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Let's take a look at incentives. Booking.com has an incentive to cancel. The hotel itself has an incentive to cancel. The laws in place don't prevent this, espe

by ArcHound 11mo ago

Let's take a look at incentives. Booking.com has an incentive to cancel. The hotel itself has an incentive to cancel. The laws in place don't prevent this, especially when some contractual fine print is involved. Will this public case result in flood of people away from booking.com? Probably not. This is just a simple abuse of power, most easily identified by the question: "What are you going to do about it?" It seems the play is to tell the world. Congrats to this lady for getting her money/booking back.

wslh 11mo ago
This is why consumer laws should be really hard and executed very fast, it's the balance to big companies and "perfect" markets.
- MichaelZuo 11mo ago
  Why? There are plenty of full service travel agencies that offer to book guaranteed price reservations in pretty much any locale in most countries. There are some that even offer extra guarantees like a last minute cancellation by the hotel being refunded at double the cost, to ensure you can get a room elsewhere.
  - wslh 11mo ago
    > Why? Because you live in an attention economy and the probability of using another service is pretty low. We can also develop our own travel agent with LLMs but that's an outlier of the market, and financially negligible. The problem is about power in the economy.
    - MichaelZuo 11mo ago
      This doesn’t make sense, how is your preferred range of attention expenditure even relevant? If a dozen different HN users expressed a dozen different preferred ranges… would there now have to be viable competitors at each possible step?
      - Supermancho 11mo ago
        > This doesn’t make sense, how is your preferred range of attention expenditure even relevant? This is an ironic statement, insofar as it's myopic. The implication was clearly a monopoly by market availability (convenience), which is not a legal precept, but a sociological one. Comparing rates across all possible locales and vendors is impractical. This is part of what makes Amazon so successful. Sheer momentum.
        MichaelZuo 11mo ago
        And a dozen different HN users could also claim the same for their preferencez?
  - dpkirchner 11mo ago
    Can you recommend an agency that offers that double refund option? I haven't been able to find one.
    - MichaelZuo 11mo ago
      Amex I believe for most of the popular countries. They also offer all kinds of niche insurance options that are effectively even better, for corporate and high end clients.
causal 11mo ago
Booking.com is also just a terrible service. Their search is one of the better hotel search tools, but I stopped using them after they "lost" a booking but continued to charge me for it anyway. They denied it existed when I finally reached someone on the phone, despite the very real credit card charge. Only after I got my CC company to chargeback did they send me a cancellation notice. Incompetence at that level feels like malice.
- netsharc 11mo ago
  Recently they've blocked selecting a hotel's address. I do so to look at the area or public transport options on Google Maps, but I guess too many people look up the hotel website from there and book directly.
  - a4isms 11mo ago
    My gawd. You don't need to be a "nerd" to know that almost every modern device these days will happily take a screen shot, read the text in the screen shot, and let you copy or even translate that text.
    - rwmj 11mo ago
      Their response will be to block screen shots.
      - CamperBob2 11mo ago
        And as long as customers continue to tolerate it, they're not wrong. You get more of what you tolerate. Fortunately, you have more power than you think. Just don't do business with these companies. Picking a hotel and calling them directly always works for me.
      - netsharc 11mo ago
        As far as I remember, that happens with the app!
    - 11mo ago
imdsm 11mo ago
I was concerned about this happening to me, as I booked somewhere really early and prices have since gone 5x. Knowing that booking.com will do this means I'll never now use them, and will tell others the same. Thankfully I used another and got the hotel to confirm it.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
limagnolia 11mo ago
Honestly, it is a difficult case. The consumer is obviously on the higher end of wealth here, booking a premium hotel suite for an expensive event. Then, the consumer criticizes those of us that enjoy backpacking as not being "adults". This one really got me. The concept that advertised prices that are genuine mistakes are generally not enforceable is a well established concept in many jurisdictions. With that being said, I do believe that honoring ones advertised prices, even when they are mistakes, unless it would be egregious or impossible to do so, is generally a better way to do business. But will this story prevent me from using a convenient and less expensive platform for booking cheap, bottom barrel hotels, for those of use who aren't "adults"? Probably not.
- TheJoeMan 11mo ago
  It's not a mistake to forget to apply a surcharge in my opinion. The "mistake" was that they underpriced the market, as the booker hedged their bets on the two weekends. A "mistake" would be $1 instead of $1000 which is the example in the TOS.

wslh 11mo ago

This is why consumer laws should be really hard and executed very fast, it's the balance to big companies and "perfect" markets.

MichaelZuo 11mo ago
Why? There are plenty of full service travel agencies that offer to book guaranteed price reservations in pretty much any locale in most countries. There are some that even offer extra guarantees like a last minute cancellation by the hotel being refunded at double the cost, to ensure you can get a room elsewhere.
- wslh 11mo ago
  > Why? Because you live in an attention economy and the probability of using another service is pretty low. We can also develop our own travel agent with LLMs but that's an outlier of the market, and financially negligible. The problem is about power in the economy.
  - MichaelZuo 11mo ago
    This doesn’t make sense, how is your preferred range of attention expenditure even relevant? If a dozen different HN users expressed a dozen different preferred ranges… would there now have to be viable competitors at each possible step?
    - Supermancho 11mo ago
      > This doesn’t make sense, how is your preferred range of attention expenditure even relevant? This is an ironic statement, insofar as it's myopic. The implication was clearly a monopoly by market availability (convenience), which is not a legal precept, but a sociological one. Comparing rates across all possible locales and vendors is impractical. This is part of what makes Amazon so successful. Sheer momentum.
      - MichaelZuo 11mo ago
        And a dozen different HN users could also claim the same for their preferencez?
- dpkirchner 11mo ago
  Can you recommend an agency that offers that double refund option? I haven't been able to find one.
  - MichaelZuo 11mo ago
    Amex I believe for most of the popular countries. They also offer all kinds of niche insurance options that are effectively even better, for corporate and high end clients.

causal 11mo ago

Booking.com is also just a terrible service. Their search is one of the better hotel search tools, but I stopped using them after they "lost" a booking but continued to charge me for it anyway. They denied it existed when I finally reached someone on the phone, despite the very real credit card charge. Only after I got my CC company to chargeback did they send me a cancellation notice. Incompetence at that level feels like malice.

netsharc 11mo ago
Recently they've blocked selecting a hotel's address. I do so to look at the area or public transport options on Google Maps, but I guess too many people look up the hotel website from there and book directly.
- a4isms 11mo ago
  My gawd. You don't need to be a "nerd" to know that almost every modern device these days will happily take a screen shot, read the text in the screen shot, and let you copy or even translate that text.
  - rwmj 11mo ago
    Their response will be to block screen shots.
    - CamperBob2 11mo ago
      And as long as customers continue to tolerate it, they're not wrong. You get more of what you tolerate. Fortunately, you have more power than you think. Just don't do business with these companies. Picking a hotel and calling them directly always works for me.
    - netsharc 11mo ago
      As far as I remember, that happens with the app!
  - 11mo ago

imdsm 11mo ago

I was concerned about this happening to me, as I booked somewhere really early and prices have since gone 5x. Knowing that booking.com will do this means I'll never now use them, and will tell others the same. Thankfully I used another and got the hotel to confirm it.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

limagnolia 11mo ago

Honestly, it is a difficult case. The consumer is obviously on the higher end of wealth here, booking a premium hotel suite for an expensive event. Then, the consumer criticizes those of us that enjoy backpacking as not being "adults". This one really got me. The concept that advertised prices that are genuine mistakes are generally not enforceable is a well established concept in many jurisdictions. With that being said, I do believe that honoring ones advertised prices, even when they are mistakes, unless it would be egregious or impossible to do so, is generally a better way to do business. But will this story prevent me from using a convenient and less expensive platform for booking cheap, bottom barrel hotels, for those of use who aren't "adults"? Probably not.

TheJoeMan 11mo ago
It's not a mistake to forget to apply a surcharge in my opinion. The "mistake" was that they underpriced the market, as the booker hedged their bets on the two weekends. A "mistake" would be $1 instead of $1000 which is the example in the TOS.