I think this question resulted from me having an argument with my gf. We want to go to a holiday trip, and she wanted to book a hotel via booking.com. We then got into a discussion, because booking.com repeatedly ignored privacy concerns and is conciously acting illegally in regards to privacy laws of the EU (for those of you who can read German, this link from a German privacy investigator explains it fairly well. In my opinion, supporting companies which consciously breach laws is unethical, because they willingly ignore the well-being of their customers for own gains. However, in this case it was probably unfair to gf to judge her for using this platform, as the negative impact done by her using booking.com is not enough to justify this as a morally wrong action on her end.
My question is where you draw the line what to ethically judge. What if (hypothetically) booking.com would support slavery and willingly sacrificed children to earn more money for their shareholders? What if they were very interested in animal abuse and liked Nazis? In this case I think I’d be completely justified to judge my gf for her using this platform, as she would then directly support inhumane and unethical practices.
Most of life, however, resolves in a grey area between “this is absolutely morally okay” and “this is terrible, anyone who supports this is a monster”. And so I think your opinions on the topic of an ethical line would be highly appreciated.
Why didn’t you just find the place on booking.com and then directly call the hotel and ask if they can match the rate booking.com quoted? I’m assuming the why of your gf wanting to use the service was a discounted rate. But there are probably options to stay at the hotel without using booking.com
Yes, I’ve thought of the same solution. For her it doesn’t work, because she wants to book the hotel as early as possible, and she’s anxious that over the holidays, the hotel won’t reply and it’ll then be more expensive to book it.
You don’t need to e-mail them, you can call them directly. I know it can be a bit more stressful, but you’ll know their answer right away.
I didn’t think of that exactly, but I fear it’ll be too stressful for her as well. Probably that’s the path I’d prefer, especially because it often is cheaper, but I think she wants to just get this done with.