rentalcars.com, Momondo, OpenTable, and many more niche engines.

tomhoward 5y ago
Booking Holdings is the Nasdaq-listed corporation that was originally called Priceline.com Incorporated, when it was formed and listed in the late 90s. It acquired Booking.com in 2005, but renamed the whole corporation to Booking Holdings in 2018, I gather as Booking.com had become such a dominant part of the business. That said, this post seems to pertain to the Booking.com business (which is still a somewhat independent division, as are all the properties/brands in the group), rather than the entire Booking Holdings corporation.

petre 5y ago

I got screwed over by their car rental division. Basically any mistake on your part voids any refund. I complanied to the European Consumer Centers network to see if I can recover at last part of my funds, but it gets more complicated as their transport division is registered in Manchester, UK which is no longer part of the EU. Needless to say, I am never going to rent any car through an agency again.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Card dispute?
- petre 5y ago
  Yes

wdb 5y ago

Worst website to deal with when needing to books rooms as a travelling consultant. False claims hotel is full etc. Can’t claim points of hotel chain (thanks IHG). Better to talk to the hotel if your re planning to stay at the hotel Effie days a week for a year and get yourself f a great deal :)

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago

So with everyone offering remote work isn't it an advantage to work in a country that offers real social security like most of europe?

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nottorp 5y ago

That was sort of announced earlier in the first summer of the pandemic when suddenly most free cancellation offers were gone in my corner of the world...

mrweasel 5y ago

Apparently I have the wrong impression of what Booking.com does, because apparently they have WAY more employees than I would have guessed.

nolok 5y ago
Their employees are customer service on one side, and marketing (calling hotels to have them sell through booking) on the other side. So they have a ton of employees for the same reason groupon does.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  See, that's exactly what I didn't get. I just figured that hotels signed up on Booking.com and that the hotels would handle the customer service side of business. I worked with a few price comparison sites, and they've all been run by somewhere between a handful and maybe 100 people, so I figured that Booking.com would work the same.

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hardlianotion 5y ago

I used Booking.com for the first time last year. It was OK. But I won't use them again, and I find quotes like this all too believable: "... Also, last year Booking have to their employees 2.5 days off to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the company. You might think it's a nice move from them. During that day, only outsourced employees were working. They were just testing if they could carry the work without their employees."

iLoveOncall 5y ago
That's conspiracy levels of bullshit right here.

rmbyrro 5y ago

Too bad these companies handle customer support employees as third-class citizens within the corporation.

tinyhouse 5y ago

With remote work so popular, it's just the beginning. If your skill is not in high demand and can be done remotely, it's going to be outsourced (or just transferred within the company) to a lower cost of living region.

rurban 5y ago

Also known as the company who single-handedly killed perl.

durnygbur 5y ago
Now they seem to be mostly Java, let them continue their job...

golergka 5y ago

I can see how this is bad for Booking.com users (quality will likely go down) and current employees. But it's a good thing for a lot of people from third world countries that Majorel will inevitably hire: what might be a bad salary for this person from France is likely a great deal for the places where this jobs go. So, from a bystander viewpoint — is this ethically a bad thing? People from poor countries out-competing their counterparts from developed countries? I'm not sure.

nkmnz 5y ago

I once booked the worst hotel room on earth via booking.com - I spare you the details, but when I picked the lowest rating on every single scale on the booking.com feedback form, the resulting score was something like ~3.5 out of 10 – instead of 0 points! So, whenever you're looking for a a place on booking.com, keep in mind that the places are rated on a scale from 3.5 to 10, not 0 to 10.

stewx 5y ago
What's important to know about Booking.com review scores is that customers do not choose the scores, per se. They ask you a series of questions like "was the bed comfortable?" and if you say "yes" to all of them, that's scored as a 10/10.
thriftwy 5y ago
I think any Booking user knows that 8+ - awesome, 7+ - okay, less than 7 - handle with care. At least it's more consistent than "star ratings"
- listenallyall 5y ago
  Seems every online star system is heavily weighted to the upside. Your assigned Uber driver has a 4.6? Likely going to be a nightmare. An Amazon product at 4.2? Probably garbage.
- Jenk 5y ago
  That's known as the Net Promoter Score. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score In summary: 1-6 are demoters (will talk negatively of their experience to others), 7-8 passive (probably won't talk about their experience), 9-10 promoters (will talk positively about their experience).
  - vdqtp3 5y ago
    Real world summary for anyone graded by NPS: if you got a 10, you're meeting expectations. Anything else and you're getting a write-up.

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supergeek133 5y ago

My first large employer was Best Buy, and at the time (and I believe still?) a large majority of their phone customer service operation was outsourced. I will still never understand why companies do this. Your quite literal last line of defense (and sometimes first) with a customer is people that aren't directly accountable other than a corporate contract? Never made sense to me. Also, the fact that they are generally the lowest paid is also bizzare.

olalonde 5y ago
> I will still never understand why companies do this. Specialization and economies of scale. Best Buy's core competence isn't phone customer service. A phone customer service can specialize and develop tools and processes that Best Buy couldn't. They can also serve multiple companies with a smaller workforce due to increased utilisation rate (a bit similar to why cloud hosting has become so popular). > Also, the fact that they are generally the lowest paid is also bizzare. It doesn't require skills or training, almost anyone who can talk is qualified to do phone customer service. I had many friends in high school whose first job was phone customer service.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > A phone customer service can specialize So then outsourced CS should be better than in-house. But it doesn't seem to work like that. > almost anyone who can talk is qualified to do phone customer service That's not consistent with my own experience; for example, many third-world telephone CS outfits employ staff with accents so thick that I can't understand them. I mean they may be able to talk in some language; but they're not that good at talking English. Outsourced CS reps are much more likely to just hang up on the caller if it looks like it might be a difficult call. Also, "qualified" is doing quite a lot of work there. Anyone that can talk (the customer's language) is qualified to pick up the phone and follow a script. But good customer service means reps that know the product, and don't need a script.
- supergeek133 5y ago
  Having worked there, the sheer volume of phone interactions was crazy, and I haven't worked there in almost 10 years. Regardless of the volume, it was very shocking to me how many situations that ended up being escalated to even the executive level were caused simply by the interaction with the phone customer care channel. These situations "cost" the company quite a bit in highly paid people time to solve. Granted that cost is never quantified, but it is real. You also see this pattern replicated in the ISP industry quite heavily.

jimthom 5y ago

Damn, they really did their employees dirty over a pre-recorded call.

gryzzly 5y ago

Just now? In my experience, their support has been useless for some time now. Caused more stress than help several times now.

oversocialized 5y ago

not surprising. they lure programmers to Amsterdam and then work them to death on their ancient perl system. we used to laugh about this back in the late 2000s. all these big tech booking companies are scum anyway, like expedia too. the base databases they all connect to are ancient and use regex to parse out of giant text fields. previously they could see each others booking info so prices would stay more competitive but then some airlines started pulling out to make their own about ten years ago (they were all jealous of southwest who started after these databases were created so they have their own). lots of dumb tricks in the airline industry, like sometimes two one ways cheaper than round trip, how soon before flight to book to get best deals, which airports are cheaper on certain days, etc. company i worked at had former travel agents that got paid lots of money to help us program these things. it's completely arbitrary.

jlengrand 5y ago

To me, deciding to outsource customer support and hiring are huge red flags. People / Customers are not at the center of the company any more, but behind a wall. Incentives get shifted, and core business becomes a service. Not a good news.

mingusrude 5y ago
I worked as a consultant with a phone operator who were insourcing their inhouse sales (telemarketing) after having it outsourced. What they had discovered was that by outsourcing that function they had lost a large chunk of their overall talent pool that they could recruit from to almost any other function (especially sales of course).
- jlengrand 5y ago
  A past company I worked for decided to outsource recruitment. Went from having a dedicated human to talk to knowing me, and being aware of what kind of team people were running to having generic folks on the phone crawling linkedin profiles for me. Who do you think was having a better success rate at finding the right candidate? In companies where there are many roles open, someone needs to be aware of what kind of team would fit the profile to ensure success. A couple years later, half the teams were using under the radar private hiring firms to help find talents. A loss on all sides.
glanzwulf 5y ago
Yep! I agree with you 100%. The way I see it is once you move away from internal CS teams it means the customer is no longer your priority. Outsourced teams will never care about their work as much as an internal team does and because of that everything else suffers. Such a shame.

cultofmetatron 5y ago

booking.com's service is easy to use but I've had several issues with them in latin america 1. had a hotel cancal on me because I didn't "call ahead" ffs: I don't speak spanish 2. showed up to the "resort" looks like it had been abandoned for months. literally no one there. total ghost town 3. show up in town, try to contact the hotel to get directions. they told me they cancelled because I didn't show up on time despite me messaging them ahead of time that the only tow busses for the town arrive either in the early morning or late at night 4. showed up, price was suspiciously good. Yea the actual hotel was terrible. dangerous part of town and the rooms were one step above prison grade. of course I had already booked and poid so I ate the loss as I took an uber to a better hotel in a good part of the city. It had a 9 rating.

cannabis_sam 5y ago

Lol, booking.com sold me lodgings in Malibu, at a place that had clearly been shut down for months.. We ended up going to a motel in Thousand Oaks, BUT the customer service is what actually allowed us to deal with the fraudulent booking. I’m gonna take a wild guess here, but this kind of outsourcing does not generally improve the service..

gw67 5y ago

It's a good opportunity for a new startup to enter in their market when they will start going down.