Vacations and Trips

On January second, I'm doing a business trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. The second-to-last person from our team is leaving after the first week of January, and the last member could leave anytime in the future, so my boss needs someone to know what they know about our UK projects. I actually suspect my boss is sending me to this business trip just in case I had plans to leave myself.

I'm really excited about this, although I'll be sharing the experience only with myself. I'll be in Scotland for the first two weeks of January, then one week of real vacations in London.

Not being able to send an email, I had to call the hotel to extend my Edinburgh trip by one day. I had to concentrate a lot to be able to understand (and be understood) by the very kind hotel lady, which was but a preview of what I'll have to go through with the Scottish language. I reserved a train seat from Edinburgh to London (£35), and the last thing was to book a hotel room for 6 nights in London.

I used to go to expedia in the past because it was convenient and quick to book everything at once, and I never really had any trouble with them. Looking around, I am now understanding that their prices are (obviously and understandably) a bit higher than the prices you get directly at the airline or hotel, except that they sometimes have rebates.

I decided to book the hotel by myself, but the hotel my company had booked for me in Edinburgh was twice the price in London. I checked on expedia for other good hotels, and Caesar Hotel had a pretty good rating, so I went on their site (on Google, the first site that actually looked legit, http://www.caesar-hotel.co.uk/) and booked 6 nights with them. The price was the same than on expedia, which should have ringed my mental alarm, but at the time, I was starting to be tired of looking at the same thing over and over again, and I wanted to be done with it. £514 for 6 nights - ow. But anyway, it was better than the £840 I would have paid, if I kept the same hotel. The booking and payment was processed by CentralR. I just assumed it was a service provider to hotel chains or something.

I started to know something was wrong when I printed the confirmation sheet and highlighted the important parts. Being the careful person that I am (usually), I went to highlight the hotel address and phone number for easy access when I took the taxi from the train station. No address, no phone number. Not even the hotel name - just a totally generic confirmation sheet, written CentralR on top. I just assumed the hotel's web designers were not professionals.

I went back to the hotel web page, noted the address, but never found a phone number. Going to Google maps, I wrote "Caesar Hotel London", and (thanks, Google) the hotel was on the left. The address is slightly different, but both point at the same place on the map. I note the phone number, and that's when I see it. Right beside the phone number, derbyhotels.com, which I remember as being the first link in google. I check that site to grudgingly confirm my suspicions that Caesar Hotel is in fact part of the Derby Hotel group. I preview a booking for the same dates - £462.60. Pieces of the puzzle all fit together at great speed in my head. Either expedia and CentralR are both the same kind of service providers and take the exact same cuts when you book with them, or CentralR is a fishing web site that managed to get pretty high on google search.

I feel like an idiot, especially for being in a hurry like that. I google "CentralR reviews" and confirm it's a service provider, although with mostly bad reviews. Looking back at the cancellation section, I confirm what I already know - there is a 10% reservation upfront (in my case, £51.40) that is not reimbursable. So the maximum I may lose is that amount if I cancel with CentralR and book directly with the hotel. I quickly do a mental substraction. £514.00 - £51.40 = £462.60. I sigh.

All of that brings me to the identity thievery concept. Can a website trying to pass as a different entity be considered an identity theft? CentralR was definitely trying to pass as a specific hotel, and the domain name was convincing enough to fool even me. Normally, I would be right to assume that the web site was the hotel's (okay, I could have done a bit of research), but CentralR keeps quiet about the fact that it is not, and that it is in fact a "service provider" (and a very expensive one). The difference with expedia is that expedia makes no such secret, and proclaim its services as what they are. CentralR was hiding all of this from me.

I know that expedia is taking a pretty big cut on bookings they make for you, but I may use their services in the future nonetheless. CentralR is, in my opinion (and experience with what just happened), using dark patterns, and are being deceptive about them. I will take care to never "use" their services again, and will spread the word as much as I can.

That mistake just cost me about 80$, with added stress that the booking may go wrong. I shall remember.