Two questions bring this to mind, one just today, Vayama - price quoted at booking was increased after ticket confirmation and one from a while ago Is Canadian Visa Expert a legitimate company or a scam?.
In the case of canadianvisaexpert, while it was generally agreed that their business was ... scammy ... a user account was created with that same name and posted an answer defending the company. While those who are intimately familiar with the process of obtaining and using visas would consider this business as (potentially) a waste of time and money, someone, perhaps older and less computer savvy might find them a godsend. They aren't an outright scam, taking money and returning nothing, they are just an expensive way to get someone else to do a portion of what you might not have the time, knowledge or inclination to do.
As far as Vayama goes, I feel for the OP, I really do. That being said, it would appear according to the fine print and terms of use, Vayama was well within their rights and rules to raise the price quoted before issuance of the tickets. Now we have a question which accuses them of being a scam and unethical. A tag was created with the company's name. If I understand what I have learned about SE, this means that any time someone does a Google search, for instance, on Vayama, they'll find this question as one of the top hits. If I saw this questions title, I would not hesitate to assume they are (scammy and unethical) and move on to the next company.
We, in this travel.se have a tremendous capability of hurting a business. Perhaps badly. Perhaps, even to the level of litigation by the company. Is that what we want? How do we determine, objectively, provably, if a company/website/individual is scammy/unethical?
More importantly, do we care?
If I understand what I have learned about SE, this means that any time someone does a Google search, for instance, on Vayama, they'll find this question as one of the top hits.
- what on earth gives you this understanding? I created the tag either because other questions exist already or are likely to be asked in the future, or so it can be merged into another tag such as travel-agents or flight-search-engines. I don't know which service the provide so opted for a self-named tag. – hippietrail Oct 20 '14 at 6:01they'll find this question as one of the top hits
. You're trying to turn a positive into a negative. There is no magic that makes tagged questions shoot to the top of Google or other search engine hits, it's just one factor weighed up in PageRank and other ranking formulae. In short, always try to tag usefully. Never tag to game search engines or de-tag to attempt to hide from search engines. – hippietrail Oct 20 '14 at 13:16