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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: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday May 17 2018, @11:25AM (11 children)
Glitches, indeed.
1. Nobody noticed that TFS does not link to any of news sources? "When CBC tried to bypass the erroneous online search results" indicate that TFA source is CBC, but no link in TFS. Hey, martyb, you had a celebration lately [soylentnews.org], right? On top of others, here's the link [www.cbc.ca] as a gift.
2. other glitches in original TFA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday May 17 2018, @01:15PM (7 children)
"Technical issues that caused certain unaffiliated properties to appear"
Seriously? I'm finding it hard to imagine how a software error could cause accidental data entry.
With a lot of goodwill, I can imagine this as a kind of hard-ball sales tactic: "look, this could be your entry - give us a contract, and we'll make it actually work". More realistically, it's probably implicit blackmail: "we're going to use our search position to intercept potential customers, unless you pay us".
IMHO: Whenever possible, book directly with the properties.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:42PM (4 children)
Let me introduce you to Microsoft.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:18PM (3 children)
I'll add to the above. The person who made the comment hasn't worked with complex code spread across multiple services, written and supported by 100's (or more) developers who are located in multiple countries. Add to that the historical nature of large systems where they are built 10-20 years in the past and modified, changed and extended by developers who rotate in and out constantly, and while various regressions happen without notice, and you can easily have a problem like this come up. Why more "glitches" aren't seen is a better question. Software fails all the time, especially in very complex systems. Expedia, I'm sure, has very complex systems.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Thursday May 17 2018, @05:11PM (2 children)
Complex software, yes. However, this hotel was never an Expedia customer. Therefore, there is no reason for their data to exist in Expedia systems. Someone had to enter it, and what honorable reason would you have for entering a non-customer's data.
It turns out that Expedia did try to sign them up. Likely, therefore, that my hypothesis about high-pressure sales is the reason. "Here's your entry, now you have to sign on the dotted line".
Leaving it up after that - could be "a glitch" or could also be intentional. It doesn't matter - either way, Expedia has stolen business from the hotel by passing bookings on to Expedia partner hotels. Expedia should, justly, be liable for those damages. Plus punitive damages, since this is not the first time that exactly this scenario has occurred.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @12:57AM
Yes the big tech companies have gone full evil. That should be apparent from the bitcoin madness gripping everyone. US citizens are still WAY too trusting of corporations even though if you look at the track record there have been massive abuses for centuries. Yes, centuries.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday May 19 2018, @07:41AM
If that happened on the public-facing part of Expedia, how is that not impersonation?
I mean, that's got to be illegal, even if you apply the "but on a computer" sauce??
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:51PM
Hey, that's a nice business you've got there. Be a shame if it ended up on our site as some unaffiliated glitch.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday May 18 2018, @09:55AM
If you get a price quote from Expedia or other such discount booker, hotels will often honor that rate when booking directly. They save the 10% commission that way. Just ask nicely.
(Score: 4, Informative) by martyb on Thursday May 17 2018, @01:20PM (1 child)
Yes, I missed that. I've updated the story making use of your helpful information and corrections.
Thank You!
[Get home from work at 9PM. Noticed there were no pending stories in the story queue. Unless something happened quickly, there would be no new stories on the site. Pushed out 5 stories, needed 3 more to make it through the night. This was the next story I processed. We're all volunteers, here, and generally there's enough natural overlap that things just 'take care of themselves' with each editor contributing as they can. Once in a while, things don't. I very much appreciate the feedback and the community keeping us honest!]
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Thursday May 17 2018, @01:52PM
+1 Thank you
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:29PM
My bad for forgetting the link to the CBC story.