5 ms·

It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago. I just bought tickets to Las Vegas

It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago. I just bought tickets to Las Vegas on Friday. I got through the checkout process (choosing a flight and a hotel) and then they said there was a "problem" and kicked me back to the beginning of the process. I went through it again, choosing the exact same flights (with the same number of seats available) and the prices were 20-30% higher. The available seats were identical (I was buying for a same-day flight so there were only a handful remaining and it was easy to see that they were the same). I went ahead and bought since it at was the last minute, but I made a mental note not to ever bother coming back. It's happened so frequently to me on this and other aggregators like Travelocity that it may even be intentional. Perhaps they display competitive prices so they will be chosen by people who are comparison shopping (either manually or through a site like kayak.com). Then once you've asserted your willingness to buy by moving through the flight selection process they randomly restart you with higher prices on the (probably likely) belief that you have already mentally committed to Orbitz.

natrius 14y ago
The innocuous possibility is that prices change several times during the day of a flight, and price changes for incomplete orders cause bad system behavior and a strange user experience.
derda 14y ago
It is also possible, that they show you a cached price first and one step before the confirmation they check back with the airline if they price really is the same. In your case the airline might have increased the fare, for whatever reason, shortly before you started your booking process.
- mratzloff 14y ago
  That's definitely possible. I just have a hard time giving any company involved (airline or aggregator) the benefit of the doubt...
masklinn 14y ago
That's a very different issue than the one outlined in TFA though: TFA talks about presenting different (more expensive) options by default after noting a trend that those were the options usually selected by users of the target platform. Not about tacking on extra charges on the same product.
rmc 14y ago
Flight price change all the time. This "go back to the start and its a different price" happens often. As a point of data, I've had it happen, but the flights have been cheaper.
willvarfar 14y ago
This can happen if someone else buys that cheap seat before you complete your booking. I've often tried to coordinate buying tickets with others online and we can all be chatting on the phone as we're all looking at our own computer screens and we all read off different prices. Well, flight pricing is never simple any which way anyway.
- mratzloff 14y ago
  Right, but my point was that no one had bought those tickets--because there were so few seats it was apparent it was the same flight with the same seats available. The hotel also increased by a significant amount.
doc4t 14y ago
1. Airline ticket prices can change several times within the same hour. 2. Once you have done a booking search many companies store this information in a cookie (or otherwise) to prevent you from seeing cheaper prices on subsequent searches. Try deleting your cookies next time...it usually works for me. Also I never log in to my account until I know exactly what I want.
mikeash 14y ago
I stopped using Travelocity after a repeated problem with this. I was booking a flight which they listed for about $300, and when I got to the end they said, oops, there's been a sudden change, it's now $900. So of course I bailed out of the process. A little while later, I checked Travelocity again and it was back to $300. Went through to the end again and, same "sudden change", now $900. As I recall, this persisted for something like a day before I finally gave up and wrote them off as a bunch of scammers.
Nutella2 14y ago
Amazon does this. If you look at a product and then come back later to buy it the price will be higher than it is if you bought it immediately after looking. If you want to get the best prices and look up things whenever you want, use one computer to do lookups and one to buy.

natrius 14y ago

The innocuous possibility is that prices change several times during the day of a flight, and price changes for incomplete orders cause bad system behavior and a strange user experience.

derda 14y ago

It is also possible, that they show you a cached price first and one step before the confirmation they check back with the airline if they price really is the same. In your case the airline might have increased the fare, for whatever reason, shortly before you started your booking process.

mratzloff 14y ago
That's definitely possible. I just have a hard time giving any company involved (airline or aggregator) the benefit of the doubt...

masklinn 14y ago

That's a very different issue than the one outlined in TFA though: TFA talks about presenting different (more expensive) options by default after noting a trend that those were the options usually selected by users of the target platform. Not about tacking on extra charges on the same product.

rmc 14y ago

Flight price change all the time. This "go back to the start and its a different price" happens often. As a point of data, I've had it happen, but the flights have been cheaper.

willvarfar 14y ago

This can happen if someone else buys that cheap seat before you complete your booking. I've often tried to coordinate buying tickets with others online and we can all be chatting on the phone as we're all looking at our own computer screens and we all read off different prices. Well, flight pricing is never simple any which way anyway.

mratzloff 14y ago
Right, but my point was that no one had bought those tickets--because there were so few seats it was apparent it was the same flight with the same seats available. The hotel also increased by a significant amount.

doc4t 14y ago

1. Airline ticket prices can change several times within the same hour. 2. Once you have done a booking search many companies store this information in a cookie (or otherwise) to prevent you from seeing cheaper prices on subsequent searches. Try deleting your cookies next time...it usually works for me. Also I never log in to my account until I know exactly what I want.

mikeash 14y ago

I stopped using Travelocity after a repeated problem with this. I was booking a flight which they listed for about $300, and when I got to the end they said, oops, there's been a sudden change, it's now $900. So of course I bailed out of the process. A little while later, I checked Travelocity again and it was back to $300. Went through to the end again and, same "sudden change", now $900. As I recall, this persisted for something like a day before I finally gave up and wrote them off as a bunch of scammers.

Nutella2 14y ago

Amazon does this. If you look at a product and then come back later to buy it the price will be higher than it is if you bought it immediately after looking. If you want to get the best prices and look up things whenever you want, use one computer to do lookups and one to buy.