People used to complain bitterly about the many pop-ups on websites. That’s where ad blockers came in, although people who don’t use them will probably be used to the pop-ups (and the amount has decreased over the years). Then what plagued websites was the videos that just started playing at full volume. Extremely annoying, especially if you also have a not too great data plan. There go your MBs. However, new misery has now arisen and that is the third party, although it comes to ‘ghost’ in a slightly different way.
Third parties
You see it on Marktplaats, Bol and Booking: everywhere you are thrown to death with third parties / external sellers. If you want to buy a nice second-hand wig for carnival on Marktplaats, you first have to work your way through all kinds of shops that are only allowed to create advertisement after advertisement. You often see the same advertiser coming back ten times, and ten times it is not what you are looking for. After all, you are not on Marktplaats to buy new things: you want them second-hand. That is the sustainable and often cheap solution. Isn’t that what Marktplaats is for?
Not that durable
The same kite goes for Bol.com. you never quite know where you stand with a seller who uses Bol.com in terms of the delivery time of your item. And if disputes arise, you may have to resolve it with that seller and Bol.com is less of a middle man. In many cases, Bol.com does take its responsibility, but it is and remains annoying to keep running into sellers. For example, we once bought ten jars of nail polish, all ten of which were sent in separate packages.
A large part of it came from the same selling party. Something you don’t have if you order directly from Bol.com. The fact that those sellers are also allowed to set their own prices makes it even more annoying, because you pay the most idiotic prices for, for example, some LEGO sets. Or when everything around corona just started and the Nintendo Switch controllers were not to drag, the price of them suddenly shot up via individual sellers. In addition, you often have less choice with an external seller about how you can have something delivered, which is a pity, because this means that you cannot choose a sustainable option such as delivery to a delivery point.
AirBnBooking.com
Booking has the problem that it once thought that it was not okay with the success of Airbnb and that it wanted to make a profit from it. The consequence? You don’t just have to avoid the hostels on Booking.com, but also the people who offer their garden house as a place to sleep. While at the hostels you can still opt for only private accommodations, in practice it turns out to be less easy and obvious to filter on all kinds of accommodations except ‘host’ accommodations. Only if you check ‘hotels’ you will only encounter non-private accommodations. If it’s ok..
You often cannot select at Bol, Booking or Marktplaats that you do not want to see those third parties in the search results. So you can’t get rid of it. The solution? Whether you keep looking for a blow in the round, or opt for an alternative more often. Think of going to Vinted for your second-hand items or to the local thrift store. You can find hotels on Trivago or Weekendjeweg, for example, and for all those things from Bol you can probably also find a webshop that keeps it under control. You are not only more sustainable with it, but probably also cheaper.
That is certainly not always necessary, but if you are really tired of those third parties and external sellers, then in many cases that is the solution. Although we naturally hope that these websites will come with a filter for anyone looking for the ‘authentic’ experience. A kind of pop-up blocker, but better.
Laura Jenny
When she’s not tapping, she’s traveling around the wonderful world of entertainment or some cool place in the real world. Mario is the man of her life,…
