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A small BC boutique hotel has discovered that travel site Expedia had been misleading potential customers.
For the past two years, owners Lori and Randy Strandlund say potential customers clicking on that link were told "rooms are unavailable for your trip dates on Expedia," no matter what date was entered.
[...] The Strandlunds believe they're the latest victims of an online issue that landed Expedia in trouble in France and is the subject of a potential class action lawsuit in the U.S. — the travel site allegedly posting hotels that aren't its clients, listing them as "unavailable," then re-directing customers to member properties that pay Expedia a booking fee.
Expedia has denied wrongdoing in each case.
[...] CBC News tried to bypass the erroneous online search results by calling the phone number listed until recently alongside the Moon Water Lodge address on the Expedia site.
Rather than connect with the inn, it rang through to an Expedia call centre — in Cairo, Egypt.
The booking agent stated that since Moon Water Lodge was "updating their inventory," he "couldn't access their system right now" and offered to find "other similar hotels in the area."
Lori Strandlund says she hopes to launch a Canadian class action lawsuit against Expedia — if other small hotels in this country report similar problems.
Postscript: When I searched for "Moon Water Lodge" on Google today, the paid Expedia listing for the lodge is the very first listing. As of 2018-05-17 12:49:06 UTC, the first listing is now for https://moonwaterlodge.com/.
[Updated to provide link to source article, reformat story, and to provide updated link results. --martyb]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday May 17 2018, @10:10AM (7 children)
They reach a certain size, and their ethics disappear.
If the allegation is true, Expedia owes that hotel a lot of money...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @10:38AM (4 children)
Gut feeling, the allegations are absolutely true.
I can see some unethical marketing droid (hmm, "marketing droid" already equates to "unethical", but redundancy does not hurt) thinking this was an excellent idea using this line of reasoning:
And here is where the unethical aspect comes in. When they present the "no rooms available" message, they quite conviently for Expedia omit the rest of the story and drop the through Expedia qualifier from the screen. And without the through Expedia qualifier the user is left with a belief (incorrect, as it was manufactured by the unethical marketing droid) that the hotel is booked full when in fact it may not be full at all.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @11:16AM
5. Bwahahahaha (evil laughter)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:22PM
Yelp got big enough so they could hustle companies with reviews up on Yelp to remove/hide bad reviews, or only display bad reviews if not paid.
Many of these internet companies have become such household names that shakedowns in search of profit are completely within their bounds, whether yelp, experdia, google, amazon, or any of the hundreds to thousands of others that monopolize their niche of the internet.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:22PM
Almost a perfect parallel to my experience with Amazon, back when they were mostly a bookseller:
1. We can't get a vastly discounted price on this book because the publisher won't partner with us.
2. Therefore, when searching this book on Amazon, we will give a description and a great price. This keeps up the illusion that Amazon sells "all books".
3. ...while also reporting to the user that the book is "ten weeks or out of print".
As the author, I found out about this when a potential customer found my email and pleaded with me to buy a copy that I might have around as a spare. I confirmed with my publisher that Amazon had offered such a bad deal that it was refused. This happened more than once, of course Amazon never apologized to me or my publisher. Meanwhile, my publisher has had the book in print continuously (it's still selling at low volume).
How did Amazon find out about my book? They use the USA Library of Congress catalog and base their catalog on it. When there was a listing error (two different books with similar titles), I corrected it with the Library of Congress (easy to work with) and, after a couple of months, the fix flowed into the Amazon description (also Barnes & Noble, and probably other booksellers).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @01:07AM
I would say you nailed it. Sadly I can't say "OF COURSE ITS TRUE!" since I don't have the damned proof, but from observing these companies and hearing stories online and real world they are totally going all Mafia on everyone. The glorification of money and power is the worst human trait, but even worse than that is the effect it has on the entire human race. Other countries are developing the cut-throat capitalist mindset, the entire fucking planet is paying the price and along with it the future of humanity itself.
Yes it is that nuts, no hyperbole.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @12:13PM
Often the removal of ethics is the reason they become big in the first place.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:45PM
Assumption: that they had any ethics to begin with.
Let me introduce you to Microsoft.
Now about other companies . . . once they reach $5 million / year, the MBAs totally take over. Doesn't matter who the founders were. Once they reach $100 million / year the lawyers take over.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.