lgbtqrstuv people are free from feeling judged. Slavery is freedom. War is peace.

Whether it is fast food, rent, prices at the pump, or this evolving patchwork of hotel cancellation rules, it ultimately reduces to the same underlying force: pricing power shifting toward the seller whenever consumers have limited alternatives or information asymmetry tilts the playing field. As soon as hotels realised third-party services were exploiting flexible cancellations to arbitrage room rates, they recalibrated their pricing structure to insulate revenue precisely the same way landlords adjust lease terms in tight housing markets, or fuel companies adjust margins when crude prices swing.

Consumers experience these adjustments as policy changes, but businesses experience them as price corrections to protect yield. The mechanisms differ. Non-refundable rates instead of cancellation windows, variable menu pricing instead of dollar menus, etc. but the logic is identical: once a loophole or inefficiency threatens revenue, the industry retools the rules so that the cost lands with the customer rather than the operator. On top of that you have the rising prices, often folded into the new policy because the higher price is thereby disguised. In that sense, the story here is not really about cancellation policies at all; it is about how every sector continually reshuffles the fine print to defend its margins.

I personally used the Hilton system recently and I can say they know they can charge more and be less flexible without losing customers. I'm guessing it's the same for other chains. But it may be that hotels will be more willing to allow late cancellations if a human took the time to make the reservation. i.e. they know for that person 20 different hotels aren't lined up for all but the least expensive to be cancelled.

pleading quilty

"These people" are just anyone on a bad day. People make random mistakes when they do anything enough times.

I've had it happen. I was sitting weird and my foot just missed. You do these motions millions of times without thinking about it, so in that one-in-a-million case where something doesn't line up right, you get a very disorienting "why won't it slow down" feeling, and it's easy to panic. Your muscle memory instinctively pushes the "brake" harder to compensate, but it's actually the accelerator. It takes a moment for your brain to diagnose the situation and correct.

No harm done in my case: average car, open road, healthy and alert so I figured it out within a second. If I was in a Tesla Plaid, in a congested area, tired and distracted, I would have put it through a store window.

It was an eye-opening experience.

Yes: getting cash. Anonymity is a cornerstone of freedom.

Yeah, no doubt. But for all the good they do me, right?

All I can tell from this video is they're trying new things which, in this era of technology, is a good thing. It seems like it's missing what in humans would be called reflexes.

I use Bing, and I get Microsoft Rewards points for that. Each month, the points I earn are automatically donated to the Wikimedia Foundation. Just sayin'.

Welllll, a bunch of countries use VAT, where you pay whatever is on the label. In the US, what you pay for a product will depend on where you buy it, despite it having the same price on the tag..

"Use" is relative, unless you mean "figure out how to cancel it."

I don't know. From what I can tell, Tizen seems OK. I just don't know how much "software" you really need in a television.

Hell, I don't like it now!

One reason I can think of is that different states and municipalities impose different rates of sales tax at the register. Multiplying a retail price by 8.75% may not always produce an even, round number.

It's because of subdomains. Edit your filters: slashdot.org###floating-ad-unit

>advocating or implementing extreme policies like... official legal state discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics
TIL the Democratic party is far right.