In July 2020, Ms. Hu, a diamond-level member of the travel platform Ctrip, booked a room at a hotel in Zhoushan through Ctrip for 2,889 yuan. The hotel’s own listed rate for the room was 1,377.63 yuan. In 2021, the Keqiao District Court in Shaoxing ordered Ctrip to pay her 4,777.48 yuan: the part of the difference it had not yet refunded, plus three times the price difference.
Chinese media described it as the first court judgment that made a company using big data against its familiar customers refund the difference and pay three times as much. The Personal Information Protection Law, adopted in August 2021, forbids “unreasonable differential treatment” of individuals “in transaction prices and other trading terms” in automated decisions.