6. Holiday booking agent

One of the more pleasant things to do in life is to book a holiday or weekend break. This is often done through an online web site. Consider the effect of inaccurate or out of date information.

Scenario

You visit the online web site of a Bed & Breakfast in the peak district, which is a very popular destination. The site presents you with a calendar style picker. The calendar shows the days available for you to book up. So you duly select a few days. The system then sends you an email confirming the booking.

The site also gives you their address and post code. So you note the post code ready to load into the car SatNav for your break.

Problem 1: Inaccurate data. The post code was incorrect on the site. So you end up driving to the wrong place and then struggle to find the correct location.

Problem 2: Out of date information. One of the days has been double booked as the system had a fault that allowed double bookings to take place.

Both of these issues has caused some very unhappy customers.