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Tons 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 st
by manderley 7y ago
Tons 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.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoAre any of those websites the airline/hotel/car rental company itself? If so, which ones?
- jcrawfordor 7y agoThat's just abandoned cart recovery, which is pretty ubiquitous. I'd say it's very different than presenting different prices to different users.
- johntb86 7y agoI've definitely experienced a case (I think on hotels.com) where I was using two different computers to look for the same room, and they both displayed consistently different prices. I think on the more expensive one I was already logged into my account, so that may have made the difference.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoBut that’s a travel agent, not the hotel itself. And the big hotels brands guarantee they offer the lowest price on their website to their rewards members since they don’t have to pay commission to travel agents. Unless it’s an opaque rate where you’re bidding for hotel rooms and don’t know which hotel you will get, but you’re forced to buy it once you bid. But I’m talking about publicly advertised prices.
- jsjohnst 7y agoBeing that all publicly sold fares for plane tickets from the airline must have their price registered in advance of the sale, I agree I find it suspect in that case too. Maybe sites like Priceline or similar places might do stuff like described, but I very highly doubt airlines do, unless they just don’t show availability in some fare codes to specific customers (which I also doubt, with the possible exception of elite status members).