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Re:Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an ou... by NumberCruncher on Friday February 11, 2022 @03:46AM (#30298869)
> several of the dark patterns don't

The "only x room left with these conditions" false claim is used also in the EU.

Re:Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an ou... by tluyben2 on Friday February 11, 2022 @03:54AM (#30298950)
Yep, cannot understand people still fall for that though. But I guess if you are a first time user…

As it is a lie, it should not be allowed.

Re:Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an ou... by MikeDelta on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:14AM (#30299129)
Yeah, and 20 people looking at this room, booked 10x in the last hour, last one left.

When you go to the hotel website instead, you see plenty of rooms left and sometimes with a nice offer.

Re:Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an ou... by 3boll on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:23AM (#30299190)
Agree, but the hotel will not alocate the all the rooms for booking/other platforms, just N rooms at Y$ price.
Re:Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an ou... by NumberCruncher on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:38AM (#30299299)
This is true, but I remember reading an article where the journalist compared the "only X rooms left with these conditions" claim to the system of the given hotel in real time. Well, as it turned out, the hotel had more than X free rooms with those conditions allocated to booking.com...
Re:Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an ou... by krono on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:43AM (#30299342)
Booking doesn't care, though. They'll happily overbook the rooms you assign them sometimes.

Edit: It might have gotten better since, but I still remember all those sad/defeated/angry faces of people who had booked trough Booking.com that I had to send away / find alternative hotels for because we were full. Back then when.

Re:Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an ou... by tluyben2 on Friday February 11, 2022 @05:02AM (#30299474)
I had that in Asia quite a lot with Booking; that's not my problem though; it's theirs. But that's why I do not use them (booking) whenever I can prevent it. Hotels.com has this rarely but when they have it, they make sure you are well taken care off; I got much better and far more expensive hotels for the same price in those cases. I discovered ny favorite hotel in the world (so far) by a double (double double; the overbooked twice for the same room) booking; everything was full so they booked me in a hotel in the middle of a nature reserve which was much more expensive at that point, but I paid nothing more of course. Very nice for a business trip where I was supposed to sleep in a concrete bunker in a city.
Re:Booking.com is moving its customer service staff to an ou... by zaphirplane on Friday February 11, 2022 @06:15AM (#30300047)
I understood that airlines and hotels have a tiered system fist x at this rate next y and rate*y … etc I have booked directly with Marion and IHG last minute and they both had prices change the next day when I took a peak. Assuming the thread isn’t about some random number generator

Beware, Marion had a higher price after I visited trivago