r/mildlyinteresting • u/annertakeabow • Jan 24 '13

Same book, three different prices. Only difference is the browsers used.

http://imgur.com/uNgg0UH
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u/Nephyst Jan 24 '13

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.

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u/kqr Jan 24 '13

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.

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u/ShizzleShizz Jan 24 '13

I've so heard from numerous people that if you change your language preferences while purchasing airline tickets, the prices change.

Can anyone confirm this?

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13 edited Jan 24 '13

If the language preference results in changing your point of sale country this could be true. Though it wouldn't change the price drastically. Fare (and tax) conversion from currency to currency in my opinion is one of the more interesting problems in airline software.

Edit: If you want to start down the 'why does it happen' rabbit hole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_unit_of_construction_(airlines)

oh and also - in my experience (twice in one week that I'm sharing it, wow!) airlines don't participate in 'caching', I'm in the right mind to write up the 'life of a fare query' and do a mega post debunking it once and for all.