> A Booking.com market manager in south-east Asia admitted at a recent industry event that payment delays were caused by the installation of a new payment system. Staff salaries were also affected, she said, explaining it as a risk they had to take.
What do you mean a new payment system? How do you not create a fallback for this situation when you're dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions?
I mean I am willing to give Booking.com the benefit of the doubt here in case that is actually the root cause, but it doesn't compute for me. You don't just throw thousands of people (who drive business for you in the first place) under the bus by not properly preparing for a software rollout.
You still have the old system or whatever it is that you were using, how hard would it have been to detect an issue if they did a A/B or a gradual rollout at first.
As a Booking.com user myself - I am pissed that this is a thing.
Start from the axiom that computers don't make mistakes. Then change to a new computer system at lower cost, because it's cheaper and computers don't make mistakes. So cheaper is better. Don't need a roll back plan, all computer systems work fine.
Then put on your best surprised expression and wait to see if you manage to unwind the errors before a competitor exploits them.
It is fascinating how much faith people have in computers, even after at least a decade of watching them fall over. Sure it crashes a lot but it couldn't get the answer wrong.
> A Booking.com market manager in south-east Asia admitted at a recent industry event that payment delays were caused by the installation of a new payment system. Staff salaries were also affected, she said, explaining it as a risk they had to take.
What do you mean a new payment system? How do you not create a fallback for this situation when you're dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions?
I mean I am willing to give Booking.com the benefit of the doubt here in case that is actually the root cause, but it doesn't compute for me. You don't just throw thousands of people (who drive business for you in the first place) under the bus by not properly preparing for a software rollout.
You still have the old system or whatever it is that you were using, how hard would it have been to detect an issue if they did a A/B or a gradual rollout at first.
As a Booking.com user myself - I am pissed that this is a thing.