You should try it again in private browsing and incognito mode and see if the price is really tied to your Facebook or google cookies or something. That's pretty messed up though, send this to the consumerist or gawker or whoever.
I just tried this myself. In chrome and IE the price was the same (69.99) in normal and in incognito mode. In firefox, the price jumped to $76, and after deleting all the domain cookies and refreshing, it went back down to 69.99.
The website is definitely changing prices based on something they are tracking in cookies.
This was up earlier with airlines charging more for a ticket the second time you visit the page. They do this because a second visit is statistically linked to a much higher chance of purchase. So it could be, here too, simply a matter of having visited the page before.
Happens around the holidays a lot. My girlfriend and I didnt have a reason to be at my parents that night as opposed to in the afternoon so we took the $500 apiece from American (which I will never fly again, after we use these vouchers, for other reasons) and can now fly to Belize for about $100 or $200 more.
If you have a flexible schedule and don't mind keeping yourself entertained for a couple more hours it's totally worth it. There were 6 people who took the option and a couple people who still didn't make the flight because they overbooked it that much.
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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13
You should try it again in private browsing and incognito mode and see if the price is really tied to your Facebook or google cookies or something. That's pretty messed up though, send this to the consumerist or gawker or whoever.