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Do Firefox Users Pay More For Car Loans?
RandyOo writes "Someone wrote in to The Consumerist to report an interesting discovery: while shopping online for a car loan, Capital One offered him different rates, depending on the browser he used! Firefox yielded the highest rate at 3.5%, Opera took second place with 3.1%, Safari was only 2.7%, and finally, Google's Chrome browser afforded him the best rate of all: 2.3%!
A commenter on the article claims to have been previously employed by Capital One, and writes: If you model the risk and revenue of applicants, the type of browser shows up as a significant variable. Browsers do predict an account's performance to some degree, and it will affect the rates you will view. It isn't a marketing test. I was still a bit dubious, but at least one of her previous comments backs up her claims to have worked for a credit card company.
Considering the outcry after it was discovered that Amazon was experimenting with variable pricing a few years back, it seems surprising that consumers would be punished (or rewarded), based solely on the browser they happen to be using at the time!"
Correlation is not equal to causation.
What the interest rate for IE was?
First of all, if this were an indicator, it would seem logical that Internet Explorer users would trend lower incomes than anyone else. Anyone educated enough to even be using an alternate browser on a PC is probably educated enough to be making more money than your run-of-the-mill user. At least with Safari it kind of makes sense. Anyone using an Apple has enough extra money to waste it on hipster cred.
Of course these opinions are soley those of a Firefox user who likely makes considerably more than the average schlub who's surfing the internet for porn between his shifts at Denney's.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Now I wish I'd set up my car insurance on my own machine rather than while at my mum's house.
which is totally what she said
What rate did they offer for IE6?
Surely that must be good indicator for negligent behaviour?
But it's up now.
You base your assumptions that:
1. the browser is telling the truth about the user agent.
2. the browser used it the one the customer uses regularly.
3. your eveluation about "risky" browser is correct.
4. all this makes some kind of sense.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
It's always been an interesting problem with insurance. If they can find some data that reliably correlates to account performance why not use it? Does it matter if it's logical so long as it's true and accurate (note I'm not saying that these particular data are)? Of course if news of certain criterion gets out and causes enough of an outcry to loose them money then they'll stop using it. They are a business after all.
On the other hand the theory behind insurance (not behind insurance companies mind you) is to pool high cost but low probability risk so that everyone chips in a little in the the chance that they might be one of the few who need help. With this principle the idea is to spread out the burden. As companies get more and more accurate predictors of your individual risk and charge you accordingly they start to defeat the entire purpose of insurance. Think of what the end state of a perfectly predictive set of data would be. Everyone pays for exactly what they will cost, in other words it's not insurance at all.
We perceive our perceptions.
Here is a comment from the article. I have not tested this.
bearymore::: ""Wow! I have a Firefox addon which spoofs the user agent. When I go to Capitalone with the default Firefox as the user agent I get 3.50%. When set the addon to tell Capitalone I'm using Internet Explorer, I get 2.70%. When I switch back to Firefox, I get 3.50% again. Keep in mind, I'm using the same browser and simply opening the site in different tabs""
So either deliberate or incredibly bad coding for a financial site.
So what, IE users are not allowed to buy cars?
It figures they seem like a liability, because they are accustomed to their machines crashing
Just turn JavaScript off and you'll get the higher 3.50% every time ...
Seems like something's up with their variables; A different cg variable causes a different rate for the same zip code.
This calls for a Firefox add-on or greasemonkey script that will take such pages, request the pages with different user-agents, and compare the resulting pages for differences. If the only difference is a single numerical value, it should be easy enough to catch. And then print it to the user in a neat table or graph.
I wonder if this correlation has anything to do with AdBlock? Maybe IE users see a lot of ads competing on rate, while Firefox users don't. Or maybe Firefox users pay off their car early and aren't as profitable....
Retaliation for Ad-Block!
http://xkcd.com/552/
http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm
Hop to it.
I mean if you use Lynx you must be a bearded freak living in your parents basement.
"Dear literal net, yes I know it will now work with Lynx"
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Insurance is a game of statistics. Yes, some browsers lie in their user agent string. Yes, sometimes people use other people's browsers. But MOST browsers are what they say they are, MOST people use their own machine pretty regularly, and if the insurance company is really doing this (which I take no position on), then you can bet they have statistics to back up their belief that there's a difference in insurance risk, ON AVERAGE, between users of different browsers.
The insurance company couldn't care less if the correlation holds true for every single instance. They know that it doesn't, in fact. But if it holds true often enough, then they can use that data to offer some people a better price on the insurance, because they're statistically less likely to file a claim.
From the text of the email, it seems that the user launched the site once in each browser. The quote was probably changing each time the page loaded (according to some actuarial variable, intentional randomness to see how people reacted to different prices, or a bug in the software making the quote) completely independently of the browser choice.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Orc mischief to me.
Hope is the currency of fools
Software engineers are prone to lapsing into bad bill paying habits, more out of negligence than need.
Software engineers are more likely to use Firefox than IE.
Don't ask how I know.
they could use that information to find people using apple products. and charge such people 9.5%. as long as the car was titanium white, such people would happily purchase at that rate
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't understand why anyone still goes to large banks for loans or savings instead of community banks and credit unions. The corporations will nearly always give you a worse deal. And have fun talking to the customer service reps who live half a world away. My checking account is truly free and it earns me interest, like it should. And my credit card has 10% APR. Big banks are parasites. Vote with your wallet, people, it's not that hard!
Technically, i think the W3C standards for HTML 4.0 require a 3.5% interest rate. The other browsers are just providing proprietary rates in a standards breaking battle of oneupmanship. I think HTML 5 attempts to address this issue with the new heavily scriptable InterestCanvas element.
Maybe it is just the tinfoil hat person inside of me, but I wonder if there's more to it than just risk assessment. Consider the fact that each browser maker has a vested interest in preferential treatment by websites. ATM, the most hotly contested treatment has to do with how the website looks in a particular browser(ever wonder why Facebook runs faster in IE?). But as we move towards more standards compliant browsers, that area will be slowing diminishing(especially if IE6 goes the way of the Dodo bird). So what's next? What's going to drive users to use one browser over another, besides being pre-installed on particular OSs & devices? What about having special deals for those that use their browser? This becomes especially true if the browser maker also can control how the user finds a vendor's product like Google & M$ can. All it would take from Google is to put a vendor 1st in a search for a car loan and for the bank to check which browser for someone to get a better rate just for using Chrome.
While it may be true that users of different browsers tend to have varying levels of credit worthiness that tracks to what browser they use, this creditworthiness will be more clearly (and accurately) reflected by other criteria. As an example, while people with a particualar credit score range may be more likely to select a particular browser, it seems improbable to me that people who select a particular browser are more or less likely to default on debt than people with the same credit score who select a different browser.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Now, at least we know there is room for negotiation on the interest rates.
Don't pay more if you don't have to.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Dammit and I used FF to apply for a car loan. Turned down, naturally, because I leaned the other way.
Used to work there. Capital One has done this for many, many years. They used to send snail mailers with different rates to random households in the same neighborhood. The CEO is one of the early proponents of experimental marketing.
One commenter says:
"it sounds like an A/B test. when you arrive at the site, you're assigned a random rate. they do this because they want to be able to see how customers respond to price increases, decreases, special offers, webpage designs, etc.
after your first arrival, every following time you reload or return to the site, you'll see the same rate, since you'll keep the persistent cookie. if you delete your cookies and see the same results every time, there could still be other means for them to be sure it's you, so there's a chance they're using those tricks (flash cookies, for instance). reinstalling the browser may not even fix this.
of course it's possible they're distinguishing by user agent, but i think it's very unlikely."
Sounds plausible.
I can tell you that this was the case for me on Zillow, when it comes to calculating the monthly payment. I and my brother thought it was quite strange but assumed it must be some coding bug. IE gave lower numbers than firefox or chrome. I don't remember what the numbers were.
The entire insurance industry is based on the principle of retaliation against customers who cost the company money and rewards for those who dutifully pay more than they claim. Any statistical basis they can use to figure out which customer is which ahead of time... they'll use. The only ones they (usually) won't use are those prohibited by law; instead they look for some other factor that correlates strongly, and use that instead. So if they aren't allowed to use race, they'll use neighborhood... if they aren't allowed to use neighborhood, they'll look for something else. Maybe ISP, or IP address block, or OS, or.... browser. They don't care, as long as there's a good correlation. It's not that they hate Firefox users, any more than they hate people of a particular race or ethnic group or neighborhood or religion or credit score or driving record... they just don't care. Like any "good capitalist" they want to maximize profit.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
And if the information returned Internet Explorer, could they offer a lower rate, believing that the car being purchased will be in the shop more often?
I just spoke to my wife, who spent 10 years working for Capital One at their corporate headquarters in Richmond (*). When I mentioned the gist of the story to her, her response was "I believe it", which actually floored me as I am always telling her about various conspiracy stories I see online. She immediately offered up that they use various bits of financial information to determine what % interest rate you would be charged and suggested that the Safari users would be seen as having more money (as Mac owners) and hence a lower risk.
(*) As an aside, if you haven't been to the Capital One campus in Richmond then you are missing out. The selection of restaurants is amazing. They have outdoor basketball and volleyball courts. And they even have a frickin' treehouse where you can go and sit outside with your laptop and do your work via Wi-Fi. The downside is that corporate doesn't instill loyalty as pretty well everyone in Richmond either knows someone who was downsized from Capital One, or is downsized themselves.
The only better work conditions nearby would be CarMax, which for their staff they don't offer fixed length vacations. You get to choose how long you take off each year - they assume that if you are professional enough to do your job that you are professional enough to know when your job is done!
"I used IE6, and I didn't get a rate. In fact, i don't think the page exists at all. This may be fake"
What rates did lynx/elinks garner? What about IE 6? Does faking a useragent do enough?
After reading about this, I am completely {outraged}{amused}{indifferent}{turned on} by this practice.
Javascript error. Aborting script.
Any "Weakest Link" jokes you'd like to make, as long as you're hitting these phenomena at the height of their popularity?
This is indeed true. I've experienced it this past September. However, I think it is not just based on browser, but also based on geographic location. I checked their site from my home PC with Firefox (east coast state), and to be a bit safer, I VPNed in to my office with my work laptop, still using Firefox, to actually fill out the application. To my surprise, the rate was higher (the exit node to the Internet is a north, central US state for the corporation). I called my wife in to the room to show here two computers, both on Capital One's auto loan home page, showing her the two different "as low as" rates on the page. I'm glad I didn't go with them for the auto load - seedy bastards.
I recently noticed the same type of happening when I was shopping for a Verisign SSL cert (clients *sighs* don't get me started on why). When I use Safari or Firefox, the price for a 1-year "Secure Site" SSL cert (with site seal) is $499 - however, when I switch to Chrome or IE8, I get a price of $399. I only had to buy the one, and so wrote it off as a fluke - but I just re-verified that this is still happening for me (tested on both Mac and Windows), given the news on this article.
This smacks me as being seriously wrong - now I have to test all browsers when buying something online, to be sure I'm getting the right price? And no, I'm not going to change my default browser habits, just to get lower pricing...
Worrying works!! 99% of all the stuff I worry about never happens
So the question becomes whether this is also true for other products and services. Mortgages? Insurance? Physical products? Ancillary question: do these companies not realize the potential PR damage stuff like this does?
The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
Tests with car loans:
IE 8: 3.10%
FF 3: 2.30%
Chrome: 3.50%
they've been redlining the shit out of the NIGGERS since the beginning of time.
I' guess Firefox users are the NIGGERS now.
Is what rates do you actually get? Just because they print a rate on their site doesn't mean you may not get a higher or lower rate when you actually get approved for the product, after they've looked at things that actually matter.
I have trouble believing a random poster that claims to have worked there that this actually influences things. Really? Then where is the actuary data on this, and why isn't it something asked on home loans? Anything that has a significant predictive value int terms of loan performance, banks want to know. Given that home loans are some of the most major loans, they check everything they legally can. If browsers really were such a major predictor, they'd ask on your home loan app.
To me this looks like an error. I cannot believe that the browser a person uses is a good enough performance predictor that they'd offer a 1.2% difference in interest rate (which in the context of these loans is a 35% difference in interest). That is like 100 FICO score kind of interest difference, or more. No way the browser someone uses accurately predicts loan performance to the point of being worth it.
Just remember that the rates on the site are advertising rates. Who know show the hell they decide what it should show or why JS is involved, but that it hows it has nothing to do with the rate you'd actually get when you apply. Not only is the rate they show always the "Very best credit," rate but it often has other provisos. For example when I was looking at a home equity line of credit, the bank had a rate listed on their site that, when you dug in to it, only applied if you got a $250,000 or larger line of credit AND took out $100,000 or more AND kept it out for several months. Ok well that isn't unrealistic (sometimes you finance home construction with such a loan) but clearly most peopel aren't getting that rate.
This is just the advertised rate, which is always based on parlor tricks and weird math. Your actual rate is calculated after your application and credit check are reviewed, and neither of those things care what browser you use.
This makes sense if you think about it. The bank wants to advertise a rate that is appropriate to you, but it doesn't know much about you until you apply. So it has to guess based on the very limited information it does have. Otherwise -- and this still happens all the time -- you see an ad that says 'Low low 2% APR!' and then you apply and find out that you qualify for 6% APR and get pissed off. If looking at your USER_AGENT reduces the spread between what they promise and what they get, it makes sense for them to do it. But don't let that get in the way of your populist rage.
Not anymore, now that this story is circulating. Maybe they'll be able to detect Firefox users who have spoofed their useragent string, and give them even higher rates. :)
So far I tested this in Safari and IE7. Make sure capitalone.com is not open and clear your entire browsing history, cache, everything. In Safari, you can just hit "Reset Safari". In IE, after clearing all that, close the browser, reopen, and visit capitalone.com. Seems to pick randomly 2.3, 2.7, 3.1, or 3.5. You may get the same number again, just try it a few times. Can anyone else replicate this?
Google provides the data they use to base their pricing on, and Chrome gets you the best deal?
Interesting.
And not actual rate differences. Remember that nothing they list there is anything but marketing. Your rate isn't your rate until you actually apply. A number on a website is just promotion/information. It isn't a binding offer of any kind. They'd need a credit check at the very least before they'd be willing to make an actual offer.
Now, as you said, the one and only concern with loans is established risk. What factors (that they are legally allowed to consider) increase or decrease risk? All they are interested in is coming up with a probability of default, and then deciding if they want to make the loan and at what rate based on that.
Well browsers just don't seem to play a role. I've heard of no studies, no evidence, that choice in browser indicates anything with regards to handling money. Without such research, it would be a meaningless metric to use.
Also notice that the rate difference is LARGE. Something like that means a significant risk difference. Even if browsers factored in, you really think it'd be that much? You think they'd offer over a percent just based on the browser?
Not hardly. Unless someone can provide some actuary data showing that this has been looked at scientifically, I do not believe it is actually a deciding factor, just some Javascript being squirrely.
I saved a lot of money on my car loan by switching to Internet Explorer.
Reinstalling your browser doesn't clear your cookies; *especially* your flash cookies, which are troublesome to clear anyway. The only fair test that I would really believe would be changing your user agent string and hammering the reload button. I may try this myself later. Other's anecdotes are less convincing than my anecdotes (to me anyway). I need to see it; or I need to see data from a controlled experiment; I need to see one of these companies admit it; or have the FTC explain that they've done it. You know.... something credible.
Interesting notion though.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Looks like this website's idea has been taken a little further than people expected it would
Anyone dumb enough to accept any financial services from them deserves whatever they get coming.
Typically the value you get when you multiply the amount of money spent on relentless TV marketing with the amount of money spent on nonstop direct mail campaigns is inversely proportional to how trustworthy their financial products are.
I've seen this with Netflix before. I don't know if it still does this, but you get offered a month trial when using IE and only a two week trial when using Firefox.
IMHO, privacy concerns like this (and panopticlick) are a primary reason I prefer my browser to not send the USER_AGENT header. It's optional according to the HTTP spec, and most sites work fine without it. For those that don't, my useragent is a phrase, such as "I am not a script" for Wikipedia. Very occasionally I have to set a real one, so I just use WebPositive's.
In any case, I see no benefit to me, as a user, for a site to know my browser and operating system. Perhaps not knowing will cause them to write their webpages to standards rather than to specific browsers.
I wonder if they also use any kind of geolocation / IP Lookup to change these rates as well... It seems to me that targeting localities would make more sense than assumptions based on user-agents
Has anyone tried clearing cookies and filling out the form again in the same browser? Or filling the form in the same browser but at a different IP? Or they could have a load balancer and the result varies according to which server you get.
I have never tried to get a car loan online, but my experience with mortgages is that the advertised rate they give you online is completely pulled out of their ass, and has no resemblance to the final rate they actually give you. Of course by the time they tell you the actual rate you don't have time to get a different loan and meet the purchase timeline you have agreed to with the homeowner.
Unless this was observed by only changing the user agent string, I would speculate this is related to having different browsing history for each browser. If Chrome is the best deal, was this their preferred browser that they happen to use more often?
I tried this in Firefox. I got random rates from 2.3% to 3.5% by clearing cookies and reloading the page. Same behavior in IE/Chrome and Safari. The rate is randomly generated and tied to a tracking cookie. Reloads without clearing cookies leaves the rate intact. As someone already mentioned, browser re-installs aren't going to clear your cookies.
is there any evidence that this is supported by google data whoring? is there statistical and fiduciary grounding for this, and how is this legal? this is clearly a form of discrimination. and I note the article states that googlers received the premium rates ... why would this be, unless google had some input at the planning or implementation stages? they could easily skew the results and I believe they have already previously done so, when tying their products together, or referring each of their products together ...
Step 1 - clear all cookies from capitalone.com
step 2 - load auto rate calculator - 36-mo rates are 3.50, 5.09, 4.84
step 3 - clear cookies from capitalone.com
step 4 - load auto rate calculator - 36-mo = 2.70, 4.09, 3.94
clear again, load again gives 3.10, 4.49, 4.34
Firefox 3.6.12, OS X 10.6.4. Note that I browsed away and then entered the URL on the navigation bar - if I just tried a reload it didn't seem to work. As someone mentioned, this is no different than sending different offers to people in junk mail, to see which ones they will respond to - it's just much more visible (and annoying) to the potential customer.
Correlation will make for defensible decisions. Ones where you can look to your peers and say something like, "Look, they were browsing with Chrome. How could I know they would default their loan?" And your loan granting colleagues will all nod their heads and sympathize. Correlation may even help one to make decisions with more predictable outcomes, even when the causative factor is unknown. While trying to anticipate the future correlates with well with being human, past performance does not guarantee future results. Either way, I'm switching to Chrome until the data indicates otherwise.
Wait. Stop scrolling for a sec. O.K. Thanks. - P
It actually sounds quite likely to me, and makes sense a bit. If you go by the stereotypes you've got:
Safari: Mac users, i.e. not a huge amount of brains but lots of cash, easily duped, faithful.
MSIE: Windows users, i.e. stupid, plus they're using the browser that came with their machine and is known for poor security, so not tech-savvy at all, Joe Public make be lower income.
Firefox: Linux users, i.e. more intelligent, possibly not as much disposable income. If its Windows FF then more brains than MSIE users.
Chrome: see Firefox, plus could be smartphone users so tech-savvy possibly business people and higher income.
Opera: well who uses Opera these days, very niche, so possibly used to paying more for things. Could be smartphone users so tech-savvy possibly business people and higher income.
These are pretty stereotypical (and I expect I sound like an arsehole) but I expect that's what the ratings are based on, not scientific research.
I agree its very naughty to bias, but I wouldn't put it past the credit industry.
#include <sig.h>
I worked briefly in car insurance, and one of the many questions asked by one of the top insurer was how long the client usually kept his car. (Note that this was an information asked from brokers about their customers, not direct b2c)
Turns out people who renew their car often take better care of them so as to maximise resale value, and consequently produce less claims. It wasn't a big difference but it was apparently statistically significant.
I'd like to know if there are also different rates depending on which OS you're running. Or for that matter, what about a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android) versus a regular computer.
Disable javascript and cookies, wipe cookies and then go to the site and reload and reload and reload...
You'll get different rates with the same User-Agent.
I mean, there would be no reason to stop at the browser used? The mode of internet access---heck, even IP address---could be factored in as well.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
A detestable practice when taken to the extreme. Especially when in electronic world where consumer's data is increasingly used to exploit the consumers themselves, rather than help businesses provide better services.
IANAL, It looks like price discrimination is only illegal if it hampers competition, but not if it only unfairly treats a certain segment of consumers.
Sounds like a good opportunity for a firefox plugin.
Got Code?
Who Cares about Capital One? thier fees are outrageous and support sucks... Screw Capital One
It's Capital One. They are probably just fucking with people.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
they could use that information to find people using apple products. and charge such people 9.5%. as long as the car was titanium white, such people would happily purchase at that rate
You're being funny, but Mac users do have statistically higher incomes, as you'd expect. They'd probably get a lower rate from these clowns, since higher income people bring less risk to the table.
Ok the real reason that FF users are being charged more, is because it is open source. You can take it, and modify it anyway you want and do not have to pay. ALSO, FF users tend to use more open-source software whenever they can. That is a HUGE SAVINGS overall, and insurance companies want the money that you are saving from not spending it on software.
Just because it works, Doesn't make it right. - JTM
Variable pricing based on browser is not unusual. Vista Print always give me different prices on their promotions based on which browser I use.
Does this mean that Chrome users are CHEAP?
Do I smell lawsuit or what?
Sorry, You'll Have to load the image. You're welcome to mirror it though.
http://www.glowfoto.com/static_image/04-083228L/3809/jpg/11/2010/img5/glowfoto
An HTTP connection not only provides the user agent (browser) employed but also the operating system. I would wonder if there are any correlations between Linux users and increased or decreased risk. The choice of an OS would seem far more behaviorally significant than the choice of a browser.
Pretty sure you just get a random rate so they can test out conversions. I don't believe this has anything to do with browser type. And you probably keep getting the same rate on the same browser based on cookies.
A good backend would have retained the user's IP address and then gone up to the "uses multiple browsers" high-risk rate.
You can't use race in US finances but you can use proxies. Race is a very important predictor however.
Browser choice is going to distinguish folks by race. --Measure it.
"Correlation is not equal to causation ... always." However, in business, there are lots of things that seems to correlate and are used to make decisions all the time. I've heard "we don't know why this works, but it does" in meetings all the time, so we use it.
I seriously doubt the browser used has much to do with the actual rate provided to a person once their personal data is known, it is just for a teaser ad.
OTOH, Capital One has never struck me as a 100% ethical bank or lender based on their passed advertising campaigns. They seem to target "income challenged" people. OTOH, I doubt any business is 100% ethical no matter how hard everyone tries.
I wonder what the reasoning was that lead to Safari users getting the lowest teaser ad rate? Apple users seem to be prepared to pay much more than others AND pay a premium for excellent customer service. They also probably have higher income levels than most, since most people will not spend $1500 on a $600 PC or $2500 on a $1100 laptop like what Apple sells. There's nothing wrong with that, and I do it for non-computer things all the time.
I tried viewing the Capital One auto loans page with a program on one of my web sites which fetches and displays pages, refusing all cookies and removing all Flash, JavaScript, etc. The browser string sent is "SiteTruth.com site rating system"; it's not pretending to be a browser. This, of course, is a diagnostic service we run to see pages as our web crawler sees them. The only state information the site receives is the IP address, which is not changing. On successive tries, I received:
So the rate returned is randomized.
I would question the legality of advertising random numbers as interest rates.
Similar case when I signed up for Netflix. In Firefox I was offered a 2-week free trial, while IE was 1 month.
LRN 2 SWM
If this were about car insurance ads instead of car loan ads, there'd be a great joke about linking what browser they use to the likelihood of crashes... ...but as it is, I've got nothing. :(
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Where this really sucks is credit reporting.
Credit reporters have lenders as clients and have a financial incentive to accept whatever information lenders report, regardless of accuracy, and to make removal of inaccurate negative information as difficult as possible.
Lenders have an incentive to have as much negative information as possible on clients as it allows them to charge higher interest rates.
CapitalOne is the bank that's been advertising for new business for years with TV ads featuring a gang of pillaging barbarians demanding to know "What's in your wallet?" while wrecking everything they touch. CapitalOne was of course central to destroying the global economy, like every other large US bank.
Why wouldn't CapitalOne do stupid, selfserving banking practices, in secret? They've only made $BILLIONS by doing that for years, and nobody's stopping them. And with the new Republican House of Representatives, there's only going to be lots more barbarism in banking.
--
make install -not war
but wasted far more time
- I'd prefer not to.
I don't have any version of IE, but do have a few browsers installed on Ubuntu 10.04 amd64. FWIW, my IP resolves to somewhere in Finland. Here are the rates offered:
Opera 10.63 = 3.50% new cars, 5.09% used
Konqueror 4.4.2 = 3.50% new cars, 5.09% used
Firefox 3.6.12 = 3.10% new cars, 4.49% used
Chromium 9.0.568 = 2.70% new cars, 4.09% used
Epiphany browser 2.30.2 = 2.70% new cars, 4.09% used
Hitting refresh did not change the rates offered, even if all cookies were deleted.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I cleared all cookies from Chrome, Opera, and FF, and went to http://www.capitalone.com/autoloans/
Chrome and Opera both gave me rates of 3.5%.
Firefox gave me 2.7%.
I proxy my FF sessions through a ssh tunnel to a personal Linux server I have, which is located in Michigan. So to see if that had an effect on it, I cleared cookies again and then disabled the proxy settings. Restarted FF and went to the URL again. This time I got a rate of 2.3%.
I went back to Opera and Chrome, deleted cookies and restarted again. Now Opera was 2.3%, and Chrome was 3.1%. Did it again, and Opera was still at 2.3%, and Chrome had dropped to 2.7%. It's as if this site is just coming up with totally random numbers.
I called the Federal 'regulators' responsible for forbidding such shenanigans, the phone would just ring and ring and ring.
You shouldn't shop for insurance online anyway. You need to talk to agents and shop around in person / over the phone to get any good estimate of how much you'll owe. Looking online is a good start for ballpark figures, but that's about it.
I prefer banks paying me interest to the other way around.
Actually it very likely affects the risk tables.
A risk table is basically an educated guess as to what a particular customer will end up costing the company.
Pretty much any easily measured correlation is perfectly valid for a risk table. And the fact is, they work. It doesn't matter one bit why young drivers get in more accidents, the fact is young drivers get in more accidents. No need to find the cause, just charge young drivers more.
Same with browsers. It doesn't matter why FireFox users get in more accidents (it almost certainly has absolutely nothing to do with FireFox). The fact is, they get in more accidents, and are therefore a higher risk. It's a marker, and apparently a statistically significant one.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Actually, Apple used to charge $100 dollars more for the black MacBook that was in every other way identical to the white one, and even Dell charges more for colored notebooks. Obviously pricing is based on whatever the customer is willing to pay, not on any rational calculation of value.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I agree with the gist of what you're saying. However, they don't need outside, independent research for their purposes. They've given out loans before, and many people pay their loans online. It's quite easy for them to use their own internal data to see that people who use browser x to pay their loans default at y rate.
I doubt there has been much in the way of independent research for car accident statistics for my zip code, but insurance companies use zip codes for determining rates all the time. I'm sure Capital One's actuaries are up to the same kind of stuff with regards to loans. As to the actual interest rate, while the rate shown on a website isn't at all binding, there are still valid reasons for changing based on the browser. For example, let's say that their own data has shown that people who pay using Firefox are most likely to default, they can show a higher rate hoping that you'll go somewhere else instead of with them, so they'll be less likely to get a new defaulting loanee.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Can they do that, I mean i know they physically can, but legally? Is there not some sort of discrimination going on here that could result in a class action lawsuit?
"Hello ladies.....take a good look at your man. Now back at me. Back to your man. Back at me. Unfortunately, he is not me. But with Google Chrome browser, he can get bank loans as if he were me. I'm in a bank, with loans for that thing you want. Now they're diamonds. Anything is possible when you use Google Chrome. I'm in a new car."
Can you imagine what the interest rate for Safari users is?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Obviously pricing is based on whatever the customer is willing to pay, not on any rational calculation of value
"What the customer is willing to pay for it" is the only rational calculation of value. Everything else is subjective.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
$ for i in {1..2000}; do curl https://www.capitalone.com/ 2>/dev/null | grep "as low as" -m 1 | cut -d ">" -f 3 | cut -d "%" -f 1; done | sort | uniq -c
420 2.30
499 2.70
428 3.10
653 3.50
So for 2000 samples (with the default curl user-agent) we get
2.3% (~21%)
2.7% (~25%)
3.1% (~21%)
3.5% (~33%)
Now let's try it again with a firefox for windows user agent.
$ for i in {1..2000}; do curl https://www.capitalone.com/ --user-agent 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101012 Firefox/3.6.11 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101012 Firefox/3.6.11' 2>/dev/null | grep "as low as" -m 1 | cut -d ">" -f 3 | cut -d "%" -f 1; done | sort | uniq -c
395 2.30
536 2.70
450 3.10
619 3.50
So for 2000 samples (with the firefox user agent) we get
2.3% (~20%)
2.7% (~27%)
3.1% (~23%)
3.5% (~31%)
This deviation does not seem statistically meaningful to me, I would conclude that user agent is not relevant, at least not between firefox and curl.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
There's a SCRIPT tag which has been commented-out that uses "offermatica/mbox.js", which is the old name for an Omniture product facilitating Multivariate Testing (MVT) and A/B testing. Although this script has been commented-out, it shows that Capital One is familiar with the technique and likely experimenting on their traffic through other means (e.g., server-side rather than JavaScript). Note that Omniture has been acquired by Adobe, so expect to see this type of experimentation happening more frequently. Presumably, such functionality will be "seamlessly" integrated into their content creation frameworks. See whichMVT.com for a list of vendors.
US should delete amazon from the internet
XD
Perhaps the sequence of requests coming from the author's IP address had an effect, not the user-agent. In other words, every time he applied from the same IP, they fiddled with the rates. Or perhaps they based the rate on how quickly he filled in certain fields, e.g. those who dilly-dally on the "annual income" field might be exaggerating, and will thus get a higher rate--or maybe a lower one, to entice them to get in over their heads! So the user-agent is simply one of many variables.
If you get a loan from Capital One you're a moron anyways.
I'm pretty sure this violates discrimitation laws. Not all browsers have the same accessibility features (chrome has practically none while firefox has many). So since people with movement or vision impariments have to use the browser that gets the higher rate they are in fact giving them a higher rate based on their dissability. I would assume that they will now be sued by the ACLU for violating laws all over the country.
About CarMax not having fixed vacation - I think it's super-clever from their side. I know that I constantly accumulate more vacation time than I take and I have hit the company cap sometimes and took time off just not to lose it - and if I leave they have to pay me all the vacation time I have accumulated. However if they don't have a fixed vacation - nothing of it applies, they can just rely on tech people being workaholics (which happens quite often) and not take too much vacation (if one does, you can always fire him...) - but they don't pay any additional money for unused vacation time! This is pure genius.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Thanks for remembering. I wrote an article for the Fall 2000 issue of 2600 Magazine explaining how to change payment amount between the shopping basket and the checkout of a wine website. A friend claimed that he got a delivery of vodka from said website after dividing the total by 10. After 10 years, that claim remains unverified. However, the wine website, belonging to a national retailer, was taken offline shortly after the article was published. The article was also plagiarized extensively.
The article demonstrated that third party credit integration was placing too much trust on client software.