Okay, please tell me what I should do instead, if you grant me: (1) I cannot easily garner which big corporations are "evil" and which are good. I do not have

Okay, please tell me what I should do instead, if you grant me: (1) I cannot easily garner which big corporations are "evil" and which are good. I do not have any practical way of finding out about hotels elsewhere without going through some large corporation. Whether it be Expedia, Hotels.com, Hipmunk (okay, Hipmunk is probably smaller), Google, Yelp... I have heard complaints about all of them. If I switch from Expedia to something else, am I doing better? (2) My time is valuable. If two minutes of effort on my part would divert $20 from Expedia to an independent hotelier, and everything would otherwise be the same for me, then I would happily do this. Sometimes, surely it would. But it is my experience that this often takes more effort than it should, the first phone number I call often turns out not to be the right number, or the price will be higher, or I get put on hold, etc., etc. And for that matter, don't travel agents charge commissions too? They have to eat, so someone has to pay them. I don't want to pay extra, and if the hoteliers pay the commissions, then is this better than Expedia? Grant me at least that the solution is not obvious.