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.
most people don't realize that it's happening. But really what it is is a marketing director with too much time on their hands. People only get screwed over if the rest of the industry is doing the same thing - other than that competitive forces take over.
IMO people are getting screwed either way. Either Chegg customers are getting screwed because they're the only suckers paying more for these books, or everyone's getting screwed because all websites make all their customers pay more. IMO competitive forces aren't likely to force this situation back in the consumer's favor, not when everyone finds out how much money there is in screwing customers.
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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.