4 ms·
Fair trade laws were repealed by '75, and it took a while for pricing to diverge and become as highly variable as today. Not sure whether anyone is doing it, b
by Merrill 7y ago
Fair trade laws were repealed by '75, and it took a while for pricing to diverge and become as highly variable as today.
Not sure whether anyone is doing it, but an early presumed advantage of internet commerce was that the seller could set a different price for each customer depending on the seller's knowledge of the customer's preferences, socioeconomic status, and other parameters. The global electronic village as the global electronic bazaar!
- kortilla 7y agoThere was someone who got caught increasing prices for iOS users.
- taxidump 7y agoTravel sites are the worst for this.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoWhich sites exactly? I’ve never seen it actually happen and I’d like to experiment.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoTravel sites are worst about it but I've seen it on Amazon which claimed it was a mistake. Smaller stores don't typically do it, but with an iPhone and an Android, one on VPN sometimes you can catch the site being funny about pricing.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoAre any of the websites actually the official website of the hotel/airline/car rental? I’ve never even seen a lower price advertised on a third party website compared to the official website of the vendor.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoI've only seen this on third party sites. Never in direct sites. I've definitely seen cheaper prices on third party rather than direct sites on more than one occasion.
- wolco 7y agoNetflix charges differently based on location which is a proxy for those. Amazon offers multiple shipping option for various prices.
- baroffoos 7y agoLocation pricing was done before the internet and ad tracking. Some countries have richer people who can afford to pay more for luxuries.
- manderley 7y agoTons of sites do variable pricing, especially in the travel sector. Typically discriminating by device, OS etc. And you'll often get a discount coupon after staying on a shopping site for a few minutes without interacting.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI’ve read rumors about this, but I’ve never experienced it on any hotel/airline/car rental’s website. I know people that work at chain hotels and they set the price, or the computer does based on shopping the other hotels around it, but never based on who is searching. I’ve tried searching flight prices by remoting into someone else’s computer far away and comparing to mine, and I’ve always gotten the same priced even though I’m not logged in or anything. Ditto for car rentals. I don’t use travel agents so I can’t say for any other kind of sites.
- soared 7y agoYou can search for Wordpress plugins that do the above and then look at their documentation to learn the rules. Shopify has a setting you can enable to email a 15% off code to anyone who adds and item to their cart but doesn’t check out.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI meant in the travel sector, as the previous poster pointed it out specifically. For retail yes, all you usually need to do is add something to cart and then leave and in the next few days they email you a discount code.
- com2kid 7y agoI'll frequently get quoted different prices on travel sites when using different computers or after turning incognito mode on.
- 7y ago