A browser agent that searches or books for you fills in dates, locations or facts that you did not give it. It may enter the wrong dates on a booking form, search the wrong town, or describe a hotel with the wrong star class, and then carry on as if nothing is wrong.
The sources do not explain the cause. They show it most often when a request leaves room to guess, for example missing dates or a vague location. One tester said the agent should have asked more questions about exact dates.
Write dates, places and travellers as fixed facts and tell the agent to stop and ask if it cannot use them. Ask it to ask questions before it searches. Ask for values exactly as the site shows them, with "not shown" where it could not see one. Make it read back dates, names and totals from the final page before you take over, and check that page yourself before you pay.
The reporter says Comet entered completely wrong dates when booking airport parking, still asked him to check out, and repeated the problem at a second location after he said the dates were not negotiable.
The reporter says a restaurant search first ran in the wrong area. A second tester quoted in the article says Operator picked arbitrary dates and returned random locations for a resort search.
The author says the agent described a 3-star hotel as 4-star and described a walk of about five minutes as much shorter.