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How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight

218 points by xpop2027 13y ago

dsl 13y ago
The "TL;DR" at the top of the post is completely different than the actual content of the post.
- xpop2027 13y ago
  Fixed
zendev 13y ago
Just tried this myself and it definitely makes a difference. Thanks for the tip.
- philmcc 13y ago
  Ditto. Tried the same thing, and a United flight went from $400 to $356 on Kayak.
ml2man 13y ago
No need for VPN - same result can be achieved (at least on this flight) by toggling the country manually to Canada.
pera 13y ago
changing your user agent also works in some websites (not sure about kayak though) protip: don't let them know you have a mac book pro
- aestra 13y ago
  They don't give you higher prices with a Macbook Pro, they might just suggest higher priced things. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230445860...
jcutrell 13y ago
This sounds quite familiar to the manipulation Orbitz did in 2012 based on the user's reported operating system: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/25/orbitz_displaying_higher_priced_hotels_to_macs_than_pcs http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/25/orbitz_displaying_...
- saryant 13y ago
  Not really. Kayak is using geolocation to detect the sales country. Airline tickets have always had different prices depending on the country of purchase.
- calbear81 13y ago
  That is incorrect and unfortunate that it left the wrong impression in user's minds. Orbitz did not price up hotels based on OS, they chose to change the list of options presented to users based on OS. This is no different than what we simply call "personalization". If a user found the Wynn on a Mac or a PC, they were the same exact price, all that was different was what position that hotel was in in the default sort order.
  - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
    That's an awful fine distinction there.
    - calbear81 13y ago
      It's simply a sort algorithm that takes into account any possible signal including OS, Browser, IP / Geo, past purchase behavior, etc. If you figure out that Mac users on average tend to click more on "boutique" hotels that have better design, why would it be wrong to feature those higher up in the results list? It just so happens that those hotels tend to be more pricey but they certainly did not "price" up the same hotel for Mac users. One is standard personalization, the other is price discrimination, and the headline made it sound like the latter.
alexhutcheson 13y ago
Does source IP address make a difference when searching fares on ITA Software's Matrix[1]? To my knowledge, ITA Software is where Kayak and many of the other booking sites get their data, so it's normally what I use when searching for flights. Since they don't actually sell tickets, I've always assumed I'm seeing "neutral" results, but now I'm curious. [1] http://matrix.itasoftware.com http://matrix.itasoftware.com
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Google bought out itasoftware so I'm not going to assume that it's completely neutral, but I have consistently seen the best deals come through that. I don't even bother using Kayak anymore as the "calendar" function on itasoftware is so much more useful for someone like me with a relatively flexible schedule on most of my trips. I can't confirm, but I assume from personal experience that kayak increases prices on flights as you search for the same flight multiple times.
  - acjohnson55 13y ago
    I've had this anecdotal experience as well. How is this legal?
    - grkvlt 13y ago
      Of course it is legal. In the same way as it is legal to set the sale price for (most) things at any (arbitrarily high, or low) value - airline ticketing takes place in a free market. This means sellers can offer tickets at any price they want, and it is up to the purchaser to signal whether they think the price is appropriate by buying the ticket (or not) at some price. The alternative is government interference or regulation of the airline ticket industry, setting fixed prices, which would not be good for the industry.
- btn 13y ago
  No, your IP has no effect; by default, you're seeing prices as if they were booked from the departure city. Matrix lets you specify the the "sales city" (the last field in the advanced search options), which allows you to check out price discrimination by location.
alexhutcheson 13y ago
Does source IP address make a difference when searching fares on ITA Software's Matrix[1]? To my knowledge, ITA Software is where Kayak and many of the other booking sites get their data, so it's normally what I use when searching for flights. Since they don't actually sell tickets, I've always assumed I'm seeing "neutral" results, but now I'm curious. [1] http://matrix.itasoftware.com http://matrix.itasoftware.com
001sky 13y ago
The price descrimination that the airlines do is so opaque and manipulative, this is exactly why one needs to be cognizant of the technicals. We are really only a single logical step removed from a pretty bad place (read: racist/sexist/elitist, etc) with this teqnique to dynamic pricing and (essentially) ... front-running.[1] For example, we can charge black people more (based on zip-code demographics) to discourage them from flying first class. We could, if we wanted to, require PII prior to bidding on tickets. Imagine if the NYSE priced publicly traded equities in this manner? The irony of cutting out the middle man to reduce costs, is that at some stage, we may be paying an intermediary (broker/marketmaker) to anonymize our order flow to get "fair" prices. [1] This is what it really is, lets be honest.
- harryh 13y ago
  How is there front running when there are only two parties in the transaction?
  - ChrisBland 13y ago
    Not front running the traditional sense, what I believe they are referring to is when you search for a flight, then come back and search it again and its gone up by $80 since they know you are interested in that destination but didnt book it last time.
    - raganwald 13y ago
      This technique goes back long before the Internet. I recall working in a computer store where it was a standard practice to give someone a quote with an expiry date, and if they missed the time limit extra money would be tacked on with some made-up BS excuse (We sold out of Foobars and the new shipment came in at a higher price). It was the exact same reasoning: The customer walked away, shopped around, and came back because we have everyone else beat. So now we need to raise our price as much as possible without making it worth their while to go back to someone else. And in fact, they probably are in our place because someone else raised their price on them, or disclosed hidden gotchas, so we have leverage.
monksy 13y ago
I do not work for Kayak. However, I believe that this may be due to the sale's city of the ticket. This is typically to encourage discounts in specific cities. When tickets are issued one aspect of the ticket is that it has a "sales location"
jw2 13y ago
The difference is southwest. I think Southwest is not offered as an option on the US side but apparently is if booking from outside the US. I just checked Southwest's website and the same flight is offered for $255.00 round trip.
testaccount4 13y ago
>(BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA). >BTGuard > >mfw oh hackernews..
- TillE 13y ago
  BTGuard is based in Canada and they have a strict policy of not keeping logs. What's your point?
  - testaccount4 13y ago
    if you're using PPTP with BTGuard -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWXP3DvH8OQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWXP3DvH8OQ even if you're not, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryp...
  - eli 13y ago
    Well, for one thing, you've taken your domestic internet traffic -- which has legal protections against many types of NSA intrusion -- and traded it for foreign traffic which has virtually no protection.
    - Glan1984 13y ago
      ok so use a vpn located in america. Boom.
      - Glan1984 13y ago
        And what protections does the NSA even respect?!? Dont make me die of laughter man.
WildUtah 13y ago
Looks like the cheap flights were on WN (Southwest) and the expensive flights were on DL (Delta). I just did an example flight search to fly later this week (Jan 24-30 round trip) from SLC to OAK, a route that both DL and WN fly direct. Kayak shows me fares from $492 on US and B6 changing planes in Phoenix or Long Beach (doubling distance and quintupling flight time) and direct flights from $532 on DL. Kayak doesn't show me any WN prices in the USA, but might have some sort of pilot program or contract to show them outside the USA. Iflyswa.com shows direct flights from $526. Meanwhile ITA Matrix (matrix.itasoftware.com, made with secret alien technology [0]) shows flights on US for $318 which violate the rules for domestic connection times and cannot be booked. It's strange that those flights are shown since Matrix is usually very reliable. Going directly to US's website reveals fares of $440 for flights with a connection in Phoenix. So what's the lesson here? Check the WN site directly instead of depending on search sites. Check both ITA Matrix and Kayak if you're depending on search sites; they don't have the same flights listed. Sometimes you need to check individual airline websites even though it's a pain because they have better flights and prices than search sites have; there's no reliable way to know when that's the case. [0] http://www.lisperati.com/logo.html http://www.lisperati.com/logo.html
- jstratr 13y ago
  > So what's the lesson here? Check the WN site directly instead of depending on search sites. Kayak and TripAdvisor will give you unpriced WN flights in their search results. You still have to check WN directly for prices, but it's useful for seeing what's available.
  - larrydag 13y ago
    Being from Dallas (Southwest HQ) I know that Southwest doesn't allow other websites to use their booking and online flight pricing. Most airlines can be checked through Google Flights or Kayak but I know that I have to check with Southwest directly to compare their prices. BUMP: I guess I should have read the other comments as this has been said a dozen times.
- User8712 13y ago
  The lesson is know what a fair price is for your flight, then check a handful of sites often until it comes up for around that price. Try to book at least a few weeks in advance. I can't stress the first point enough. When you buy anything, or if you need to negotiate a price, do your research, and know what it should cost. It's especially true when booking flights, because you don't want to see a price, think it might go lower, and miss a great deal. If you know the fair value, you can recognize a good offer when you see it, and book instantly.
billyhoffman 13y ago
I experimented with this a few months ago using free Amazon Windows EC2 instances. The thought being that with EC2 instances I can come from far more IP end points than a specific VPN offers. What I found is many ticket/event sites ban connections from EC2 IP ranges. Sites like Kayak, TicketMaster, even Healthcare.gov drop incoming EC2 connections during the TCP handshake. I imagine this is to stop third party scrappers or ticket scalpers. I have no idea why Healthcare.gov blocks it.
shimon_e 13y ago
Flight price quotes can take the currency and sales city as input. You get to play with both those options in ITA matrix. What you saw is probably based on those inputs being changed.
benhebert 13y ago
I just did this for a CheapoAirFlights.co.uk flight to Saigon from London. Booking from a US IP cost a few hundred more, but I fired up the VPN and it worked fine.
blazespin 13y ago
I've often hacked Kayak by booking flights to other destinations with a stopover at the place I want to go. It's bizarre, but yes, they're sometimes cheaper. "opaque and manipulative" indeed.
- rll 13y ago
  That only works for one-ways or on the return portion. Once you miss a segment the rest of your ticket is canceled at that point, so be careful.
- saryant 13y ago
  This is called hidden-city ticketing, it's not new. Most airlines forbid it in their contract of carriage. There's also no guarantee that you'll keep your stopover city—you could get rerouted through another hub and would have no recourse.
- veemjeem 13y ago
  I wonder if they're doing price elasticity experiments? You could get a slightly cheaper price by getting a different cookie set.
- cynwoody 13y ago
  Kayak has a feature they call Hacker Fares™†. †http://www.kayak.com/news/a-new-way-to-find-deals-on-flights-hacker-fares.bd.html http://www.kayak.com/news/a-new-way-to-find-deals-on-flights...
  - smackfu 13y ago
    Those are nothing special, they are just buying two one-way tickets on different airlines because they are cheaper in a particular scenario. Airlines don't care if you do that.
- wwweston 13y ago
  I have a similarly bizarre little story that's sort of the opposite: I recently added a leg to a trip and cut my fare. Just before the holidays, I was trying to get a flight from LAX to SLC. I tend to fly Southwest, but was finding the fares higher than usual -- generally I can get something in the $250-$300 range, I was seeing $350ish. I was offered a ride to Sacramento, so I checked SAC -> SLC and found I could purchase that flight for $200. I booked it. There are no direct flights from SAC -> SLC on Southwest, though. Mine, as it turned out, stopped over in... LAX.
rjd 13y ago
I've been doing this for years. After I noticed most places are cheap to get to but flights are expensive back. I noticed the same business model was in place from the other direction. So just fake the country of origin and you get cheap to and back. The other one is clear your cookies before booking. Places create fake demand by disappearing the cheap flights on you if you shopping around. If you clear your cookies the cheap flights will return.
- cwp 13y ago
  So you book two one-way tickets? AFAICT, that's usually not cheaper.
  - homersapien 13y ago
    No, he changes his country of origin to C then books a round trip from A to B. It is sometimes cheaper that way.
    - rjd 13y ago
      That actual works as well, don't book anything from South Africa I found out as I was booking my mates flights. You could knock several hundred off by going through an Australian or UK proxy. I believe from memory it was the same agency as well. Just changing the domain brought up vastly different prices on the same flights. But no as I mentioned above lots of holiday destinations have cheap tickets inbound, but out bound are expensive. I first noticed it travelling from London to Croatia. It was like $200 flight to Split, but the flight home was double or triple. I hopped on a proxy, and found I could get the reverse deal from Split to London. $200 to London, $600 back home to split. So I started gaming the system. The agencies are hedging on the fact you have to take the return flight. So they coerce you into the cheap flight to location X, but claw the money back with the return flight which I guess the vast majority of people have to take.
  - rjd 13y ago
    Yeah thats right, quite often to holiday destinations they run specials like flights to Croatia $200, but you try and get a flight back $600. They recoup the costs on the return flight you need to take. But if you're in Croatia you can get flights to London $200 etc... geofenced deals marketing deals to try and coerce people into taking holidays.
firstplanthendo 13y ago
Like someone else said, it’s because it’s a Southwest flight… Southwest isn't shown on the results of the big airfare search engines (kayak, expedia, orbitz) when searching from the United States because it refuses to pay those websites' fees. Looks like you’ve found out that they are shown on Canada based version of the Kayak site. Most likely because the fee arrangements are different or because Southwest is willing to pay them, probably to get exposure to markets that wouldn't otherwise know about them because they don't have a marketing presence there.
- benjaminRRR 13y ago
  This is definitely the most likely scenario. Kayak and other aggregating sites have different arrangements with different partners in different regions. In turn those partners have different arrangements either with direct connect or the GDS themselves (who may also have different arrangements depending on the geographic market). You can get the same effect with other GDS products also, try rental cars for one. The other crazy thing is that different geographic markets are generally responsible for their own revenues, so you can have different promotions, and yield management strategies depending on who is trying to hit their numbers.
hartator 13y ago
> (BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA) Unfortunately, that's not true and will even draw attention. This XKeyScore slide is crazy: http://hothardware.com/newsimages/Item26839/Xkeyscore1.jpg http://hothardware.com/newsimages/Item26839/Xkeyscore1.jpg
- Glan1984 13y ago
  XkeyScore can decrypt my tunneled connection with aes-256, sha256? I knew the nsa was good but not that good... where does it say it decrypts the vpn tunnels of any kind on the slide though I'm curious -_-
  - eli 13y ago
    Is your goal to be anonymous on your web? Because the traffic isn't encrypted when it leaves the VPN and your browser cookies (or various apps phoning home) will make your identity obvious.
    - Glan1984 13y ago
      No my goal is simply to evade the NSA wiretaps as well as my ISP who has recently started messing up my internet connection whenever I torrent, so I vpn overseas and torrent. But yes you are correct, in order to browse privately you should really use tails or something along with vpn and avoid say logging into facebook or anything linked to your identity.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
grecy 13y ago
Startup idea: A site that uses a bunch of VPNs in different countries to look for flights on the big search sites. Whichever is cheaper is presented as the one to buy. It could of course be extended beyond airline travel...
- kylec 13y ago
  Be prepared to be blocked. Each search on a site like Kayak costs money, and if a bunch of searches are being done automatically it will lower the conversion rate, which meta-search sites and their partners watch closely and care deeply about.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    I doubt a search a day would even show on the radar
    - obituary_latte 13y ago
      Wouldn't be a very successful startup then anyway would it?
      - gcb0 13y ago
        not if they use that to predict which routes are cheaper in that day and then use the client browser to request the real time data from the top contenders
- calbear81 13y ago
  I like the idea. I think in general, you can get some things cheaper from retailers in other countries based on differences in the forex rate if the shipping + tax issues are not a problem. You wouldn't even usually need a VPN, just change the language/country settings. The downside is that things may be cheaper because they weren't subject to some type of import tariff that you may be on the hook for from customs when it arrives in the US.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
bnzelener 13y ago
This has nothing to do with the VPN, unfortunately. The price difference comes from Southwest's price being different than Delta's. Southwest flights wont show up when searching Kayak's USA site, but they do show up on international Kayak pages. It sounds like that's because they don't want to pay the brokerage fees for flights booked through the USA versions of Kayak/Expedia/Travelocity -- but I'm not sure of that. Interesting experiment though!
- cynwoody 13y ago
  I just tried BOS-DEN nonstop 31 Jan to 7 Feb through the UK† and Canada††. Southwest came in cheapest on both searches. As has been noted, Southwest did not appear in the same search using www.kayak.com. I was coming from a US IP. I wonder, if I had been coming from a British or Canadian IP, if I would have been redirected to the corresponding site. †http://www.kayak.co.uk/flights/BOS-DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07 http://www.kayak.co.uk/flights/BOS-DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07 ††http://www.ca.kayak.com/flights/BOS-DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07 http://www.ca.kayak.com/flights/BOS-DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-0...
ghx 13y ago
You don't need a VPN to do this. You can just go to Southwest.com. I always check their website after I check Kayak because they don't list Southwest's flights.
coldcode 13y ago
No. I work for an OTA (not Kayak). First of all airlines file their fare rules and OTAs don't change the prices, and generally airlines pay around $10 to us to book a RT fare so there is little room to discount. Kayak is a meta which means all they do is present prices they are given from their partners (either via a feed or scrape) and then send them to the partner who shares the fee. Southwest (as others have mentioned) is not available in the US as a business choice. Kayak also heavily caches the fares (everyone does to make performance better) and inventory changes a lot especially in close by dates. Seeing cached prices of a cached price means the actual price can change a lot from searching to booking. Note the final price is only determined when you hit a booking page, everything before that is cached and might be fairly stale. Of course they can be errors in pricing since the fare rules are crazy complicated and often the difference in fares might be all the taxing entities. Each country, county, city, airport and cow pasture might affect the final price so it's possible that a country where you are booking might affect this (our customers are mostly in the US) but I doubt it. tldr - lucky "hacker"
- coldcode 13y ago
  Also note that airlines can and do choose to show more flight options on their own sites that they deny to any OTA. The actual fares are all by rule and aren't different.
  - goatforce5 13y ago
    I've had good luck in saving tons of money in the past when using an partner airline to book a flight as a codeshare, rather than the actual flight number. eg, Find a flight you like on AA? Try and book it on QF or BA and the price might be substantially different, even though you end up sitting on exactly the same plane.
- yamaneko 13y ago
  I've suffered with cached prices before.
- nathas 13y ago
  If I open an incognito window and hit it again, why does the price change?
aaronsnoswell 13y ago
I'm from Australia. My wife and I regularly use Expedia and other US travel websites to book Australian domestic flights - even after our exchange rate conversion it still works out cheaper (often we save one or two hundred dollars). Australian airfare taxes are insane. The only downside is when things go wrong it is expensive to spend ages on hold while making an international call...
- skeletonjelly 13y ago
  Well they do advertise here in Australia
- aestra 13y ago
  >expensive to spend ages on hold while making an international call Did you try using Skype? Or Google Voice? Or similar? They are much cheaper than actually placing an international call, at least in the US, it is only like 3 cents a minute (US) When I lived abroad I called home with Skype (this was before Google Voice) and I could talk as much as a wanted for only a couple dollars here and there, actually cheaper than my phone bill now.
aaronsnoswell 13y ago
I'm from Australia. My wife and I regularly use Expedia and other US travel websites to book Australian domestic flights - even after our exchange rate conversion it still works out cheaper (often we save one or two hundred dollars). Australian airfare taxes are insane. The only downside is when things go wrong it is expensive to spend ages on hold while making an international call...
aaronsnoswell 13y ago
I'm from Australia. My wife and I regularly use Expedia and other US travel websites to book Australian domestic flights - even after our exchange rate conversion it still works out cheaper (often we save one or two hundred dollars). Australian airfare taxes are insane. The only downside is when things go wrong it is expensive to spend ages on hold while making an international call...
asc123 13y ago
Someone going to Phish?
jstratr 13y ago
Flight metasearch sites have contracts with airlines and OTAs for specific markets, so you're likely to see different inventory if you visit a Canadian site instead of a US site, for example. Seeing different prices on the same inventory is much less likely (disregarding taxes and exchange rates.) Like others have said, Southwest inventory doesn't often appear on sites like Kayak because they want customers to book directly. That cuts out the commission to Kayak and conditions people to look for flights on southwest.com in the future.
Jd 13y ago
While booking flights in Europe I frequently toggle through kayak.de, kayak.it, lastminute, and kayak.com. Doesn't require a VPN, it's just that Kayak works through partners and the partners are country specific. You can often get better deals on one site or another, depending on the partner selection. I haven't used it that much in North America recently, but it seems to be the same dynamic.
kbenson 13y ago
BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA That's okay. I'm sure the minor inconvenience of not seeing the data flow directly to your local IP is more than made up for by the data collection at both sides of that VPN... To be serious, I wonder if they apply extra scrutiny to VPN providers, and use traffic analysis to build correlations between TCP connections. The extra effort might be justified by a higher class of data going across the connections. Then again, it's probably easier to just use some form of evercookie injected into TCP streams on the fly...
emrekzd 13y ago
there is working a trick for long distance flights. I used it a few times to get cheaper tickets: when you are buying long distance flight tickets, pick a city close to where you will depart (this will add an additional flight transferring from your departure city). When you get multiple transfers there is a possibility that the offered price will be cheaper (I confirmed this with an agency when I initially figured this out). If you get a cheaper price buy it and call the airlines to tell them you will miss the first flight, and have them correct the check in location to your departure city. I was able to save $100 travelling from europe to east coast last time I did this.
- saryant 13y ago
  Do this often enough and the airline will ban you. This is hidden city ticketing and repeated abuses will lead the airline to simply drop you as a customer.
- aestra 13y ago
  This is called abusing customer service. How the tell if you're not being ethical: If every single person does it, does the system break down? If the answer is yes, then stop.
senthilnayagam 13y ago
Kayak is not the only one, in India I have seen MakeMyTrip did not show couple of direct flights which I found on Cleartrip . I would like to know if using VPN has a impact on large sites like Amazon(I have seen the price change there too)
artellectual 13y ago
OTAs have all kinds of weird tricks raising and lowering prices to get people to book sooner rather than later. Instead of realizing that providing good service with a nice clean interface is the way to go they use these cheap tricks. Agoda, Booking.com and many other OTAs all do this sort of thing. Sometimes it's as simple and clearing your cookies to get a lower rate.
dorfsmay 13y ago
Wait! There's something cheaper from Canada???
xmrsilentx 13y ago
Cool. So just booking one flight pays for almost a years worth of VPN service.
a-b 13y ago
Check your user agent line; Apple owners might overpay as well...
yadongwen 13y ago
Ticket prices will also be different if you use an international credit card. I used to save 100+ bucks with paypal instead of my Chinese credit card.
gtirloni 13y ago
"BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA" As if using a VPN made you NSA-proof. Every time I see phrases like this I force myself not to think the person is a fool but it's hard. People need to realize that ensuring security and privacy isn't fixed by installing just some tool and be done with it. Worse, they will do this and trust they are immune (and then the damage will be worse).
- xpop2027 13y ago
  I'm aware it is not NSA proof.
  - yaph 13y ago
    You may be aware, but some of your readers may not. So some may think you're a fool to say that and other's may think it's a good way to stay safe. Both not really desirable.
xtc 13y ago
The word hack becomes cheaper and cheaper each day.
- Loughla 13y ago
  Right or wrong, I have no opinion, but at this point, that word is used in the general population and popular media to mean, "I thought about a problem or situation differently than I usually do." I think the lifehack movement started that train of thought. I'm not really sure.
javiramos 13y ago
How much do fare change by location? Is it only a US vs. Canada things or are prices dependent on the US location from which the search is being made? It would be interesting to create a price map of various fares searched from different states in the US...
imartin2k 13y ago
To me, the moral of the story is rather: Use another search engine than Kayak. Others, like Skyscanner, include Southwest.
ghost439024d 13y ago
The presedent in afghanistan shotting who he thought was a terroist with no danger of his life he shot the 12yr old female dead then came the order to cover it up is this the dirty way we back our money into to make the workd a better place!! you deccide
ashleyfox 13y ago
@OP PSS == "post script script". I do not think that means what you think it means.

218 points by xpop2027 13y ago

dsl 13y ago

The "TL;DR" at the top of the post is completely different than the actual content of the post.

xpop2027 13y ago
Fixed

zendev 13y ago

Just tried this myself and it definitely makes a difference. Thanks for the tip.

philmcc 13y ago
Ditto. Tried the same thing, and a United flight went from $400 to $356 on Kayak.

ml2man 13y ago

No need for VPN - same result can be achieved (at least on this flight) by toggling the country manually to Canada.

pera 13y ago

changing your user agent also works in some websites (not sure about kayak though) protip: don't let them know you have a mac book pro

aestra 13y ago
They don't give you higher prices with a Macbook Pro, they might just suggest higher priced things. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230445860...

jcutrell 13y ago

This sounds quite familiar to the manipulation Orbitz did in 2012 based on the user's reported operating system: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/25/orbitz_displaying_higher_priced_hotels_to_macs_than_pcs http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/25/orbitz_displaying_...

saryant 13y ago
Not really. Kayak is using geolocation to detect the sales country. Airline tickets have always had different prices depending on the country of purchase.
calbear81 13y ago
That is incorrect and unfortunate that it left the wrong impression in user's minds. Orbitz did not price up hotels based on OS, they chose to change the list of options presented to users based on OS. This is no different than what we simply call "personalization". If a user found the Wynn on a Mac or a PC, they were the same exact price, all that was different was what position that hotel was in in the default sort order.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  That's an awful fine distinction there.
  - calbear81 13y ago
    It's simply a sort algorithm that takes into account any possible signal including OS, Browser, IP / Geo, past purchase behavior, etc. If you figure out that Mac users on average tend to click more on "boutique" hotels that have better design, why would it be wrong to feature those higher up in the results list? It just so happens that those hotels tend to be more pricey but they certainly did not "price" up the same hotel for Mac users. One is standard personalization, the other is price discrimination, and the headline made it sound like the latter.

alexhutcheson 13y ago

Does source IP address make a difference when searching fares on ITA Software's Matrix[1]? To my knowledge, ITA Software is where Kayak and many of the other booking sites get their data, so it's normally what I use when searching for flights. Since they don't actually sell tickets, I've always assumed I'm seeing "neutral" results, but now I'm curious. [1] http://matrix.itasoftware.com http://matrix.itasoftware.com

joelrunyon 13y ago
Google bought out itasoftware so I'm not going to assume that it's completely neutral, but I have consistently seen the best deals come through that. I don't even bother using Kayak anymore as the "calendar" function on itasoftware is so much more useful for someone like me with a relatively flexible schedule on most of my trips. I can't confirm, but I assume from personal experience that kayak increases prices on flights as you search for the same flight multiple times.
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  I've had this anecdotal experience as well. How is this legal?
  - grkvlt 13y ago
    Of course it is legal. In the same way as it is legal to set the sale price for (most) things at any (arbitrarily high, or low) value - airline ticketing takes place in a free market. This means sellers can offer tickets at any price they want, and it is up to the purchaser to signal whether they think the price is appropriate by buying the ticket (or not) at some price. The alternative is government interference or regulation of the airline ticket industry, setting fixed prices, which would not be good for the industry.
btn 13y ago
No, your IP has no effect; by default, you're seeing prices as if they were booked from the departure city. Matrix lets you specify the the "sales city" (the last field in the advanced search options), which allows you to check out price discrimination by location.

alexhutcheson 13y ago

001sky 13y ago

The price descrimination that the airlines do is so opaque and manipulative, this is exactly why one needs to be cognizant of the technicals. We are really only a single logical step removed from a pretty bad place (read: racist/sexist/elitist, etc) with this teqnique to dynamic pricing and (essentially) ... front-running.[1] For example, we can charge black people more (based on zip-code demographics) to discourage them from flying first class. We could, if we wanted to, require PII prior to bidding on tickets. Imagine if the NYSE priced publicly traded equities in this manner? The irony of cutting out the middle man to reduce costs, is that at some stage, we may be paying an intermediary (broker/marketmaker) to anonymize our order flow to get "fair" prices. [1] This is what it really is, lets be honest.

harryh 13y ago
How is there front running when there are only two parties in the transaction?
- ChrisBland 13y ago
  Not front running the traditional sense, what I believe they are referring to is when you search for a flight, then come back and search it again and its gone up by $80 since they know you are interested in that destination but didnt book it last time.
  - raganwald 13y ago
    This technique goes back long before the Internet. I recall working in a computer store where it was a standard practice to give someone a quote with an expiry date, and if they missed the time limit extra money would be tacked on with some made-up BS excuse (We sold out of Foobars and the new shipment came in at a higher price). It was the exact same reasoning: The customer walked away, shopped around, and came back because we have everyone else beat. So now we need to raise our price as much as possible without making it worth their while to go back to someone else. And in fact, they probably are in our place because someone else raised their price on them, or disclosed hidden gotchas, so we have leverage.

monksy 13y ago

I do not work for Kayak. However, I believe that this may be due to the sale's city of the ticket. This is typically to encourage discounts in specific cities. When tickets are issued one aspect of the ticket is that it has a "sales location"

jw2 13y ago

The difference is southwest. I think Southwest is not offered as an option on the US side but apparently is if booking from outside the US. I just checked Southwest's website and the same flight is offered for $255.00 round trip.

testaccount4 13y ago

>(BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA). >BTGuard > >mfw oh hackernews..

TillE 13y ago
BTGuard is based in Canada and they have a strict policy of not keeping logs. What's your point?
- testaccount4 13y ago
  if you're using PPTP with BTGuard -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWXP3DvH8OQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWXP3DvH8OQ even if you're not, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryp...
- eli 13y ago
  Well, for one thing, you've taken your domestic internet traffic -- which has legal protections against many types of NSA intrusion -- and traded it for foreign traffic which has virtually no protection.
  - Glan1984 13y ago
    ok so use a vpn located in america. Boom.
    - Glan1984 13y ago
      And what protections does the NSA even respect?!? Dont make me die of laughter man.

WildUtah 13y ago

Looks like the cheap flights were on WN (Southwest) and the expensive flights were on DL (Delta). I just did an example flight search to fly later this week (Jan 24-30 round trip) from SLC to OAK, a route that both DL and WN fly direct. Kayak shows me fares from $492 on US and B6 changing planes in Phoenix or Long Beach (doubling distance and quintupling flight time) and direct flights from $532 on DL. Kayak doesn't show me any WN prices in the USA, but might have some sort of pilot program or contract to show them outside the USA. Iflyswa.com shows direct flights from $526. Meanwhile ITA Matrix (matrix.itasoftware.com, made with secret alien technology [0]) shows flights on US for $318 which violate the rules for domestic connection times and cannot be booked. It's strange that those flights are shown since Matrix is usually very reliable. Going directly to US's website reveals fares of $440 for flights with a connection in Phoenix. So what's the lesson here? Check the WN site directly instead of depending on search sites. Check both ITA Matrix and Kayak if you're depending on search sites; they don't have the same flights listed. Sometimes you need to check individual airline websites even though it's a pain because they have better flights and prices than search sites have; there's no reliable way to know when that's the case. [0] http://www.lisperati.com/logo.html http://www.lisperati.com/logo.html

jstratr 13y ago
> So what's the lesson here? Check the WN site directly instead of depending on search sites. Kayak and TripAdvisor will give you unpriced WN flights in their search results. You still have to check WN directly for prices, but it's useful for seeing what's available.
- larrydag 13y ago
  Being from Dallas (Southwest HQ) I know that Southwest doesn't allow other websites to use their booking and online flight pricing. Most airlines can be checked through Google Flights or Kayak but I know that I have to check with Southwest directly to compare their prices. BUMP: I guess I should have read the other comments as this has been said a dozen times.
User8712 13y ago
The lesson is know what a fair price is for your flight, then check a handful of sites often until it comes up for around that price. Try to book at least a few weeks in advance. I can't stress the first point enough. When you buy anything, or if you need to negotiate a price, do your research, and know what it should cost. It's especially true when booking flights, because you don't want to see a price, think it might go lower, and miss a great deal. If you know the fair value, you can recognize a good offer when you see it, and book instantly.

billyhoffman 13y ago

I experimented with this a few months ago using free Amazon Windows EC2 instances. The thought being that with EC2 instances I can come from far more IP end points than a specific VPN offers. What I found is many ticket/event sites ban connections from EC2 IP ranges. Sites like Kayak, TicketMaster, even Healthcare.gov drop incoming EC2 connections during the TCP handshake. I imagine this is to stop third party scrappers or ticket scalpers. I have no idea why Healthcare.gov blocks it.

shimon_e 13y ago

Flight price quotes can take the currency and sales city as input. You get to play with both those options in ITA matrix. What you saw is probably based on those inputs being changed.

benhebert 13y ago

I just did this for a CheapoAirFlights.co.uk flight to Saigon from London. Booking from a US IP cost a few hundred more, but I fired up the VPN and it worked fine.

blazespin 13y ago

I've often hacked Kayak by booking flights to other destinations with a stopover at the place I want to go. It's bizarre, but yes, they're sometimes cheaper. "opaque and manipulative" indeed.

rll 13y ago
That only works for one-ways or on the return portion. Once you miss a segment the rest of your ticket is canceled at that point, so be careful.
saryant 13y ago
This is called hidden-city ticketing, it's not new. Most airlines forbid it in their contract of carriage. There's also no guarantee that you'll keep your stopover city—you could get rerouted through another hub and would have no recourse.
veemjeem 13y ago
I wonder if they're doing price elasticity experiments? You could get a slightly cheaper price by getting a different cookie set.
cynwoody 13y ago
Kayak has a feature they call Hacker Fares™†. †http://www.kayak.com/news/a-new-way-to-find-deals-on-flights-hacker-fares.bd.html http://www.kayak.com/news/a-new-way-to-find-deals-on-flights...
- smackfu 13y ago
  Those are nothing special, they are just buying two one-way tickets on different airlines because they are cheaper in a particular scenario. Airlines don't care if you do that.
wwweston 13y ago
I have a similarly bizarre little story that's sort of the opposite: I recently added a leg to a trip and cut my fare. Just before the holidays, I was trying to get a flight from LAX to SLC. I tend to fly Southwest, but was finding the fares higher than usual -- generally I can get something in the $250-$300 range, I was seeing $350ish. I was offered a ride to Sacramento, so I checked SAC -> SLC and found I could purchase that flight for $200. I booked it. There are no direct flights from SAC -> SLC on Southwest, though. Mine, as it turned out, stopped over in... LAX.

rjd 13y ago

I've been doing this for years. After I noticed most places are cheap to get to but flights are expensive back. I noticed the same business model was in place from the other direction. So just fake the country of origin and you get cheap to and back. The other one is clear your cookies before booking. Places create fake demand by disappearing the cheap flights on you if you shopping around. If you clear your cookies the cheap flights will return.

cwp 13y ago
So you book two one-way tickets? AFAICT, that's usually not cheaper.
- homersapien 13y ago
  No, he changes his country of origin to C then books a round trip from A to B. It is sometimes cheaper that way.
  - rjd 13y ago
    That actual works as well, don't book anything from South Africa I found out as I was booking my mates flights. You could knock several hundred off by going through an Australian or UK proxy. I believe from memory it was the same agency as well. Just changing the domain brought up vastly different prices on the same flights. But no as I mentioned above lots of holiday destinations have cheap tickets inbound, but out bound are expensive. I first noticed it travelling from London to Croatia. It was like $200 flight to Split, but the flight home was double or triple. I hopped on a proxy, and found I could get the reverse deal from Split to London. $200 to London, $600 back home to split. So I started gaming the system. The agencies are hedging on the fact you have to take the return flight. So they coerce you into the cheap flight to location X, but claw the money back with the return flight which I guess the vast majority of people have to take.
- rjd 13y ago
  Yeah thats right, quite often to holiday destinations they run specials like flights to Croatia $200, but you try and get a flight back $600. They recoup the costs on the return flight you need to take. But if you're in Croatia you can get flights to London $200 etc... geofenced deals marketing deals to try and coerce people into taking holidays.

firstplanthendo 13y ago

Like someone else said, it’s because it’s a Southwest flight… Southwest isn't shown on the results of the big airfare search engines (kayak, expedia, orbitz) when searching from the United States because it refuses to pay those websites' fees. Looks like you’ve found out that they are shown on Canada based version of the Kayak site. Most likely because the fee arrangements are different or because Southwest is willing to pay them, probably to get exposure to markets that wouldn't otherwise know about them because they don't have a marketing presence there.

benjaminRRR 13y ago
This is definitely the most likely scenario. Kayak and other aggregating sites have different arrangements with different partners in different regions. In turn those partners have different arrangements either with direct connect or the GDS themselves (who may also have different arrangements depending on the geographic market). You can get the same effect with other GDS products also, try rental cars for one. The other crazy thing is that different geographic markets are generally responsible for their own revenues, so you can have different promotions, and yield management strategies depending on who is trying to hit their numbers.

hartator 13y ago

> (BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA) Unfortunately, that's not true and will even draw attention. This XKeyScore slide is crazy: http://hothardware.com/newsimages/Item26839/Xkeyscore1.jpg http://hothardware.com/newsimages/Item26839/Xkeyscore1.jpg

Glan1984 13y ago
XkeyScore can decrypt my tunneled connection with aes-256, sha256? I knew the nsa was good but not that good... where does it say it decrypts the vpn tunnels of any kind on the slide though I'm curious -_-
- eli 13y ago
  Is your goal to be anonymous on your web? Because the traffic isn't encrypted when it leaves the VPN and your browser cookies (or various apps phoning home) will make your identity obvious.
  - Glan1984 13y ago
    No my goal is simply to evade the NSA wiretaps as well as my ISP who has recently started messing up my internet connection whenever I torrent, so I vpn overseas and torrent. But yes you are correct, in order to browse privately you should really use tails or something along with vpn and avoid say logging into facebook or anything linked to your identity.

deleted 13y ago

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grecy 13y ago

Startup idea: A site that uses a bunch of VPNs in different countries to look for flights on the big search sites. Whichever is cheaper is presented as the one to buy. It could of course be extended beyond airline travel...

kylec 13y ago
Be prepared to be blocked. Each search on a site like Kayak costs money, and if a bunch of searches are being done automatically it will lower the conversion rate, which meta-search sites and their partners watch closely and care deeply about.
- gcb0 13y ago
  I doubt a search a day would even show on the radar
  - obituary_latte 13y ago
    Wouldn't be a very successful startup then anyway would it?
    - gcb0 13y ago
      not if they use that to predict which routes are cheaper in that day and then use the client browser to request the real time data from the top contenders
calbear81 13y ago
I like the idea. I think in general, you can get some things cheaper from retailers in other countries based on differences in the forex rate if the shipping + tax issues are not a problem. You wouldn't even usually need a VPN, just change the language/country settings. The downside is that things may be cheaper because they weren't subject to some type of import tariff that you may be on the hook for from customs when it arrives in the US.
deleted 13y ago
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bnzelener 13y ago

This has nothing to do with the VPN, unfortunately. The price difference comes from Southwest's price being different than Delta's. Southwest flights wont show up when searching Kayak's USA site, but they do show up on international Kayak pages. It sounds like that's because they don't want to pay the brokerage fees for flights booked through the USA versions of Kayak/Expedia/Travelocity -- but I'm not sure of that. Interesting experiment though!

cynwoody 13y ago
I just tried BOS-DEN nonstop 31 Jan to 7 Feb through the UK† and Canada††. Southwest came in cheapest on both searches. As has been noted, Southwest did not appear in the same search using www.kayak.com. I was coming from a US IP. I wonder, if I had been coming from a British or Canadian IP, if I would have been redirected to the corresponding site. †http://www.kayak.co.uk/flights/BOS-DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07 http://www.kayak.co.uk/flights/BOS-DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07 ††http://www.ca.kayak.com/flights/BOS-DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-07 http://www.ca.kayak.com/flights/BOS-DEN/2014-01-31/2014-02-0...

ghx 13y ago

You don't need a VPN to do this. You can just go to Southwest.com. I always check their website after I check Kayak because they don't list Southwest's flights.

coldcode 13y ago

No. I work for an OTA (not Kayak). First of all airlines file their fare rules and OTAs don't change the prices, and generally airlines pay around $10 to us to book a RT fare so there is little room to discount. Kayak is a meta which means all they do is present prices they are given from their partners (either via a feed or scrape) and then send them to the partner who shares the fee. Southwest (as others have mentioned) is not available in the US as a business choice. Kayak also heavily caches the fares (everyone does to make performance better) and inventory changes a lot especially in close by dates. Seeing cached prices of a cached price means the actual price can change a lot from searching to booking. Note the final price is only determined when you hit a booking page, everything before that is cached and might be fairly stale. Of course they can be errors in pricing since the fare rules are crazy complicated and often the difference in fares might be all the taxing entities. Each country, county, city, airport and cow pasture might affect the final price so it's possible that a country where you are booking might affect this (our customers are mostly in the US) but I doubt it. tldr - lucky "hacker"

coldcode 13y ago
Also note that airlines can and do choose to show more flight options on their own sites that they deny to any OTA. The actual fares are all by rule and aren't different.
- goatforce5 13y ago
  I've had good luck in saving tons of money in the past when using an partner airline to book a flight as a codeshare, rather than the actual flight number. eg, Find a flight you like on AA? Try and book it on QF or BA and the price might be substantially different, even though you end up sitting on exactly the same plane.
yamaneko 13y ago
I've suffered with cached prices before.
nathas 13y ago
If I open an incognito window and hit it again, why does the price change?

aaronsnoswell 13y ago

I'm from Australia. My wife and I regularly use Expedia and other US travel websites to book Australian domestic flights - even after our exchange rate conversion it still works out cheaper (often we save one or two hundred dollars). Australian airfare taxes are insane. The only downside is when things go wrong it is expensive to spend ages on hold while making an international call...

skeletonjelly 13y ago
Well they do advertise here in Australia
aestra 13y ago
>expensive to spend ages on hold while making an international call Did you try using Skype? Or Google Voice? Or similar? They are much cheaper than actually placing an international call, at least in the US, it is only like 3 cents a minute (US) When I lived abroad I called home with Skype (this was before Google Voice) and I could talk as much as a wanted for only a couple dollars here and there, actually cheaper than my phone bill now.

aaronsnoswell 13y ago

asc123 13y ago

Someone going to Phish?

jstratr 13y ago

Flight metasearch sites have contracts with airlines and OTAs for specific markets, so you're likely to see different inventory if you visit a Canadian site instead of a US site, for example. Seeing different prices on the same inventory is much less likely (disregarding taxes and exchange rates.) Like others have said, Southwest inventory doesn't often appear on sites like Kayak because they want customers to book directly. That cuts out the commission to Kayak and conditions people to look for flights on southwest.com in the future.

Jd 13y ago

While booking flights in Europe I frequently toggle through kayak.de, kayak.it, lastminute, and kayak.com. Doesn't require a VPN, it's just that Kayak works through partners and the partners are country specific. You can often get better deals on one site or another, depending on the partner selection. I haven't used it that much in North America recently, but it seems to be the same dynamic.

kbenson 13y ago

BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA That's okay. I'm sure the minor inconvenience of not seeing the data flow directly to your local IP is more than made up for by the data collection at both sides of that VPN... To be serious, I wonder if they apply extra scrutiny to VPN providers, and use traffic analysis to build correlations between TCP connections. The extra effort might be justified by a higher class of data going across the connections. Then again, it's probably easier to just use some form of evercookie injected into TCP streams on the fly...

emrekzd 13y ago

there is working a trick for long distance flights. I used it a few times to get cheaper tickets: when you are buying long distance flight tickets, pick a city close to where you will depart (this will add an additional flight transferring from your departure city). When you get multiple transfers there is a possibility that the offered price will be cheaper (I confirmed this with an agency when I initially figured this out). If you get a cheaper price buy it and call the airlines to tell them you will miss the first flight, and have them correct the check in location to your departure city. I was able to save $100 travelling from europe to east coast last time I did this.

saryant 13y ago
Do this often enough and the airline will ban you. This is hidden city ticketing and repeated abuses will lead the airline to simply drop you as a customer.
aestra 13y ago
This is called abusing customer service. How the tell if you're not being ethical: If every single person does it, does the system break down? If the answer is yes, then stop.

senthilnayagam 13y ago

Kayak is not the only one, in India I have seen MakeMyTrip did not show couple of direct flights which I found on Cleartrip . I would like to know if using VPN has a impact on large sites like Amazon(I have seen the price change there too)

artellectual 13y ago

OTAs have all kinds of weird tricks raising and lowering prices to get people to book sooner rather than later. Instead of realizing that providing good service with a nice clean interface is the way to go they use these cheap tricks. Agoda, Booking.com and many other OTAs all do this sort of thing. Sometimes it's as simple and clearing your cookies to get a lower rate.

dorfsmay 13y ago

Wait! There's something cheaper from Canada???

xmrsilentx 13y ago

Cool. So just booking one flight pays for almost a years worth of VPN service.

a-b 13y ago

Check your user agent line; Apple owners might overpay as well...

yadongwen 13y ago

Ticket prices will also be different if you use an international credit card. I used to save 100+ bucks with paypal instead of my Chinese credit card.

gtirloni 13y ago

"BTW, I use the VPN to mask my internet traffic… sorry NSA" As if using a VPN made you NSA-proof. Every time I see phrases like this I force myself not to think the person is a fool but it's hard. People need to realize that ensuring security and privacy isn't fixed by installing just some tool and be done with it. Worse, they will do this and trust they are immune (and then the damage will be worse).

xpop2027 13y ago
I'm aware it is not NSA proof.
- yaph 13y ago
  You may be aware, but some of your readers may not. So some may think you're a fool to say that and other's may think it's a good way to stay safe. Both not really desirable.

xtc 13y ago

The word hack becomes cheaper and cheaper each day.

Loughla 13y ago
Right or wrong, I have no opinion, but at this point, that word is used in the general population and popular media to mean, "I thought about a problem or situation differently than I usually do." I think the lifehack movement started that train of thought. I'm not really sure.

javiramos 13y ago

How much do fare change by location? Is it only a US vs. Canada things or are prices dependent on the US location from which the search is being made? It would be interesting to create a price map of various fares searched from different states in the US...

imartin2k 13y ago

To me, the moral of the story is rather: Use another search engine than Kayak. Others, like Skyscanner, include Southwest.

ghost439024d 13y ago

The presedent in afghanistan shotting who he thought was a terroist with no danger of his life he shot the 12yr old female dead then came the order to cover it up is this the dirty way we back our money into to make the workd a better place!! you deccide

ashleyfox 13y ago

@OP PSS == "post script script". I do not think that means what you think it means.