They're outsourcing their customer services.<p>Thia is actually quite annoying, because the one time I've used their customer services they were really good. I needed to cancel half of a reservation (booked for 2 nights, needed to leave early), and the hotel staff said they couldn't do that as I'd booked through a third party. I called Booking.com and they made it happen. Hopefully whoever they outsource to can continue the good work.
In Germany this isn't a legal move. One of my former employees (global telco everyone knows) tried to do the same, namely moving the contracts of the employees to an other company. 200 of them started a class action and won easily. The company had to terminate their contracts (which means the employees are eligible for unemployment benefits, etc.) and had to pay a good severance. Something like (years of employment) * 2 monthly salaries. Some of the employees took the money and went into early retirement.
It's weird to see all those negative anecdotes about Booking.com. As a counter anecdote, I've used them several times and they always seem to have much cheaper prices then the competition. I was also able to cancel my booking once without issue after talking to customer support. PS: Not in any way affiliated with them other than being a satisfied customer.
My first large employer was Best Buy, and at the time (and I believe still?) a large majority of their phone customer service operation was outsourced.<p>I will still never understand why companies do this. Your quite literal last line of defense (and sometimes first) with a customer is people that aren't directly accountable other than a corporate contract? Never made sense to me.<p>Also, the fact that they are generally the lowest paid is also bizzare.
Just skimming through the comments, there is some negative sentiment about Booking.com. So I came to say, that over the years, I've used Booking.com numerous times, without any single problem. Yes, there are dark patterns (13 people are looking at this offer right now, etc.), but free cancellation was always free for me, reviews matched my experience, information matched the reality.<p>Sorry to hear about the layoffs, but customer experience has been great for me.
A non-reddit news source: <a href="https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/10/bookingcom-cut-thousands-workers-new-reorganization" rel="nofollow">https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/10/bookingcom-cut-thousands-worke...</a><p>I rarely use booking.com, and now I'm sure I never will.
To me, deciding to outsource customer support and hiring are huge red flags.<p>People / Customers are not at the center of the company any more, but behind a wall. Incentives get shifted, and core business becomes a service.<p>Not a good news.
Disregarding how horrible it is to do that this way, ...<p>The employee says he's french, so either he didn't have a french work contract, or what he is saying is untrue.<p>While you can transfer an employee from one company to another, it must protect every employee advantage, his history, etc ... So he has the same severance as on his original contract, with the original timeline (his time of employment isn't reset to now). I'm French, I own several companies, I have done it several times.<p>If he was on some sort of a self employed organisation working for a non french company, then he should have added that clarification and not having those rules in the way is the whole point of hiring more expensive freelance instead of employees.
I despise the experience so much that I can’t feel bad about the demise of that website. They’re are guilty of all the dark patterns imaginable. The day you stop providing a useful tool to your users is the day you can start counting til you close shop. On the other hand google hotel is providing a top service.<p>This is actually my biggest worry with facebook. Even though I own their stocks, I’m scared that they are following a path where they maximize engagement versus providing utility. Facebook back in the days was definitely an amazing tool that you’d be crazy not to use. Today, not so much.
The most annoying dark pattern for me was not being able to give 0 stars for something and then averaging across completely dissimilar topics so that it was impossible for most hotels to score less than about 2 out of 5.<p>So the location was great, 5 out of 5 but that doesn't make up for the terrible service and the noise 0 out of 5.<p>Another thing that got me was the window dressing. They show the nicest room of the hotel on the site but the room you get when you arrive is nasty. Booking.com were famous for this kind of stuff and probably helped AirBnB get to where they are.
PSA: Booking Holdings operates not just Booking.com, but also Priceline, Agoda, Kayak, Cheapflights, Rentalcars.com, Momondo, OpenTable, and many more niche engines.
On contrary what most people have experienced booking helped me multiple times to get my money back.<p>When travelling SEA for cheap I ended up in hotels that were lying about the rooms more than once. A room without windows, described as balcony room for 2 weeks and shit like that.<p>Shady hotel owners don't care, and discussions can go on forever. However simply calling booking and have them call the hotel for me fixed the issue any time within a few minutes.
Majorel website<p>> Majorel came into being in January 2019 when Bertelsmann and Saham joined hands to create a leading customer experience organisation. Majorel brings together Arvato CRM Solutions, Phone Group,<p>Bertelsmann, Arvato, et al. Who ever tried their chance in Germany know these sweatshops. Working for them will impact one's mental wellbeing. Amazon receives all the hate in Germany meanwhile domestic slavers are allowed and doing well.
Meh. They are just terrible. We once booked a hotel with a children's bed, which was advertised as an option on Booking.com . When we go there, no bed, and they could provide one. After much discussion, they allowed us to cancel the room and they would refund the 125 Euro.<p>Except the refund never came. So, we contacted booking.com and have been passed between support personnel for months. At some point they wanted months of our bank transcripts (which I rejected because of privacy issues, I don't trust such a company to securely handle/erase them). After five months, we just accepted the loss.<p>(Customer service can be good. E.g. recently Apple double charged Apple Care. I had someone on the phone within minutes and I got a personal contact within their financial department that I could message or leave voice mails for. They were very helpful in the whole process of getting the money back.)
Booking.com are abysmal.<p>I used to spend 100-150 nights a year on the road and an ungodly amount of money with them.<p>One time I turned up late at night to a property that didn’t exist that was listed on their website.<p>They were absolutely useless in helping to resolve and it took months to get the money back. The fake apartment remained listed on their site for a long time too.<p>Moved all of my spend to Hotels.com and had a much better experience.
Timely and relevant: <a href="https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1492046480328523777?s=20&t=hkSYrFsm_qc351gQ_uqyIA" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1492046480328523777?s=20...</a><p>Apparently booking sites have the worst rooms reserved for their platforms. So its worth just booking directly through a hotel's website instead of using an aggregator.
Book direct and support your local accommodation providers.<p>Most providers will match any rate you see on these aggregator sites because they still are getting more money then if you booked through the site after they take out their fee.
I can see how this is bad for Booking.com users (quality will likely go down) and current employees.<p>But it's a good thing for a lot of people from third world countries that Majorel will inevitably hire: what might be a bad salary for this person from France is likely a great deal for the places where this jobs go.<p>So, from a bystander viewpoint — is this ethically a bad thing? People from poor countries out-competing their counterparts from developed countries? I'm not sure.
I once booked a room in a reputable international chain hotel through booking.com. My sister (living in a different country) booked the same hotel for the same night for a different price and paid with her card in a different currency.<p>The only "link" between the two bookings was that we booked rooms in the same hotel for the same nights, the bookings were made within an hour of each other, and we share a surname.<p>A few days later I checked my credit card statement and I had two charges. My sister hadn't been charged at all, but one of the amounts I was charged corresponded to what she paid.<p>Booking.com said "talk to the hotel" and the hotel said "talk to booking.com". We ended up getting free breakfasts but I'd have loved to know what really happened there.
I once booked the worst hotel room on earth via booking.com - I spare you the details, but when I picked the lowest rating on every single scale on the booking.com feedback form, the resulting score was something like ~3.5 out of 10 – instead of 0 points! So, whenever you're looking for a a place on booking.com, keep in mind that the places are rated on a scale from 3.5 to 10, not 0 to 10.
With remote work so popular, it's just the beginning. If your skill is not in high demand and can be done remotely, it's going to be outsourced (or just transferred within the company) to a lower cost of living region.
Any Booking.com engineers reading this are welcome to apply to join us a TableCheck (<a href="https://www.tablecheck.com/en/company/jobs/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tablecheck.com/en/company/jobs/</a>)<p>We see Booking.com's online travel agent ("OTA") model as fundamentally predatory/parasitic to hospitality operators. Our business is designed to cut-out of the likes of Booking.com and other middlemen--let the operators own the guest data and build direct relationship with their guests.
I got screwed over by their car rental division. Basically any mistake on your part voids any refund. I complanied to the European Consumer Centers network to see if I can recover at last part of my funds, but it gets more complicated as their transport division is registered in Manchester, UK which is no longer part of the EU. Needless to say, I am never going to rent any car through an agency again.
I find this service good for one thing: if a hotel assigns you a crappy room (loud neighbors, loud construction site outside, similar drawbacks), they'll upgrade it with zero issues. I have never had an issue with getting room replacement in such cases and never had to say anything but stating the issue.<p>Some hotels seem to be terrified of getting bad reviews on this site.
One of the most unpleasant companies that I ever interacted with.<p>It baffles me how hard it is to avoid them when booking hotel rooms online.<p>The first time when I tried to avoid them (because I was so mad at them for screwing me over), I booked the same room on another website that I found by searching, only to get a confirmation email from booking.com...
Lol, booking.com sold me lodgings in Malibu, at a place that had clearly been shut down for months..<p>We ended up going to a motel in Thousand Oaks, BUT the customer service is what actually allowed us to deal with the fraudulent booking.<p>I’m gonna take a wild guess here, but this kind of outsourcing does not generally improve the service..
tldr; Almost all of booking.com customer support employees are having their contracts transferred (outsourced) to another company, Majorel. This Luxembourg based one, will offer 6 months contracts but it’s unclear what will happen next and also it’s not stated what will happen to those employees that don’t accept the transfer. Corporate tactics at work once more in order to reduce costs :-(
booking.com's service is easy to use but I've had several issues with them in latin america<p>1. had a hotel cancal on me because I didn't "call ahead" ffs: I don't speak spanish<p>2. showed up to the "resort" looks like it had been abandoned for months. literally no one there. total ghost town<p>3. show up in town, try to contact the hotel to get directions. they told me they cancelled because I didn't show up on time despite me messaging them ahead of time that the only tow busses for the town arrive either in the early morning or late at night<p>4. showed up, price was suspiciously good. Yea the actual hotel was terrible. dangerous part of town and the rooms were one step above prison grade. of course I had already booked and poid so I ate the loss as I took an uber to a better hotel in a good part of the city. It had a 9 rating.
Worst website to deal with when needing to books rooms as a travelling consultant. False claims hotel is full etc. Can’t claim points of hotel chain (thanks IHG). Better to talk to the hotel if your re planning to stay at the hotel Effie days a week for a year and get yourself f a great deal :)
I always use booking.com to find hotels and then just book directly at the hotel. Normally, I would not do such a thing, but considering booking.com's shady practices I do not feel bad.
I used Booking.com for the first time last year. It was OK.<p>But I won't use them again, and I find quotes like this all too believable:<p>"... Also, last year Booking have to their employees 2.5 days off to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the company. You might think it's a nice move from them. During that day, only outsourced employees were working. They were just testing if they could carry the work without their employees."
That was sort of announced earlier in the first summer of the pandemic when suddenly most free cancellation offers were gone in my corner of the world...
The one time I used booking.com I got screwed over. Their website is riddled with dark patterns and has probably been A/B tested into oblivion. The tactic they used that screwed me over was that they advertised 100% refunds on last minute cancellations. I used booking.com for this exact reason as I didn’t know if I’d be staying the night in the city I was driving past. Well turns out I didn’t need the booking but when I went to cancel I didn’t get a refund. When I went to go back to booking.com to see what their policy was, it was clear they carefully worded the last minute cancellation policy to really mean something completely different from what they knew they were advertising.<p>Lesson learned: never use any third party service when you can book the place directly. Also last minute cancellations probably just don’t exist
not surprising. they lure programmers to Amsterdam and then work them to death on their ancient perl system. we used to laugh about this back in the late 2000s. all these big tech booking companies are scum anyway, like expedia too. the base databases they all connect to are ancient and use regex to parse out of giant text fields. previously they could see each others booking info so prices would stay more competitive but then some airlines started pulling out to make their own about ten years ago (they were all jealous of southwest who started after these databases were created so they have their own). lots of dumb tricks in the airline industry, like sometimes two one ways cheaper than round trip, how soon before flight to book to get best deals, which airports are cheaper on certain days, etc. company i worked at had former travel agents that got paid lots of money to help us program these things. it's completely arbitrary.