Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)(blog.devgenius.io)
blog.devgenius.io
Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)
https://blog.devgenius.io/are-14-people-currently-looking-at-this-product-e7fe8412f16b?gi=e7a96dc956cf
182 comments
Booking.com is a terrible company in pretty much every regard. I've had a reservation to a hotel that was pretty full according to the website scare tactics, but when I got there I was the only person to come in weeks.
Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stuck with Booking.com while Booking.com claim the money is in the hotels account. Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there.
It also happened twice to me that they "double charges" me, with a pre-charge (that is deleted in a few weeks) and then with a real pay, which might leave you without money in your credit card if you have a small credit limit.
Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stuck with Booking.com while Booking.com claim the money is in the hotels account. Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there.
It also happened twice to me that they "double charges" me, with a pre-charge (that is deleted in a few weeks) and then with a real pay, which might leave you without money in your credit card if you have a small credit limit.
As an opposing pov: we mostly use booking.com for our reservations, and have never had an issue with them, and found their support useful the one or two times we needed it. They're the best reservation site that I know (others are way worse), and are fairly customer friendly [+]. I still book directly whenever I can because I don't want the hosts to pay the rather large booking.com fees... but we often find places to stay through them, and use them for 1 night stays, or places that don't necessarily inspire lots of confidence (e.g. have custom-implemented payment methods), or places that require payment in advance while offering cancel-able options on booking.com.
[+] Yes they use scare tactics but come on, they're easy to ignore. Who cares it's the only available room and 500 people are looking at it right now and 5 of them are already typing in the credit card details? Not me. If I can't get that particular room, I'll get another one, whatever. (I guess it also helps that we often book ~1year in advance, so we're reasonably confident that we'll eventually find something).
[+] Yes they use scare tactics but come on, they're easy to ignore. Who cares it's the only available room and 500 people are looking at it right now and 5 of them are already typing in the credit card details? Not me. If I can't get that particular room, I'll get another one, whatever. (I guess it also helps that we often book ~1year in advance, so we're reasonably confident that we'll eventually find something).
> 5 of them are already typing in the credit card details?
Haha exactly. Two of them have already hit enter! Our service mesh is delaying calling the Stripe API as long as possible in case you want to buy instead!
Haha exactly. Two of them have already hit enter! Our service mesh is delaying calling the Stripe API as long as possible in case you want to buy instead!
I think the problem here is that while they may be easy for you to ignore, that’s not universally true.
Right. They presumably do A/B testing. They wouldn't use these manipulative practices if they didn't work.
I'm using booking for 15+ years, mostly in Europe. I'm a satisfied user. These scare tactics don't bother me since it's easy to ignore. What I care about is that I see exact micro location of property, if I'm going with friends to a mountain cabin it's a real bonus if it's a bit further from other cabins or surreounded by woods. Airbnb burned me more than once with hidding this critical piece of info and only showing general area.
Do you recommend any mountain cabins? I've used and will be trying more of these https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/
but some of the cabins in the Swiss alps look good, paid and free.
Sorry, trips with friends were all in Serbia, I guess that’s not what you have in mind. EU based bookings were for family trips. Point still stands, if you want exact micro-location Booking.com gives it, while airbnb doesn’t. Are there any other EU booking sites comparable to Booking, meaning all kinds of properties, hotels, private apartments, etc, not limited to single region?
I've used https://www.huetten.com/ successfully a few years ago. It has a decent selection of huts in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Mostly Austria I think.
> Also, their support is abysmal. Often when hotels fail to provide rooms as advertised, they play a "not my fault" game with the hotels, where the hotels claim they can't refund because the money is stuck with Booking.com while Booking.com claim the money is in the hotels account. Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there.
I'm going through the exact same dispute with VRBO (Expedia Group). The apartment that we rented wasn't at all what was advertised, so we left after one night. VRBO first said that because we left voluntarily, there was nothing they could do. After pointing out that we still have our booking as active, they said we need to talk to the owner directly. After pointing out that the owner is just ignoring our messages, they just said that they handle as a middle-man between us and the owner.
After pointing out that the apartment isn't what is advertised, and that the reviews don't even match the property, they said that we agreed to their terms and conditions. I then spend a couple of hours looking at their other terms and conditions, and pointing out that the owner had agreed with these, but that they had broken several of their terms and conditions by apparently using the same listing for multiple properties.
VRBO finally agreed and refunded us their 10% service fee, but claimed that the rest of the money is already with the owner, so we need to talk to them for a refund. (They have ignored us for weeks now)
I'm still baffled that they would handle it this way. First completely dodging any responsibility, only taking some responsibility after highlighting that the owner had broken several of their rules, and only refunding us their service fees. I never paid any money directly to the owner, so I have no clue how the owner will ever refund me.
At this point I don't even really care about the money that was lost, but the fact that both VRBO and the owner are willing to just take my money (1500 EURO), for a single night in their falsely advertised property infuriates me to no end. And I'm doing anything in my power to make their lives as difficult as possible.
I'm going through the exact same dispute with VRBO (Expedia Group). The apartment that we rented wasn't at all what was advertised, so we left after one night. VRBO first said that because we left voluntarily, there was nothing they could do. After pointing out that we still have our booking as active, they said we need to talk to the owner directly. After pointing out that the owner is just ignoring our messages, they just said that they handle as a middle-man between us and the owner.
After pointing out that the apartment isn't what is advertised, and that the reviews don't even match the property, they said that we agreed to their terms and conditions. I then spend a couple of hours looking at their other terms and conditions, and pointing out that the owner had agreed with these, but that they had broken several of their terms and conditions by apparently using the same listing for multiple properties.
VRBO finally agreed and refunded us their 10% service fee, but claimed that the rest of the money is already with the owner, so we need to talk to them for a refund. (They have ignored us for weeks now)
I'm still baffled that they would handle it this way. First completely dodging any responsibility, only taking some responsibility after highlighting that the owner had broken several of their rules, and only refunding us their service fees. I never paid any money directly to the owner, so I have no clue how the owner will ever refund me.
At this point I don't even really care about the money that was lost, but the fact that both VRBO and the owner are willing to just take my money (1500 EURO), for a single night in their falsely advertised property infuriates me to no end. And I'm doing anything in my power to make their lives as difficult as possible.
I am very careful never to book vrbo via hotels.com (which i usually use); there is 0 support once you do. Both are selling via Expedia (hotels.com and vrbo) but with vrbo you have no recourse. Doesn't matter what is wrong, good luck to you. Hotels has it's flaws but even in the weirdest places on earth where we booked hotels and the hotel owners had no clue what Expedia is or why we turned up, they always find a similar or better accommodation for you. We found our favorite hotel (unfortunately on the other side of the world) that way. They couldn't find anything close so they asked if we would mind an extra drive but the hotel is 2x the price: they would pay the difference. We said yes and ended up in a fabulous place we immediately stayed 3 weeks at. It is all about the service. Booking has more inventory and vrbo is often cheaper but screw that; peace of mind is definitely better for me.
Normally I would just book through a hotel directly. But this was a 6 week trip, through multiple countries and multiple cities, with a friend. So instead of us both spending $120 each, we could spend $120 a night on an apartment. We had 4 reservations through VRBO, and the other 3 were perfect for us. But that 1 bad experience really put me off of ever using their platform again. They could've just accepted responsibility and refunded our money, but they decided against it.
I'm now traveling alone, and am paying around $80 a night for a decent hotel. I agree, peace of mind is worth paying for, traveling these days is already stressful enough.
I'm now traveling alone, and am paying around $80 a night for a decent hotel. I agree, peace of mind is worth paying for, traveling these days is already stressful enough.
Almost the exact same thing happened to me. I used a debit card to pay (don't do this) and got refunded because I filed a dispute, which was denied, only because my bank failed to give a provisional credit (violation of federal regulations). VRBO offered no help at all.
You know this happens a lot when they issue 10% refunds. If it were rare and they cared about customers at all they would refund 100% and deal with the owner themselves. They just don't want to get into the business of talking with renters.
You know this happens a lot when they issue 10% refunds. If it were rare and they cared about customers at all they would refund 100% and deal with the owner themselves. They just don't want to get into the business of talking with renters.
That's what I still don't get, they admitted the owner broke their TOS, and used the same listing for multiple properties. Especially after they said they're just the "middle man", you would think they would just issue a full refund, since they essentially just let stuff like this happen.
Them issuing a 10% refund just felt like an insult to me. Hence why we're taking it further as well.
Them issuing a 10% refund just felt like an insult to me. Hence why we're taking it further as well.
Small claims court?
For me, in the end I disputed the charge with my credit card and they sided with me when I send pictures of the hotel. The single collective bathroom (yes) had no locks on the door (yes).
wife had rented via airbnb in london a few years back. Booked for... 10 days. It was close to $2000. Got there - TV broken. No curtains on window in main room, which faced an office block close enough where people could see you and you could see them. You had to walk between bedroom and bathroom through the main room. Leftover food in the fridge ("you can eat that if you want, previous people didn't finish it"). 2 hangars in a closet. Shower head didn't work - sprayed water out of the top, but not down. After 3 days of 'complaints' (messaged on airbnb and directly), my wife got an extra 6 hangars and the shower 'fixed', sort of. They claimed she must have broken the TV - no one previously had complained.
My wife provided video and picture evidence of this to airbnb - no support. Hosts threatened to provide negative feedback to her and essentially blackball her with other hosts in London. We provided THAT messaging to airbnb - still nothing.
airbnb's position was "well, if it was bad, you should have left and we might have refunded some of your money". Leave $2k with them, go spend another... $2000 on hotel someplace else (assuming you can even get anything short notice), then hope/pray you get some refund? I think we have waived some chargeback ability because of T&C we'd agreed to (I might be misremembering this). We should have pressed chargeback with cc company. It was horrible experience, and we've not used them since.
My wife provided video and picture evidence of this to airbnb - no support. Hosts threatened to provide negative feedback to her and essentially blackball her with other hosts in London. We provided THAT messaging to airbnb - still nothing.
airbnb's position was "well, if it was bad, you should have left and we might have refunded some of your money". Leave $2k with them, go spend another... $2000 on hotel someplace else (assuming you can even get anything short notice), then hope/pray you get some refund? I think we have waived some chargeback ability because of T&C we'd agreed to (I might be misremembering this). We should have pressed chargeback with cc company. It was horrible experience, and we've not used them since.
> well, if it was bad, you should have left and we might have refunded some of your money
Heh, VRBO said the exact opposite to us. Essentially "you should've stayed at the property, but since you left, we can't help you". One of our major complaints was that you had to walk through he first bedroom in order to get to the second. For two adults, that's just a stupid arrangement, and should've been mentioned up front.
Heh, VRBO said the exact opposite to us. Essentially "you should've stayed at the property, but since you left, we can't help you". One of our major complaints was that you had to walk through he first bedroom in order to get to the second. For two adults, that's just a stupid arrangement, and should've been mentioned up front.
At this point I believe they'll use any excuse not to refund you. Had you stayed they would have asked the question above.
Like I said, they've refunded the 10% service fee that they normally take, and this was only after pointing out that the owner had broken their TOS. The other 90% is still lost, and they claim there's nothing they can do about it.
> ”No curtains on window in main room, which faced an office block close enough where people could see you and you could see them.”
This place sounds terrible, and of course it should have had curtains. But the part about facing onto other buildings is pretty normal in London.
This place sounds terrible, and of course it should have had curtains. But the part about facing onto other buildings is pretty normal in London.
sure - my wife used to live in london years back, so isn't a complete stranger. but... seeing pictures of a room that has curtains, then getting there and not having curtains is just nuts.
I already disputed the charges weeks ago, but from talking to the credit card company, it seems that VRBO just claimed that nothing was wrong. Luckily in their last email to me, they admitted the owner broke their TOC, and that they had asked the owner to change their listings. I personally think that should be enough evidence for my credit card company to provide a charge back.
That's exactly the route we're taking now.
> Then they give you a "20% refund" that you can use on your next purchase there.
Consider yourself lucky. For me it was 20eur take it or leave it, on 500eur loss.
<rant> I consider cancellation/refund policies that end before your arrival technically - a scam. The situation was like that - the apartment was booked with cancellation available 3 (or smth) days before arrival [0]. Upon arrival - the place was cigarette reeking, bedbug infested, with 30 year old completely worn out mattresses disgusting place. Owner says - "sorry - no refunds" [1], booking says - "we talked to the owner, cancellation policy has ended, the reviews are above average" [2][3]. Upon other calls they gave me 20eur. Bank could not issue a refund, because everything was up to policy.
Though I still use booking.com. I learned to ignore those dark patterns, because it's obvious that 1 spot is left for an apartment, there are no more to it :) . I had only 1 horrible experience with them, but had much worse with AirBNB. Booking.com is great to search all types of accommodation and it's often possible to find a way to book directly and for cheaper, so using it sort of as a search engine. </rant>
[0] from my experience it's usually like that, cancellations/refunds until your arrival usually add exorbitant amounts to the price
[1] though owner suggested ordering cleaning services, but that place needed crime scene level cleaning and complete refurbishment
[2] lesson learned: always sort reviews by newest and translate from foreign languages, because newest 3 reviews were horrifying. But I have not read them, because have not translated them, or have not seen them. Because default sorting shows by "relevant", i.e. foreign language reviews are on the bottom and the other sort order is a mystery to me.
[3] it seams that people do not know how to vote in reviews. If you returned from vacation and infested your own home with bed bugs, and had multitude of other problems - do not give 7 or 8 as a review score - give it a 1. Booking.com used those reviews against me - "if it's above 8 - we cannot do anything about it".
Consider yourself lucky. For me it was 20eur take it or leave it, on 500eur loss.
<rant> I consider cancellation/refund policies that end before your arrival technically - a scam. The situation was like that - the apartment was booked with cancellation available 3 (or smth) days before arrival [0]. Upon arrival - the place was cigarette reeking, bedbug infested, with 30 year old completely worn out mattresses disgusting place. Owner says - "sorry - no refunds" [1], booking says - "we talked to the owner, cancellation policy has ended, the reviews are above average" [2][3]. Upon other calls they gave me 20eur. Bank could not issue a refund, because everything was up to policy.
Though I still use booking.com. I learned to ignore those dark patterns, because it's obvious that 1 spot is left for an apartment, there are no more to it :) . I had only 1 horrible experience with them, but had much worse with AirBNB. Booking.com is great to search all types of accommodation and it's often possible to find a way to book directly and for cheaper, so using it sort of as a search engine. </rant>
[0] from my experience it's usually like that, cancellations/refunds until your arrival usually add exorbitant amounts to the price
[1] though owner suggested ordering cleaning services, but that place needed crime scene level cleaning and complete refurbishment
[2] lesson learned: always sort reviews by newest and translate from foreign languages, because newest 3 reviews were horrifying. But I have not read them, because have not translated them, or have not seen them. Because default sorting shows by "relevant", i.e. foreign language reviews are on the bottom and the other sort order is a mystery to me.
[3] it seams that people do not know how to vote in reviews. If you returned from vacation and infested your own home with bed bugs, and had multitude of other problems - do not give 7 or 8 as a review score - give it a 1. Booking.com used those reviews against me - "if it's above 8 - we cannot do anything about it".
Oh, I wonder if we went to the same place. Exact same experience.
The funny part is that you can cancel before arriving, but if you're set to stay multiple days, you can't cancel the other days. Might as well make N reservations instead of 1 with N days.
About reviews: Booking.com didn't allow me to leave a review, since they claimed I could only spend one day at the hotel. Even though they charged me for a week. They are as crooked as it gets.
The funny part is that you can cancel before arriving, but if you're set to stay multiple days, you can't cancel the other days. Might as well make N reservations instead of 1 with N days.
About reviews: Booking.com didn't allow me to leave a review, since they claimed I could only spend one day at the hotel. Even though they charged me for a week. They are as crooked as it gets.
> About reviews: Booking.com didn't allow me to leave a review,
We had a feeling about this. So we explicitly did not allow them to cancel, unless they refunded us. I had a hunch if they'd cancel, we also going to lose ability to leave a review. On top of that it would allow host of the apartment to re-rent the place for our days and essentially be paid twice.
We had a feeling about this. So we explicitly did not allow them to cancel, unless they refunded us. I had a hunch if they'd cancel, we also going to lose ability to leave a review. On top of that it would allow host of the apartment to re-rent the place for our days and essentially be paid twice.
In South Korea all the hotels we booked on booking.com cancels the booking when you arrive and you pay on the desk. That's how they do it not to pay the booking.com tax.
I guess they don’t care too much about staying on booking.com, then?
They politely ask you to cancel your own booking. I think we only experience a couple of hotels that cancel it themselves after informing us that they will cancel it. Maybe booking.com don't want to reduce their inventory so most are not penalize.
I agree with all your points.
However, last time I travel for a extended time (hotel everyday at different place for a month), I found Booking has the best UI after some comparison between all the major players (keep in mind lots of them are from the same company), I still used it.
Would like a recommandation about what to use instead.
However, last time I travel for a extended time (hotel everyday at different place for a month), I found Booking has the best UI after some comparison between all the major players (keep in mind lots of them are from the same company), I still used it.
Would like a recommandation about what to use instead.
As you point out, the vast majority of hotel booking platforms in the US and Europe are controlled by either Booking Holdings or Expedia Group. Whatever website you use, chances are it's really of one of these conglomerates. But some notable exceptions include:
Trip.com
Tripadvisor
Lastminute
I still use their UI but I just call the hotels directly.
When I can't find anything, I use AirBnB.
When I can't find anything, I use AirBnB.
We arrived at a hotel, then found out we could get the room for a cheaper rate than we got on booking.
The hotel was very helpful, and we cancelled the booking both from our, as well as the hotel’s side. Nonetheless it took Booking.com days to decide that the refund was legitimate.
The hotel was very helpful, and we cancelled the booking both from our, as well as the hotel’s side. Nonetheless it took Booking.com days to decide that the refund was legitimate.
Isn’t the hotel screwing Booking.com over in that scenario?
In all fairness, Booking.com is screwing everyone over, so it seems to balance things out.
If you go down that route of thinking - any online marketplace (e.g.: Amazon, mobile app stores, Steam ...) and even offline your local green market and groceries store are all screwing everyone over.
Perhaps, but a hotel willing to screw over Booking.com to make some extra bucks might be similarly willing to screw me over.
After snatching that alleged last apartment in a 3 story cabin, we ended up being the only guests, and the owner was snoring in the attic.
[deleted]
I also have quite a few bad experiences with them, including some surprises with the actual hotel room, however I have had worse ones with other services, so I keep using them.
I agree totally and, despite spending 3-6 months of most years traveling, we never use them anymore.
This only got better (at least here) because booking.com had to change their practices after legal action from the EU consumer protection commission.
> As a market leader, it is vital that companies like Booking.com meet their responsibilities in this area, ensuring that online accommodation reservation systems are free from manipulative techniques such as hiding sponsoring in ranking, unduly putting time pressure on users or misrepresenting rebates.
> Booking.com has committed to make the following changes to their practices by 16 June 2020 at the latest:
* Make clear to consumers that any statement such as “last room available!” refers only to the offer on the Booking.com platform;
* Not present an offer as being time-limited if the same price will still be available afterwards;
* Clarify how results are ranked and, whether payments made by the accommodation provider to Booking.com have influenced its position in the list of results;
* Ensure that it is clear when a price comparison is based on different circumstances (e.g. stay dates) and not present that comparison as a discount;
* Ensure that price comparisons presented as discounts represent genuine savings, e.g. by providing details about the Standard Rate price taken as a reference;
* Display the total price that the consumers will have to pay (including all unavoidable charges, fees and taxes that can reasonably be calculated in advance) in a clear and prominent way;
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/es/ip_19_...
> As a market leader, it is vital that companies like Booking.com meet their responsibilities in this area, ensuring that online accommodation reservation systems are free from manipulative techniques such as hiding sponsoring in ranking, unduly putting time pressure on users or misrepresenting rebates.
> Booking.com has committed to make the following changes to their practices by 16 June 2020 at the latest:
* Make clear to consumers that any statement such as “last room available!” refers only to the offer on the Booking.com platform;
* Not present an offer as being time-limited if the same price will still be available afterwards;
* Clarify how results are ranked and, whether payments made by the accommodation provider to Booking.com have influenced its position in the list of results;
* Ensure that it is clear when a price comparison is based on different circumstances (e.g. stay dates) and not present that comparison as a discount;
* Ensure that price comparisons presented as discounts represent genuine savings, e.g. by providing details about the Standard Rate price taken as a reference;
* Display the total price that the consumers will have to pay (including all unavoidable charges, fees and taxes that can reasonably be calculated in advance) in a clear and prominent way;
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/es/ip_19_...
I booked a hotel room with them and when I arrived there, the hotel said they had no such record of my booking. I showed the receipts and all, but the hotel washed their hands off saying the server was down, etc. I contacted booking.com, but it was useless. I literally spent 2 hours in the hotel lobby trying to figure out what was going on and how I could get my money back. Their support is almost non-existent, especially for money related matters. The unhelpful thing their agent told me was "Oh, if you were wrongly charged, the amount would be credited back to your account in X days". I was so pissed off that I filed a chargeback with my credit card provider that very moment with all the evidence and then booked a room in a different hotel for the night for twice the budget I had. 4 business days later, I get spam calls from random numbers and guess who it was? Booking.com "We apologize, we will give you this credit into your account, bla bla" something along those lines.
Chargeback is the real way to fight such scammy companies. Because, they lose more money than they will make from you. Hit them where it hurts. Lesson learnt. Now, I ALWAYS use my credit card for booking anything online.
Chargeback is the real way to fight such scammy companies. Because, they lose more money than they will make from you. Hit them where it hurts. Lesson learnt. Now, I ALWAYS use my credit card for booking anything online.
The way the pay-per-click machine works, is you pay like 3$ for 'hotels in amsterdam', their average (public info) commission is 15%. Looking at booking.com/amsterdam you can see vague idea about average price, lets say most bookings are 2 nights, then you can get ballpark average reservation of around 200$, 15% of that is 30$. So for each room they sell they can buy 10 clicks on 'hotels in amsterdam'.
This is super ballpark estimates, could be order of magnitude different, but the idea is that there is enormous incentive to push people to book, its the same as the example in the article, pushing people to buy. Purely because the pay-per-click is so expensive, you need ROI > 1 to survive.
Those companies are in survivor mode, and anything that is even remotely legal, or can be defended in court, is allowed and encouraged.
Thing like 70% off on pair of shoes, that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute, just so there was a record in the database that they actually had higher price, nobody cares that they never sold at the high price.
Companies constantly push the legal boundary.
This is super ballpark estimates, could be order of magnitude different, but the idea is that there is enormous incentive to push people to book, its the same as the example in the article, pushing people to buy. Purely because the pay-per-click is so expensive, you need ROI > 1 to survive.
Those companies are in survivor mode, and anything that is even remotely legal, or can be defended in court, is allowed and encouraged.
Thing like 70% off on pair of shoes, that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute, just so there was a record in the database that they actually had higher price, nobody cares that they never sold at the high price.
Companies constantly push the legal boundary.
>Thing like 70% off on pair of shoes, that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute, just so there was a record in the database that they actually had higher price, nobody cares that they never sold at the high price.
In my country this is explicitly illegal. A good or service must be sold for a certain period of time (2 weeks I think) before it can be used as the pre-sale price.
I've only heard this in relation to physical stores though, not sure how it works for e-commerce.
In my country this is explicitly illegal. A good or service must be sold for a certain period of time (2 weeks I think) before it can be used as the pre-sale price.
I've only heard this in relation to physical stores though, not sure how it works for e-commerce.
What country is that, if you don't mind saying? I'd love to cite that example when friends who work in marketing start to babble about "cool tricks" they can do next time.
I'm not sure where the rules come from (law, business association regulation etc), but here are a couple of links for the UK.
https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/marketing-and-selling/co...
https://www.lewissilkin.com/-/media/files/main/insights/cmi/...
You'll find similar rules in many European countries, though most won't be available in English. This document is, for Denmark:
https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/media/14560/forbrugerombuds...
https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/marketing-and-selling/co...
https://www.lewissilkin.com/-/media/files/main/insights/cmi/...
You'll find similar rules in many European countries, though most won't be available in English. This document is, for Denmark:
https://www.consumerombudsman.dk/media/14560/forbrugerombuds...
Ah, thank you for the links, hopefully translation tools will help me get at least the gist of the Danish document.
Ireland. Also I was wrong with the 2 weeks, it's 28 days out of the last 3 months
https://thecai.ie/your-rights/your-rights/pricing/
>Businesses cannot claim that goods have been sold at a higher price and are now on sale for a lower price unless the goods were actually on sale at the higher price for a “reasonable period,” which is generally understood to be 28 days in the three months before the price reduction.
https://thecai.ie/your-rights/your-rights/pricing/
>Businesses cannot claim that goods have been sold at a higher price and are now on sale for a lower price unless the goods were actually on sale at the higher price for a “reasonable period,” which is generally understood to be 28 days in the three months before the price reduction.
As one example, it's illegal in Brazil. Booking doesn't even display the "X people are looking at it" here because that would get a lot of attention from consumer protection.
Anywhere in EU, for one. I can't find the exact info at the moment (Google gives me a bunch of completely irrelevant stuff), but it's definitely true.
This holds for all of EU, in fact.
Presumably the majority of clients are happy, and go back to booking.com after their first visit, thus costing $0
yes, loyalty just reduces the cost per click, but the math is the same, so they buy 100 people instead of 10 people with one reservation, but the game is the same.
EDIT: also think about how many times people book per year, maybe 4-5 times in the upper quantiles? so if booking pays 3$ for you, it will take a couple of months until your next booking so they can reinvest your 15% commission to buy other people.
EDIT: also think about how many times people book per year, maybe 4-5 times in the upper quantiles? so if booking pays 3$ for you, it will take a couple of months until your next booking so they can reinvest your 15% commission to buy other people.
A a freelance consultant, Pre COVID I was easily booking 50 times/year
hotels.com gave one free night for every 10 nights, effectively a 10% discount. Change in contracts at work means I now book with ihg with massive discounts over hotels.com rates and get the points from them instead, but before then I'd get several weekends away for free each year.
> that just had their price increased by 90% for 1 minute
In the UK, that's a criminal offence.
In the UK, that's a criminal offence.
I will give you a tip.
* search hotel at booking.com
* find that hotel at google
* call them directly, by actual phone
You will get a lower price always. Of course, you need to actually manually call them, which people don't want to do; but it always worked for me.
* search hotel at booking.com
* find that hotel at google
* call them directly, by actual phone
You will get a lower price always. Of course, you need to actually manually call them, which people don't want to do; but it always worked for me.
I would add something (disclaimer I am involved in the management of a small hotel, this comes from my experience):
1) you will talk to a human
2) you will be able to talk about particular requests (like - say - higher or lower floor, an additional bed for your child, room with balcony, non standard breakfast, etc.)
3) the dates/times of your arrival and departure will be double checked interactively with the hotel clerk [0]
4) the rate will be double checked and confirmed [1] (besides very likely being lower, particularly if you are going to stay mmore than one or two days)
[0] it is not extremely rare that people make mistakes with the dates, when/if you arrive one day earlier it is usually not a problem (unless the hotel has no vacancies) but if you arrive one day later, that is a "no show", your money cannot be recovered
[1] it happens often enough that people books a double room ( but for one person) by mistake and then is surprised that the hotel asks for a supplement for the second person
1) you will talk to a human
2) you will be able to talk about particular requests (like - say - higher or lower floor, an additional bed for your child, room with balcony, non standard breakfast, etc.)
3) the dates/times of your arrival and departure will be double checked interactively with the hotel clerk [0]
4) the rate will be double checked and confirmed [1] (besides very likely being lower, particularly if you are going to stay mmore than one or two days)
[0] it is not extremely rare that people make mistakes with the dates, when/if you arrive one day earlier it is usually not a problem (unless the hotel has no vacancies) but if you arrive one day later, that is a "no show", your money cannot be recovered
[1] it happens often enough that people books a double room ( but for one person) by mistake and then is surprised that the hotel asks for a supplement for the second person
Might work in the US, but it's not always that easy. Some people do not like to talk over the phone in general. Also, if booking a stay abroad, the owner might not speak English.
* Search a hotel at booking.com
* Find them at Google
* Call them directly
* Get a super expensive price and a tip to book online
* Find them at Google
* Call them directly
* Get a super expensive price and a tip to book online
This has been my experience the few times I’ve tried it.
I had a gf who was able to get a different experience but it always seemed she had to get the manager on the line to do so.
I had a gf who was able to get a different experience but it always seemed she had to get the manager on the line to do so.
This might work in the US, but the rest 80% of the world...
I am aware of booking's dirty tools to make you feel you have to book NOW! However, after around 100+ booking.com booking all around the world (including small villages in Amazonia or Laos) I am eternally grateful that for that extra 1$/night or so I get instant support with whatever probleem I had.
I am aware of booking's dirty tools to make you feel you have to book NOW! However, after around 100+ booking.com booking all around the world (including small villages in Amazonia or Laos) I am eternally grateful that for that extra 1$/night or so I get instant support with whatever probleem I had.
Thanks ♡ And imagine that our mission is to have everyone feel that same way.
Obviously as middle man you take some part of the pie - though idea is that it's worth for everyone.
BTW - it's not that common to meet customer with 100+ reservations. So excuse me for asking - what do you think of the changes in the account area (My Trips)?
Obviously as middle man you take some part of the pie - though idea is that it's worth for everyone.
BTW - it's not that common to meet customer with 100+ reservations. So excuse me for asking - what do you think of the changes in the account area (My Trips)?
Sorry my bad, on booking.com I only have around 50 (private), the rest are company booking systems. (felt much more!)
Currently I only have the android app (well, traveling again) and I am mostly satisfied with it.
However the web version I always found a disaster. Especially since I had a linked business account too, and the SSO just craps itself into a redirect loop when I try to logout from it.
Everything else seems to be very user-oriented and I am satisfied in general.
(ha, I also happen to know the storage system behind the backend ;-) )
Currently I only have the android app (well, traveling again) and I am mostly satisfied with it.
However the web version I always found a disaster. Especially since I had a linked business account too, and the SSO just craps itself into a redirect loop when I try to logout from it.
Everything else seems to be very user-oriented and I am satisfied in general.
(ha, I also happen to know the storage system behind the backend ;-) )
...I am living in Vietnam, part of the "80%", and doing this every time. It always works.
When speaking Vietnamese, you get an extra discount.
When speaking Vietnamese, you get an extra discount.
sometimes they even have their own website so no need to call!
Quite often I get a lower price or free goodies (ie. a bottle of wine) because I skipped booking.com
Quite often I get a lower price or free goodies (ie. a bottle of wine) because I skipped booking.com
I always try the hotel’s own website but often the prices are higher. I have previously got cheaper prices by talking directly to the owner or hotel management when deciding to extend my stay.
"Hate Selling" is the term coined by one of the industry magazines
https://skift.com/2015/08/10/travel-brands-stop-hate-selling...
https://skift.com/2015/08/10/travel-brands-stop-hate-selling...
>I wouldn't want to shop on that site ever again, they have no respect for their users.
Perhaps this may the case for you (it's one of the reasons I refuse to use food delivery apps), but across the general population these dodgy tactics do seem to work.
In my eBay business, at times we've seen a >100% increase in sales during the last 24 hours of a promotion, when the site starts showing ticking red countdown timers.
Perhaps this may the case for you (it's one of the reasons I refuse to use food delivery apps), but across the general population these dodgy tactics do seem to work.
In my eBay business, at times we've seen a >100% increase in sales during the last 24 hours of a promotion, when the site starts showing ticking red countdown timers.
Here is what I do. Find the hotel on booking.com. Call the hotel directly. Tell them the price is what you found online - per night on booking.com. EVERY time they give me that rate over the phone. The end. Done.
I was part of "Consumer Psychology Team" at Booking.com for years. That team was/is one way or another involved in pretty much every functionality you mentioned (among other things I did in particular latest version/implementation of "X other people looking at this") and TL;DR: All of it is real - and majority of people don't find it as annoying as you, many even find it helpful
---
While I can't really give too many details (BTW I still work at Booking - just moved teams).
I did the real time (it's a stream so technically that's "near real time") processing back-end which collects all the "views events", uses anonymous unique user identifiers to make sure it's truly not counting duplicates, bots are also excluded ...etc. And result is a reverse index of sorts.
On the FE side (technically still BE so think backend for frontend) as part of producing message (or not) we literally do a real-time query on that reversed index to be sure that even if looking only at count it's "1" - we want to be sure that it's not you.
As of things like "Only X left" - that's literally how many rooms we've got left to offer to you for the dates you've entered.
---
And speaking generally. Booking.com being 25+ years old global company, one can imagine that company is basically constantly under microscope of various regulators and consumer protection agencies. So even if there was someone that wanted to fake this type of stuff (and that would be going against what they've learned in various mandatory ethics, privacy, legal ... training). Well something like that would've been very short lived.
And with so much money on the line - companies (at least those that don't have walled garden ecosystems and such) actually do look into long term effect of things like Marketing/Sales/Persuasion - because they don't want to annoy potential customers so much that they never come back.
---
While I can't really give too many details (BTW I still work at Booking - just moved teams).
I did the real time (it's a stream so technically that's "near real time") processing back-end which collects all the "views events", uses anonymous unique user identifiers to make sure it's truly not counting duplicates, bots are also excluded ...etc. And result is a reverse index of sorts.
On the FE side (technically still BE so think backend for frontend) as part of producing message (or not) we literally do a real-time query on that reversed index to be sure that even if looking only at count it's "1" - we want to be sure that it's not you.
As of things like "Only X left" - that's literally how many rooms we've got left to offer to you for the dates you've entered.
---
And speaking generally. Booking.com being 25+ years old global company, one can imagine that company is basically constantly under microscope of various regulators and consumer protection agencies. So even if there was someone that wanted to fake this type of stuff (and that would be going against what they've learned in various mandatory ethics, privacy, legal ... training). Well something like that would've been very short lived.
And with so much money on the line - companies (at least those that don't have walled garden ecosystems and such) actually do look into long term effect of things like Marketing/Sales/Persuasion - because they don't want to annoy potential customers so much that they never come back.
Perhaps it is just travel anxiety? I book hotels a few hours in advance and stats like "only 2 rooms left", are usually correct when I check with hotel reception. At least in Europe booking.com is much better than competition. It has loyalty discounts, transparent pricing and consistent experience. Reviews and descriptions are actually useful, not BS. Emails I get are usually "place you looked at become 30% cheaper".
> Perhaps it is just travel anxiety?
It was just an illegal consumer practice.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_19_...
It was just an illegal consumer practice.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_19_...
Not sure what illegal consumer practice are you talking about.
Reading through the points from the page you posted - I think internally only actions related to that were basically to add more info (e.g. popup/hover or just "on our site") to clarify to people that same as every other marketplace on the Internet ... coughAmazoncough ...
Things we show are just things we know about and have in our "inventory".
And actually after some of those changes - I believe some customers started to complain that reminding them how "X other people are looking at {name of hotel} for your dates" felt much creepier than "X other people are looking at {name of hotel}" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
---
PS. Only reason I wrote a quoted "inventory" is that unlike physical goods with real stock. When you're renting accommodation - on top of physical rooms, there's extra dimensions due to different dates, meals (because in many hotels restaurant can't support everyone having breakfast, half/full board/meals) ...etc.
Reading through the points from the page you posted - I think internally only actions related to that were basically to add more info (e.g. popup/hover or just "on our site") to clarify to people that same as every other marketplace on the Internet ... coughAmazoncough ...
Things we show are just things we know about and have in our "inventory".
And actually after some of those changes - I believe some customers started to complain that reminding them how "X other people are looking at {name of hotel} for your dates" felt much creepier than "X other people are looking at {name of hotel}" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
---
PS. Only reason I wrote a quoted "inventory" is that unlike physical goods with real stock. When you're renting accommodation - on top of physical rooms, there's extra dimensions due to different dates, meals (because in many hotels restaurant can't support everyone having breakfast, half/full board/meals) ...etc.
> Not sure what illegal consumer practice are you talking about.
> I was part of "Consumer Psychology Team" at Booking.com for years. That team was/is one way or another involved in pretty much every functionality you mentioned
You were part of a team that cooked up new ways to harm consumers.
Playing the same word games here too is a bit tasteless. When your company is forced to "align practices presenting offers and prices with EU law following EU action", that means you've done something illegal, and you were caught. Nothing else matters.
> I was part of "Consumer Psychology Team" at Booking.com for years. That team was/is one way or another involved in pretty much every functionality you mentioned
You were part of a team that cooked up new ways to harm consumers.
Playing the same word games here too is a bit tasteless. When your company is forced to "align practices presenting offers and prices with EU law following EU action", that means you've done something illegal, and you were caught. Nothing else matters.
I hope you realize that picking out only bits and pieces that fit your predetermined view is basically just reinforcing your personal biases, and not bringing you to see the bigger picture.
Though as long as someone doing that is impacting only that person - I don't mind.
However, I would appreciate if you didn't follow taking those bits and pieces you've selected. And then taking them out of context that I've said/wrote them in - re-combining them in ways that would bias others reading just your "curated" version.
Though as long as someone doing that is impacting only that person - I don't mind.
However, I would appreciate if you didn't follow taking those bits and pieces you've selected. And then taking them out of context that I've said/wrote them in - re-combining them in ways that would bias others reading just your "curated" version.
Some of your work was unethical and harmful, work that was later on found to be illegal in the European Union. All of this is part of the public record.
It's never too late to reflect on that, and work on making things better at your company, instead of acting surprised that something illegal was called illegal on HN.
It's never too late to reflect on that, and work on making things better at your company, instead of acting surprised that something illegal was called illegal on HN.
AFAIK none of my own work, nor work of the people I was team lead off was unethical, harmful or illegal. Neither in EU or elsewhere.
Before jumping to further conclusions - I would encourage you to look at actual differences in website before and post that announcement you're referring to. Wayback archive should work - though some of this stuff might have not be shown, or shown differently to bots; otherwise over years there have been a bunch of articles covering persuasive techniques with examples/screenshots of Booking.com.
And then perhaps even ask specific questions based on those observations - and maybe, just maybe someone can answer them without actually breaking the law.
Though since it would be against the law for me to give too many technical and business details (employment contract, regulations related to publicly traded companies ...etc). Only way I can think off for you to get a peak into implementation - would be to become a colleague.
And finally - I will agree with you on that last sentence. It's never too late to reflect on things. That includes not acting surprised (or in denial) to hear that some "big company" you thought is doing bad things - is not.
Oh and definitely keep up with the good fight. Based on news with actual specific details of lawsuits and outcomes (some of which I initially only found about when they were used as examples in internal ethics workshops & trainings). There's a lot of companies out there that should be getting more scrutiny both internally and externally.
Before jumping to further conclusions - I would encourage you to look at actual differences in website before and post that announcement you're referring to. Wayback archive should work - though some of this stuff might have not be shown, or shown differently to bots; otherwise over years there have been a bunch of articles covering persuasive techniques with examples/screenshots of Booking.com.
And then perhaps even ask specific questions based on those observations - and maybe, just maybe someone can answer them without actually breaking the law.
Though since it would be against the law for me to give too many technical and business details (employment contract, regulations related to publicly traded companies ...etc). Only way I can think off for you to get a peak into implementation - would be to become a colleague.
And finally - I will agree with you on that last sentence. It's never too late to reflect on things. That includes not acting surprised (or in denial) to hear that some "big company" you thought is doing bad things - is not.
Oh and definitely keep up with the good fight. Based on news with actual specific details of lawsuits and outcomes (some of which I initially only found about when they were used as examples in internal ethics workshops & trainings). There's a lot of companies out there that should be getting more scrutiny both internally and externally.
As shop owner that switches to Woo I dig into many plugins the last year and only find a very few of those attention and countdown plugins that are kinda honest.
- The majority of 'users currently see this project' are looking a few hours back instead of being 100% fake. All of them allow faking the numbers somehow tho. There are plenty of 100% fake ones out there too tho.
- 'xxx just bought' things are usually real too. But also out of context and time. Plus all plugins I've seen allow you to add custom fake ones. Or even have some preenabled.
- While I was looking for the functionality to actually lock products when they are in a cart for 15 minutes or so because we have limited stock I found none of these plugins is actually doing this. All they do is adding a cookie and a fake timer.
There is more, way more. And I learned to avoid shops using any of those fake tactics.
In the end I wrote many of that stuff my own with real data and I don't think users will ever notice the difference :/
- The majority of 'users currently see this project' are looking a few hours back instead of being 100% fake. All of them allow faking the numbers somehow tho. There are plenty of 100% fake ones out there too tho.
- 'xxx just bought' things are usually real too. But also out of context and time. Plus all plugins I've seen allow you to add custom fake ones. Or even have some preenabled.
- While I was looking for the functionality to actually lock products when they are in a cart for 15 minutes or so because we have limited stock I found none of these plugins is actually doing this. All they do is adding a cookie and a fake timer.
There is more, way more. And I learned to avoid shops using any of those fake tactics.
In the end I wrote many of that stuff my own with real data and I don't think users will ever notice the difference :/
> In the end I wrote many of that stuff my own with real data
If you implemented the "looking at" functionality, are you keeping a connection open to the client (say, via WS) to determine if they are still looking as in keeping the tab open (or opencv with camera access to see that they are "actually" looking hehe), or are you just looking a few minutes back instead of hours?
How would one honestly implement this feature anyway?
If you implemented the "looking at" functionality, are you keeping a connection open to the client (say, via WS) to determine if they are still looking as in keeping the tab open (or opencv with camera access to see that they are "actually" looking hehe), or are you just looking a few minutes back instead of hours?
How would one honestly implement this feature anyway?
I didn't. I don't think this feature would reflect reality at all, or rather reality wouldn't sell. I have a few hundred products and a few hundred daily visitors, so I am far from big enough to get some relevant numbers there :)
I would go for the minutes if I were big enough, or maybe a 1 hour time frame.
However I opted for other signals that better reflect reality like 'bought X times in the last X days' or 'product is in X wishlists' or 'this product is trending within our visitors'
IMO same effect, but honest and suitable for my size :)
I would go for the minutes if I were big enough, or maybe a 1 hour time frame.
However I opted for other signals that better reflect reality like 'bought X times in the last X days' or 'product is in X wishlists' or 'this product is trending within our visitors'
IMO same effect, but honest and suitable for my size :)
That's really good thinking - and both wishlist and "bought x times" are nice representation of the real world "social proof" where you're walking next to a store or bakery and see a long queue of people waiting to enter and making you notice they are selling something good/cheap/etc.
Generally going from those towards the "X other people are considering it", and even further towards "only X left" (on their own, and especially both in combination) puts you more towards different effect of "scarcity". And that's what seems to be more polarizing with people.
Besides majority of people not noticing/caring/etc ("bell curve"). Two opposite camps are where one is really not liking it (especially when they think it's not real and just fake scarcity) and vocal about it. Meanwhile on the other end are people finding it valuable info to know, and they tend to be much less vocal. (Which, yeah - is actually same with just about everything else)
Those that find it valuable seem to be people that want specific things. Not just specific apartment/hotel, but also think of cases like parents with school age kids being limited to specific dates due to school holidays or things of that nature.
Generally going from those towards the "X other people are considering it", and even further towards "only X left" (on their own, and especially both in combination) puts you more towards different effect of "scarcity". And that's what seems to be more polarizing with people.
Besides majority of people not noticing/caring/etc ("bell curve"). Two opposite camps are where one is really not liking it (especially when they think it's not real and just fake scarcity) and vocal about it. Meanwhile on the other end are people finding it valuable info to know, and they tend to be much less vocal. (Which, yeah - is actually same with just about everything else)
Those that find it valuable seem to be people that want specific things. Not just specific apartment/hotel, but also think of cases like parents with school age kids being limited to specific dates due to school holidays or things of that nature.
Naively without thinking about it. Session Id, setInterval sending a ping every few seconds, clear the id if the ping fails to arrive. Smooth it by taking an average or sum over anywhere between a few minutes to a few days, depending on what you're selling. Some things take more thought and as such those numbers can be quite a bit higher.
There's no need to put any more thought in than that. It's a single design element, and you're not doing a scientific study or collecting marketing data here. This is fine.
There's no need to put any more thought in than that. It's a single design element, and you're not doing a scientific study or collecting marketing data here. This is fine.
If you have real time analytics, you probably have a way to count visits to that page in the last X minutes. If I was a visitor, that number would be good enough for me. If the site also made it clear that it was not an exact number, it would of course be even better ("10 to 20" or similar)
For smaller websites the "send ping every X seconds", and/or combo of that with "onLoad do +1, onUnload do -1" might work.
Though for really big websites - with millions of users making requests to 1000s of web/api servers spread across DCs in different continents ... It's indeed a variant of what you said.
Analytics can give you confidence to say that X percentile of people spend at least Z seconds/minutes on given page. So you can use initial request + TTL value of Z.
---
PS All of the above is at least order of magnitude (if not even bigger) more complex when your page is not simply one physical product, and instead you've got "product x between Start and End dates" since that's millions of products x millions of combinations.
Though for really big websites - with millions of users making requests to 1000s of web/api servers spread across DCs in different continents ... It's indeed a variant of what you said.
Analytics can give you confidence to say that X percentile of people spend at least Z seconds/minutes on given page. So you can use initial request + TTL value of Z.
---
PS All of the above is at least order of magnitude (if not even bigger) more complex when your page is not simply one physical product, and instead you've got "product x between Start and End dates" since that's millions of products x millions of combinations.
I was once tasked with upgrading a small desktop application used by warehouse workers to fetch imprint data for an apparel printer.
The data was stored in a really inefficient way and so the operation took a stupidly long time. I decided to add a progress bar so that people don't think the app is busted (which they occasionally did). Turned out, much of the time spent was on the server's end, so I couldn't track the majority of the "progress".
I had already put effort into the bar, so I replaced the "real" progress tracking with a script that randomly incremented the progress. I tweaked some heuristics until it roughly matched the amount of time the server tended to take but was random enough to not be super obvious.
After the progress bar launched, someone from the warehouse actually walked up and thanked me for the progress bar.
Of course, that's all fun and games. Weird psychological manipulation in e-commerce is horrible.
The data was stored in a really inefficient way and so the operation took a stupidly long time. I decided to add a progress bar so that people don't think the app is busted (which they occasionally did). Turned out, much of the time spent was on the server's end, so I couldn't track the majority of the "progress".
I had already put effort into the bar, so I replaced the "real" progress tracking with a script that randomly incremented the progress. I tweaked some heuristics until it roughly matched the amount of time the server tended to take but was random enough to not be super obvious.
After the progress bar launched, someone from the warehouse actually walked up and thanked me for the progress bar.
Of course, that's all fun and games. Weird psychological manipulation in e-commerce is horrible.
The fact there isn't a straightforward back-pressure mechanism in browsers to get live updates on how much time is left for an upload or a download is why loading spinners are used everywhere instead of progress bars. You can implement it yourself using websockets and a ton of complexity, but then you need the entire socket tooling and security to be in place. It's one of few the things browsers are really missing in my opinion.
You don't need websockets to simply listen to the ProgressEvent, you should know that.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/XMLHttpRequ...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/XMLHttpRequ...
That tells you something is happening, and how much has been done, but not how much work there is left to do, or how much back pressure (load) there is on the server side. Consequently you can't work out how far along the progress is or how long is left. If you assume that there'll be a consistent amount of progress you can guess, but for a large upload (eg gigabytes) you'll usually be wrong.
If the server could send data back to update the progress event it would be really nice. Right now though, that can't be done (as far as I know.. maybe there's a way now.. I haven't looked for years.)
If the server could send data back to update the progress event it would be really nice. Right now though, that can't be done (as far as I know.. maybe there's a way now.. I haven't looked for years.)
I think that virtually describes almost all progress bars. A better solution is a spinning wheel, because you don't need to figure out how long it would take. You just have to make sure the spinning wheel ocassionally stops and starts again to give users a sense that it's connected to something.
Indeterminate loading indicators are only appropriate for short load times. Anything longer and you definitely want to have something to inform the user of a timeline. Even if it’s a bit of a fib.
Bit of a meta comment but:
I love the author's rewriting of javascript into "human-readable" code[1], while retaining the same visual style as code written in an editor.
It feels like an excellent way of representing what is inside the programmer's mind when writing the code, and I will probably try to replicate it next time I coach a new student.
[1] https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*aXnY3j41mO3AShqSGiYgBA.png
I love the author's rewriting of javascript into "human-readable" code[1], while retaining the same visual style as code written in an editor.
It feels like an excellent way of representing what is inside the programmer's mind when writing the code, and I will probably try to replicate it next time I coach a new student.
[1] https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*aXnY3j41mO3AShqSGiYgBA.png
Not sure if I'm the only one, but I start writing code like this quite often.
At first it's "comment only" to describe what I'm trying to achieve and then I'm adding functional code in/around it. I find that really helpful, although some might say there's some "comment bloat" in the end, as I often keep the comments, too.
At first it's "comment only" to describe what I'm trying to achieve and then I'm adding functional code in/around it. I find that really helpful, although some might say there's some "comment bloat" in the end, as I often keep the comments, too.
I usually do something like that when working with someone, though I write "real" code but using variables and functions that we don't yet have, so that we can agree on the structure of the code.
That’s called BDD, isn’t it? :-)
I don't know to be honest. As a part-time programmer I just find it helpful to tackle the task like this. :-)
>retaining the same visual style as code written in an editor
I think its just their editor's syntax highlighting, likely for Javascript. Highlighting numbers in a different color definitely helps, but highlighting a very small subset (I assume only in and of) of random prepositions doesn't really do much.
I think its just their editor's syntax highlighting, likely for Javascript. Highlighting numbers in a different color definitely helps, but highlighting a very small subset (I assume only in and of) of random prepositions doesn't really do much.
Yeah, this is correct. In retrospect, I think I should have disabled the syntax highlighting for the numbers and the prepositions.
Hi! I'm the author and I just wanted to say thank you for your nice comment :)
I implemented this functionality for a certain SaaS with many large customers. I made sure to have a scalable way to measure unique viewers across different time frames. Only after we launched it, we realized all our competitors just put a random number that looked nice.
> competitors just put a random number that looked nice
Is this even legal? It seems this is used to mislead the customer.
Is this even legal? It seems this is used to mislead the customer.
I am an engineer, not a lawyer, but I expect that from a criminal perspective it doesn't count as fraud because it isn't material information, and the consumer rights differ vastly between countries and probably don't cover "dishonest but immaterial information" - there weren't lies on the price, on availability, etc.
If a company asks me to implement something I believe is illegal I ask for clarifications from a lawyer. Since I wasn't asked to implement this in a "wrong" way, I never looked into it further.
If a company asks me to implement something I believe is illegal I ask for clarifications from a lawyer. Since I wasn't asked to implement this in a "wrong" way, I never looked into it further.
I’m not a lawyer either. I was thinking that this may fall under false advertising [0]. That is, claiming N people are interested in the product/service while that information is clearly made up.
To be clear, I’m referring to an implementation that just uses a number that looks good, disconnected from any sort of metrics.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
To be clear, I’m referring to an implementation that just uses a number that looks good, disconnected from any sort of metrics.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
False advertising is narrower than some people would like it to be.
Indeed it's both not ethical not legal in most parts of the world.
My educated guess it that only reason it happens anywhere at all - is within "smaller" websites/companies which:
a) don't know better because they are mostly just tech people that didn't heave to deal with big company bureaucracy, they have no legal/ethics team - or (hopefully not big chunk) they do know it's not legal, but count on ...
b) they are small enough that no one bothers to deal with until amount of money company is making suddenly makes it go over whatever amount makes it worth the effort
My educated guess it that only reason it happens anywhere at all - is within "smaller" websites/companies which:
a) don't know better because they are mostly just tech people that didn't heave to deal with big company bureaucracy, they have no legal/ethics team - or (hopefully not big chunk) they do know it's not legal, but count on ...
b) they are small enough that no one bothers to deal with until amount of money company is making suddenly makes it go over whatever amount makes it worth the effort
> it isn't material information
Why not?
The SEC doesn't take that attitude when they catch people artificially manipulating the frequency at which something is trading.
Why not?
The SEC doesn't take that attitude when they catch people artificially manipulating the frequency at which something is trading.
Shirts aren't securities :)
Why should the law be any different? Selling cheap products doesn't entitle you to lie, or otherwise break the law, to close the sale. Counterfeit goods are taken seriously by the law despite being cheap.
In the case of holiday and hotel websites, they're selling expensive packages.
In the case of holiday and hotel websites, they're selling expensive packages.
How did that turn out in the end? I presume having a real number is long-term optimal in terms of keeping customers compared to showing a fake number.
Hmm, I think the fake number will bring more money, both short and long term.
If you are selling 10_000 items, with uniform demand (just toy example), you need like 3 million unique visitors per day in order to show 'one other person is looking at this item in the last 5 minutes, (24*7)
If I show 1 + random(5) are looking at each item, my competitor has to have enormous amount of visitors to compete.
Sadly, unless its illegal to lie, organizations are disincentivized to do the right thing.
If you are selling 10_000 items, with uniform demand (just toy example), you need like 3 million unique visitors per day in order to show 'one other person is looking at this item in the last 5 minutes, (24*7)
If I show 1 + random(5) are looking at each item, my competitor has to have enormous amount of visitors to compete.
Sadly, unless its illegal to lie, organizations are disincentivized to do the right thing.
Oh and it's illegal to lie in those ways (deceive potential customers) just about anywhere in the world.
And though there is legally gray area - majority of that tends to clearly be not ethical...
But you know - Elon "promised" self driving cars in just a month/quarter or so - how many years ago? IIRC he even said it would be good, no not good but best investment because such a car could earn you money on it's own ...
Yet neither we got those self-driving cars, nor Elon is in trouble due to those "forward looking statements" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And though there is legally gray area - majority of that tends to clearly be not ethical...
But you know - Elon "promised" self driving cars in just a month/quarter or so - how many years ago? IIRC he even said it would be good, no not good but best investment because such a car could earn you money on it's own ...
Yet neither we got those self-driving cars, nor Elon is in trouble due to those "forward looking statements" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Traffic distribution is basically never uniform. Unless maybe if you've only got very very few products/pages (like just 1-5), though that definitely changes long before you reach 10_000 items.
And for the majority of mid to big websites - visitors/buyers will look only at minority of products/pages. Let's say it's like Pareto 80/20 percent principle. Though if not 90/10 - for tourism/travel/flights - because places like London, Paris [France, not dozens of them in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(disambiguation)], Rome, Las Vegas, Ibiza ...etc are much, much more interesting/visited than say Anchorage/Alaska.
And unless you've got uniform spread of visitors/customers around the world - which I'm thinking that even Facebook/Google/Amazon don't really have (because Flipkart/WeChat/etc are used more in India/Chrina/etc). You're likely to see a daily (per hour), weekly (per work vs weekend days) pattern /where west is different than Israel and predominantly Muslim countries/ - the min/max difference even within one day/week is easily 2 to 5 times.
All of that is to say that by far majority of your revenue will likely be during workday afternoon in your target audiences time-zone, and from those 10_000 items it will probably be <=100 that are seen/bought by majority of your visitors.
And for the majority of mid to big websites - visitors/buyers will look only at minority of products/pages. Let's say it's like Pareto 80/20 percent principle. Though if not 90/10 - for tourism/travel/flights - because places like London, Paris [France, not dozens of them in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(disambiguation)], Rome, Las Vegas, Ibiza ...etc are much, much more interesting/visited than say Anchorage/Alaska.
And unless you've got uniform spread of visitors/customers around the world - which I'm thinking that even Facebook/Google/Amazon don't really have (because Flipkart/WeChat/etc are used more in India/Chrina/etc). You're likely to see a daily (per hour), weekly (per work vs weekend days) pattern /where west is different than Israel and predominantly Muslim countries/ - the min/max difference even within one day/week is easily 2 to 5 times.
All of that is to say that by far majority of your revenue will likely be during workday afternoon in your target audiences time-zone, and from those 10_000 items it will probably be <=100 that are seen/bought by majority of your visitors.
No one ever really cared either way, except when we rarely had issues and the number came back as 0.
When would customers ever know that the number was fake?
This is very close to home (sadly).
Someone I worked with recently put the "X of these sold in the last 24 hours" across a load of product pages as an example of "things we should be doing to increase conversion."
It didn't increase conversion because the target market was all wrong (I suspect it might, for a single click from FB/native ad to a single landing page for an 'on a whim' product). More so, much like this example, it refreshed every time you reloaded the page. If you went back to the product it was a different number. If you HAVE to do this, at least use a cookie or something. The changing number makes the product, and by extension the whole site, look completely suspicious. One of the absolute number one things I want to do on a landing page/PDP is build trust. This falls at the first hurdle.
This wasn't implemented in the UK, but with a little Googling I ended up under the impression it would break trading laws over here.
Someone I worked with recently put the "X of these sold in the last 24 hours" across a load of product pages as an example of "things we should be doing to increase conversion."
It didn't increase conversion because the target market was all wrong (I suspect it might, for a single click from FB/native ad to a single landing page for an 'on a whim' product). More so, much like this example, it refreshed every time you reloaded the page. If you went back to the product it was a different number. If you HAVE to do this, at least use a cookie or something. The changing number makes the product, and by extension the whole site, look completely suspicious. One of the absolute number one things I want to do on a landing page/PDP is build trust. This falls at the first hurdle.
This wasn't implemented in the UK, but with a little Googling I ended up under the impression it would break trading laws over here.
I'd be surprised if it were allowed in any jurisdiction.
It seems pretty universal that you aren't allowed to lie to people to make a sale.
It seems pretty universal that you aren't allowed to lie to people to make a sale.
Was X some randomly generated number, not based on any actual inventory?
Yup, pretty much literally: Math.floor(Math.random() * (25 - 3 + 1) + 3)
A little meta, but certainly in the spirit of the article, and this is Hacker News after all.
When clicking on the 'comments' icon in the article, a sidebar open with the heading Responses (36). I'd not noticed I'd gone offline. After some time, the sidebar updated with There are currently no responses for this story. Be the first to respond. which is incorrect, as there should be 36 responses with the heading still there.
So not only don't have fraudulent counters as mentioned in the article, also provide responses that correctly reflect a state, error, etc, handling the response correctly rather than falling back on an inappropriate default.
When clicking on the 'comments' icon in the article, a sidebar open with the heading Responses (36). I'd not noticed I'd gone offline. After some time, the sidebar updated with There are currently no responses for this story. Be the first to respond. which is incorrect, as there should be 36 responses with the heading still there.
So not only don't have fraudulent counters as mentioned in the article, also provide responses that correctly reflect a state, error, etc, handling the response correctly rather than falling back on an inappropriate default.
This dark pattern is designing for anxiety. While there’s no specific accessibility guidelines around this, you’ll be causing problems for the subset of your users that have less reserve in this area.
The funny part is that it actually could be implemented server side in a much more realistic manner easily, and no one could figure out. They care literally nothing so didn't even bother and went client side.
It is like all those ".io" games (ex: https://agar.io/).
You are supposed to play online against other players, but many of these games put you against bots instead. This is evident when you lose internet and the game still runs. The original idea was to first populate the game with bots and progressively replace them with real players as the game become more popular, then developers realized that if they could get away with bots, they didn't need multiplayer at all, just the illusion of it.
Side note: AFAIK, agar.io is real multiplayer, being one of the most popular game of its kind certainly helps. Of course, like in almost all online games, there are still player-run bots, but at least, it is not just JS code running on your machine.
You are supposed to play online against other players, but many of these games put you against bots instead. This is evident when you lose internet and the game still runs. The original idea was to first populate the game with bots and progressively replace them with real players as the game become more popular, then developers realized that if they could get away with bots, they didn't need multiplayer at all, just the illusion of it.
Side note: AFAIK, agar.io is real multiplayer, being one of the most popular game of its kind certainly helps. Of course, like in almost all online games, there are still player-run bots, but at least, it is not just JS code running on your machine.
You know what strikes me as a cheap way to run a bunch of bots to populate servers? Send users a wasm binary for running a bot and run several bots on a user's computer in the bg while they're playing themselves. Maybe check for resource usage and such, though. You can populate enough servers to keep a constant rate of growth up to some reasonable plateau because the amount of bots scales neatly with the amount of players, keeping a constant feeling of crowdedness as you spool up more real servers.
Eh, maybe just have the bots be part of the server software. They're not that expensive. But cool idea.
Eh, maybe just have the bots be part of the server software. They're not that expensive. But cool idea.
Nah, bots are really cheap compared to simulating the game. You need to run the whole thing on the server all the time anyway, so you might as well keep a few dozen bots alive while you're at it.
It's only when hundreds of actual people show up that the machine needs to do any real thinking, and by that point you will turned all your bots off anyway.
Source: I built and run https://joust.life/
It's only when hundreds of actual people show up that the machine needs to do any real thinking, and by that point you will turned all your bots off anyway.
Source: I built and run https://joust.life/
In gaming, trusting the client with any responsibility will almost always result in hackers causing grief for you.
If you're having fun, then what's wrong with that?
It's pretty hard to start game which's fun is based on PvP, yet you have no players
so bots are the way to go I guess
It's pretty hard to start game which's fun is based on PvP, yet you have no players
so bots are the way to go I guess
Consent is what's missing from these situations. Nothing illegal or major, but I don't think it's a good thing to cheat the people like this.
An approach I liked was with some community Team Fortress 2 servers. They kept a constant minimum player count, say 10, and replaced the missing players with bots. However it was clear to see that they were bots, the TF2 client was explicit about this.
An approach I liked was with some community Team Fortress 2 servers. They kept a constant minimum player count, say 10, and replaced the missing players with bots. However it was clear to see that they were bots, the TF2 client was explicit about this.
Not being honest about it is the frustrating part.
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> Website owners may lie, but the code never does.
well, the lesson for the businesses is ... move this same implementation server-side?
well, the lesson for the businesses is ... move this same implementation server-side?
I implemented this functionality where we work, but we did it properly.
We haven't done the "viewing" one, but we track every "add to cart" and every actual transaction, store them in a backend database and then use this to show badging that simply says "popular" on the top 5-10% of products in a given category, which is based on interactions over the past 24h.
Sure, we could improve it and make it more accurate etc, but I feel comfortable that we did things reasonably properly and it is a true and honest representation of the popular products.
There are SAAS providers that sell this functionality and it's super expensive ($tens to $hundreds of thousands annually) which is an absolute joke compared to how trivial it is to implement.
We haven't done the "viewing" one, but we track every "add to cart" and every actual transaction, store them in a backend database and then use this to show badging that simply says "popular" on the top 5-10% of products in a given category, which is based on interactions over the past 24h.
Sure, we could improve it and make it more accurate etc, but I feel comfortable that we did things reasonably properly and it is a true and honest representation of the popular products.
There are SAAS providers that sell this functionality and it's super expensive ($tens to $hundreds of thousands annually) which is an absolute joke compared to how trivial it is to implement.
Is the idea that multiple people are looking at a product supposed to inspire me to purchase it? I really struggle to understand the logic.
But look, there are only 2 items left, and 5 have been sold in the past hour. Also, 15 people are also currently looking at this product, so you better hurry and buy it before it's too late! ... or before you think twice and realize you don't need this product at all.
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I would expect that it contributes to sales both by creating a fake sense of validation from others and by creating a fake sense of urgency (get it while in stock!), both of which are good tools to compromise decision making of the buyer.
On top of validation and urgency that are negative, you have also a true sense of popularity that indicates that the product works, has good reputation, fits a common purpose or is priced correctly.
Crowd selection isn't negative, in fact without it we d just be picking fruit at random in the forest with a good chance of dying of poisonning, instead of chatting online... on a popular forum we think like minded people also frequent, having opinions we suppose we'll be interested in on posts that are ranked by upvotes :p
Crowd selection isn't negative, in fact without it we d just be picking fruit at random in the forest with a good chance of dying of poisonning, instead of chatting online... on a popular forum we think like minded people also frequent, having opinions we suppose we'll be interested in on posts that are ranked by upvotes :p
Crowd selection lead to Hitler, Jan 6th, COVID denial, Jonestown, etc..
Just because everyone believes the world is flat doesn't make it so.
Just because everyone believes the world is flat doesn't make it so.
But I mean, you immediately went to Hitler which is a lazy exit in a discussion and hard for me to defend, but let's try, since I'm French. When Germany had to submit to the Versaille Treaty and pay gold fines every year until 1975, went into a crisis compounded by the US financial crisis and we robbed the Ruhr coal mines to solve our own issues, voting Hitler with all his promises may have turned Germany around from its abject submission and sad destiny. It was too far into insanity but... wasnt it better than having the French elites continue to think that Germany had to be punished forever ?
At least in school in France we now learn not to blame ONLY the little guy voting out of despair, but also the unfair winners of WWI. Without that crowd deciding together to do something, anything, where would Germany be today ? Hard to be optimistic in 1933. And it drove the WWII winners into building a better post-war reparation program, not only explained by the communist scarecrow but also the lessons of the inception of WWII in Germany: revenge against abject humiliation.
At least in school in France we now learn not to blame ONLY the little guy voting out of despair, but also the unfair winners of WWI. Without that crowd deciding together to do something, anything, where would Germany be today ? Hard to be optimistic in 1933. And it drove the WWII winners into building a better post-war reparation program, not only explained by the communist scarecrow but also the lessons of the inception of WWII in Germany: revenge against abject humiliation.
"People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, you can't trust people Jez." - Super Hans.
These dark plugins really do work, short term at least.
When marketing enables them, the conversion rates increase by a significant fraction straight away.
Looking at increase in real dollars it becomes a hard sell to turn them back off again.
When marketing enables them, the conversion rates increase by a significant fraction straight away.
Looking at increase in real dollars it becomes a hard sell to turn them back off again.
we do tend to read the most popular topics here on HN
Of course it works. Scarcity. Loss aversion. Validation. These are very strong psychological effects that are basically impossible to filter out completely, even if you know exactly what is going on and how brain works.
I was in a meeting where the sales logic was explained as "social proof". People would choose a busy restaurant over a quiet one. Similarly they would choose a popular product over an unpopular one.
The idea is that a significant portion of the visitors are undecided, hesitant, or are postponing the purchase. These tactics try to push these people for a decision. I personally react to pushing by closing up, so they lose me if they push too hard. But many people are not like this, or maybe they are just waiting a bit before committing, and that's when these methods can work.
And these are not new either, just old sales tactics, applied to the new context. The pushiness of these counters etc remind me of the Hard sell[0] for example.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_sell
And these are not new either, just old sales tactics, applied to the new context. The pushiness of these counters etc remind me of the Hard sell[0] for example.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_sell
It's called FOMO and it works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
This is very likely, and any kind of popularity information helps making decisions.
In fact I mostly buy steam games in the popular section to sort out the trash. Each time I choose a niche unfeatured thing it turns out to be random trash nobody wanted... unsurprisingly.
Why do you think your brain wouldnt rank a product with 500 views right now above a product with 3, or be wrong about such ranking ? I think it helps ignore shit, because it's rare you want to buy stuff nobody else wants.
In fact I mostly buy steam games in the popular section to sort out the trash. Each time I choose a niche unfeatured thing it turns out to be random trash nobody wanted... unsurprisingly.
Why do you think your brain wouldnt rank a product with 500 views right now above a product with 3, or be wrong about such ranking ? I think it helps ignore shit, because it's rare you want to buy stuff nobody else wants.
Even if we assume for a minute that this information isn't being faked (which it very often probably is - see other thread) I think there are nuances there.
Looking at something and actually buying it are different. If we really wanted to help the customer decide we might want to also show the number of customers that returned the item. Or wait: allow reviews of them ;)
Would it help anyone to see that "200 people are reading xwolfi's comment"? Not really. That's just because there are not many comments yet and says nothing about the quality of it. It's much better to rank comments by votes and let that affect sort order. "200 people found xwolfi's comment so insightful they clicked the vote link" is a much better indicator of quality.
Looking at something and actually buying it are different. If we really wanted to help the customer decide we might want to also show the number of customers that returned the item. Or wait: allow reviews of them ;)
Would it help anyone to see that "200 people are reading xwolfi's comment"? Not really. That's just because there are not many comments yet and says nothing about the quality of it. It's much better to rank comments by votes and let that affect sort order. "200 people found xwolfi's comment so insightful they clicked the vote link" is a much better indicator of quality.
Reviews are insanely more useful (provided they re genuine) ofc and any online service without review has to be used carefully, you're right !
Yes. The idea is that other consumers being on the site creates a sense of security, that it must be legit if there’s a bunch of other customers.
Yes, you may think you are unaffected but that's just you lying to yourself.
Same, but if combined with limited stock it can make sense.
It should even be illegal to display these kind of fake metrics
It probably is. Many countries have broadly formulated laws regulating marketing preventing things like false advertisement, displaying fake before prices etc. Though someone needs to enforce those laws.
The kings of this “feature” are Booking.com, they have it everywhere. Can someone inspect whether theirs are genuine? I personally seriously doubt that. I think it’s almost always fake.
They are not. Booking.com themselves are featured in numerous case studies about Conversion Rate Optimization experiments. Airbnb and others do the same, but not to the insane extent that booking.com does.
Perhaps it's relevant to look at previous prohibition of manipulative "last item available!" practices e.g. the EU vs Booking.com (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-booking-hldg-eu-idUSKBN1Y... and other reports) - fear of missing out works, but misleadingly creating a fake sense of urgency is prohibited at least in some places.
Welcome to the world of CRO - conversion rate optimization.
Other examples would be:
1) "25 people like you! Upgrade to [dating app premium membership] to reveal them"
2) A client-side JS-triggered countdown timer with the message "I'm reopening enrollment for a limited time"
3) "Only 2 left in stock - buy now!"
Other examples would be:
1) "25 people like you! Upgrade to [dating app premium membership] to reveal them"
2) A client-side JS-triggered countdown timer with the message "I'm reopening enrollment for a limited time"
3) "Only 2 left in stock - buy now!"
Another dark pattern is listing a page of products, and marking one as "Sold out". Makes one wonder how much stock is left of the other items, and when those might also become sold out.
I develop a website where you can make and share games. The games each have a counter with the number of plays.
I can easily manipulate that number to inflate how many people have played those games, but I'm glad I never did. For one, the comments below that game wouldn't reflect the numbers.
I think people are smarter than you think, and can easily spot inconsistencies of numbers being too big, relative to the engagement on a platform.
I can easily manipulate that number to inflate how many people have played those games, but I'm glad I never did. For one, the comments below that game wouldn't reflect the numbers.
I think people are smarter than you think, and can easily spot inconsistencies of numbers being too big, relative to the engagement on a platform.
Whenever I see things like "x people viewing this product", "only x items left", "buy 1 get x free/discount", "limited time offer" etc it raises a massive red flag for me not just about the product but also about the company. But unfortunately good companies with good products also sometime get sucked into this marketing ploys.
It's funny how a transparent lie can be allowed to persist. They can't lie about much but apparently it's OK to tell you three other people are looking at that hotel room and two just paid a deposit.
This has been common practice for a long time. I worked for companies who did this in the 2000s. The majority of people will fall for it, and they certainly won't be viewing source on the website.
Much like the calls to action in an infomercial:
- these BS tactics work, very well, for a segment of the audience
- the rest of the audience is not sufficiently offended to do any harm
- these BS tactics work, very well, for a segment of the audience
- the rest of the audience is not sufficiently offended to do any harm
Interesting thing is that what would you do if you were asked to develop this functionality? Say NO to building this?
I usually assume that websites with these tactics have a high probability of running scams, so I navigate away.
I guess the shop's competitors could sue them for unfair practices in many countries?
Probably in China, will just vanish overnight and launch under the name $(RANDOM_ONLINE_STORE_NAME)
Seems they've removed it: https://dafnihair.com/dafni-rose-go/
Although I find it suspicious how all their products have full 5 star reviews.
Although I find it suspicious how all their products have full 5 star reviews.
I hate this visual and stressful noise, it often makes me close websites in frustration.
I have the same question about Etsy listings.
“Growth hacking” by hare brained MBAs
probably passed an A/B test ;) (see: conversion rates)
I wouldn't want to shop on that site ever again, they have no respect for their users.