You seriously had to book a shitty hotel in order to understand that you're being manipulated?
Let me give you the short version of how to book on booking, which is BTW an excellent site for travel arrangements:
1) Ignore anything that makes it sound like you're in a competition. Cheapest price, someone is looking, etc. You're trying to book a hotel room that suits you, not win a race.
2) Any hotel ranked below 9+ has problems. You just need to figure out what the problems are, and those will appear in the reviews section. Don't be lazy - you need to read dozens of reviews. The good news is that you can skip the good reviews - they won't contain what you're looking for. If you book any hotel that has a less than 9 average, make sure you understand what people didn't like about it. If it's over 9, everyone liked it, and you will too.
Despite knowing all about dark patterns, I let myself be manipulated into paying $120/night for a room (expensive by Sri Lanka standards). Because of the repeated "only 1 room left!" messages and I didn't want to mess up my anniversary holiday
A few days later, I checked again and the room was going for $50
I mailed them about it. They agreed to refund me $50, so that was nice of them
I booked an 8.9 and only found out afterwards some of the rooms aren’t cleaned if you book through booking, because those rooms aren’t actually from the hotel but a private owner renting out their rooms. I contacted booking about it, they did nothing.
The private owner also put a hold on my credit card, as did the hotel, with the sum of both being high enough i bumped into my card’s limit before the end of my stay. Oh, and the very low rate of booking.ccom turned out to be the same price as booking direct once all the semi-hidden charges were added.
Lesson learned: always book directly with the hotel.
Let me give you the short version of how to book on booking, which is BTW an excellent site for travel arrangements:
1) Ignore anything that makes it sound like you're in a competition. Cheapest price, someone is looking, etc. You're trying to book a hotel room that suits you, not win a race.
2) Any hotel ranked below 9+ has problems. You just need to figure out what the problems are, and those will appear in the reviews section. Don't be lazy - you need to read dozens of reviews. The good news is that you can skip the good reviews - they won't contain what you're looking for. If you book any hotel that has a less than 9 average, make sure you understand what people didn't like about it. If it's over 9, everyone liked it, and you will too.