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I just used booking.com and good fucking god is the whole website a shit infested hell hole. They use scammiest and pushiest techniques to make you book a place asap without giving you space to breathe and read details.

They try to obfuscate what's actually necessary with what they want to take from you. For example just before reserving a room there's a checkbox that's close enough to words "terms and conditions" and "privacy policy" for unsuspecting user to habitually check it to proceed. However, you clicking "reserve" is considered your consent and that checkbox simply adds your email to their spamming list.

There are countless examples of absolute asshole design within every inch of that place and I don't even want to imagine what they do with my data.

Suffice to say this was the first and last time I will use their services and if I were to give any advice, is "don't be the dick responsible for website/app/service similar to booking.com"

Comments
  • 1
    It's only useful to find all accommodations that still have room for the period you wanna go, then just look up the website or contact info of the accommodations themselves and hopefully you can book directly with them. Some even give a discount because they don't have to pay the commission to booking.com that way.
  • 2
    You're late to the party. True stuff, but can still be handy.
  • 1
    Had have to implement many of those asshole tricks myself before, most popular is fake red countdown timers, fake quantity (e.g. only 5 left) etc. it's a fucking shitfest, the only thing it's useful for is medium posts to read what kind of tricks actually convert
  • 1
    I use expedia, interestingly though the expedia group also owns booking.com and trivago to name but a few. Also booking direct with the hotel is not cheaper in my experience, i check every time. plus i got some compo off of expedia cos a hotel showed a pool on its images, but the pool was in the next doors hotel. I doubt i would have got compo from the hotel itself.
  • 1
    What I hate the most is they show a cheap price for a flight and on the last checkout page the price gets more than doubled, because I have to pay for luggage extra and an additional fee because I want to pay with credit card :/
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