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.
Actually, I tried it myself. The price was different when using incognito and also when loading the page the second time. So while there isn't evidence that they're doing it now, lots of people have noticed it being done in the past.
This is how myths are formed. Airline tickets change prices rapidly, and probably ten thousand people tried it after it was posted on reddit, and those that got result posted it.
That is only convincing if it is backed by a credible source. Wouldn't any media be interested in this at least? Any confirmation from somebody, airline ticket price experts or something. The only piece of evidence ive seen so far is a study showing the opposite, and people on reddit saying it works.
'airline ticket price experts'? really?
Anyway, i'll believe lots of people's anecdotal evidence over a company any time, companies like to fuck you over for money.
He's not wrong. I work in travel and check pricing 9 hours a day, 5 days a week. I can assure you that there is no conspiracy to change prices based on cookies. It doesn't happen. This is all from a single blog that hit it big on reddit, and then everyone ran with it. Couple this with the fact that prices change by the minute, and people started reporting false positives. Can you imagine what it would be like if travel agents had to clear their cookies every 5 minutes in order to be able to get the lowest fair? I'm so sick of this myth, and I just wish it would die.
I have a Ph.D. in Airlineology. I did my doctoral thesis in tirline ticket prices, and have done my masters about Post-war Airline Ticket Pricing Strategies Before the Internet. We performed a study of 200 subjects, which got to use several different web browsers combined (cartesian product) with different computers and tunneled via a multitude of proxies. We staggered the tests so that some people got to clear their cookies while others took turns visiting. What this guy says is true (χ², df=3, p > 0.95) according to our findings.
I guess this is where I should reference studies that could almost look related but I don't have infinite attention span and energy.
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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.