Travel Site Rounding Up Star Ratings?
from the half-a-star-here,-half-a-star-there... dept
Apparently, a user who booked a hotel on Hotwire noticed that the hotel he booked was half a star rating below what Hotwire told him. He tried to book a 5-star hotel, and paid the 5-star price, but ended up in a 4.5 star hotel. He's now proposing a class action lawsuit against the company for "deceptive acts, false advertising, unfair competition and breach of contract." What's unclear from the article, of course, is whether or not this is a common practice (i.e., is Hotwire "rounding up" on the stars) or was it just a simple case where a single hotel was mis-classified. A quick check on Hotwire shows that they do show hotel ratings to the half-star, so it might just be a case where there was a little mixup. Also, it's hard to see how the guy deserves very much in "punitive" damages. It seems unlikely that he suffered very much in being stuck in a hotel half a star off from his preferred rating. If it turns out to be true that this was done on a regular basis, then there's a bigger story here, but so far, it sounds like it might be a case where someone is making a much bigger deal out of something than it deserves.
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(This business model encompasses a number of variations -- rebate scams, online banks that blithely send your money to Latvia, etc.)
I am no consumer-advocate type, but these "we always get our money up front, and you get whatever we deign to give you/do to you" systems cannot be effectively fought by any single customer. It is one of the few areas where a class action threat makes sense. Too many company systems appear to have been designed to make mistakes in only one direction.
But in the absence of these recurring real-world experiences, such a lawsuit over a half a star would indeed be absurd.
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