Ethics of e-commerce — or, exploring our moral proximity (if any) to virtual businesses
The big question I’ve grappling with is — do I owe any honesty to search engines and travel aggregators?
The question originated from a fairly unexpected source — a beach vacation with three of my girlfriends last month. It was three days filled with the usual, wonderful things: swimming, eating, drinking, talking about all the things that old friends talk about. The more we change, the more we are the same as we were a decade ago.
Checking out of the hotel at the end of the vacation was the usual mix of sadness, resignation and promises for the next reunion. But at the checkout desk, we had a bizarre interaction which lasted less than five minutes but has been occupying as much of my headspace as the entire three-day vacation.
We had paid the entire amount on checking in and only needed to pay the restaurant and room-service bills. Considering we had been going out a lot, this wasn’t a large bill. The person at the reception – let’s call him Amit — seemed strangely reluctant to take the credit card I held out to him. “Err, actually madam wanted to speak with you. Please wait one minute?” He said.
“Madam” is the hotel owner. Let’s call her Priya. Attentive and charming to a high degree, Priya had been checking on us regularly, asking us how we like the place, if we had any feedback for her — the usual things. We absolutely loved our stay, and all our conversations with her had been full of joy and validation all around. When Amit said his boss wanted to speak to us, we assumed it would be to say goodbye and request us to write reviews. We were right, but there was more.
In less than a minute, Priya was standing beside us. After the expected small talk, she quickly came to the point. “So the thing is, you booked your stay with us on Unnamed Hotel Aggregator (UHA). Those guys charge us a huge percentage for the bookings that come through them. What I like to do sometimes is not pay those guys at all. I get to save money and I like to pass on those savings to our guests. So if you are okay with it, I’ll tell them you never came to my hotel. I’ll not have to pay their exorbitant rates. And you don’t have to pay me anything for the food bill. All you need to do is click “NO” when they email to ask if you stayed at our hotel. Please say yes?” She smiled brightly as she finished, entirely at ease.
I travel a lot, but this was the first time anything like this had happened with me. Take out the roundabout talk about savings, what it boiled down to was that if I agree to lie, I save five thousand rupees. That’s it — a simple, uncomplicated offer. Put like that, my answer would be a clear no. Because the price of my lies should be more than that, perhaps?
But I found myself feeling extremely uncomfortable at the thought of making her feel that I was rejecting her offer as inappropriate. Saying no meant felt like I would be getting on some moral high ground, and making this kind, hard-working woman feel like she was a crook. My inner critic had a few things to say:
What kind of idiotic snooty person will I look if I say no thank you, please let me pay the whole amount, and I think you shouldn’t lie to UHA either?
I’ll have to tell a petty lie and say I did not visit the hotel. Argh, so uncomfortable! But it’s not like I’ll be lying to a person, I’ll probably be lying to a machine-generated email.
What do I owe UHA? Between a faceless capitalist conglomerate and this sincere human — whose interests should I care about more?
This internal chat took less than two seconds. I smiled and said thank you Priya. And then I signed the bill (without paying anything), promised to visit again and got into my cab. Two days later, I clicked “did not visit the hotel” in the email I received from UHA.
It has been a few weeks, and I continue to feel uncomfortable about the choice I made. I told my husband the story, and asked him what I had asked myself as I stood at the checkout desk — “What do I owe UHA anyway, right?”
He did not make it easy for me. He rarely does. “Well, UHA does give employment to a lot of people, you know. If everyone starts to do what you did, their profits will eventually dip. And some dude working in the back office in Manila will lose his job.”
Then he saw my miserable face and backtracked. “But it was a tough decision to take in an awkward spot. Don’t beat yourself over it. I might have done the same if I were in your place.”
The memory of that morning on the beach will stay with me for a long time. I keep wondering what the “right” thing to do was.
Truth is an abstract concept. In general, I’m all in favour of protecting truth, but I can happily deprioritise being truthful over practising kindness towards the people I’m interacting with. That has long been my personal code of moral proximity, but it feels overly simplistic and problematic when I acknowledge how interconnected the world is. This particular dilemma is fairly symptomatic of the world I inhabit. For one, it points to how technology has exploded the universe that I’m directly part of and proximate to. And for another, it is proof of my massive good fortune (or privilege?) that I have the headspace to think about abstract issues like this one.
