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How To Beat Online Price Discrimination
New submitter Intrepid imaginaut sends word of a study (PDF) into how e-commerce sites show online shoppers different prices depending on how they found an item and what the sites know about the customer.
"For instance, the study found, users logged in to Cheaptickets and Orbitz saw lower hotel prices than shoppers who were not registered with the sites. Home Depot shoppers on mobile devices saw higher prices than users browsing on desktops. Some searchers on Expedia and Hotels.com consistently received higher-priced options, a result of randomized testing by the websites. Shoppers at Sears, Walmart, Priceline, and others received results in a different order than control groups, a tactic known as “steering.”
To get a better price, the article advises deleting cookies before shopping, using your browser's private mode, putting the items in your shopping cart without buying them right away, and using tools like Camelcamelcamel to keep an eye out for price drops.
I was trying to shop for resorts on my Linux box here and I got a popup stating, "There's nothing here you can afford.Try Six Flags during the work week."
True story.
As a frequent flyer, I too could benefit from defeating their price tricks, but really before I draw any conclusions of my own I'm wondering do we have any word from Bennett Haselton. Any insight of his would be appreciated on this topic. He's a frequent contributor.
"For instance, the study found, users logged in to Cheaptickets and Orbitz saw lower hotel prices"
"To get a better price, the article advises deleting cookies before shopping"
Ummm, what?
Sales I don't mind. Sometimes you have to move old inventory. But coupons are just a PITA that only exist to give housewives/househusbands something to do with their time. So online shopping with all its contortions and the web20-ification of advertising just drives me completely up the damn wall. The minute I open a browser to buy something I can feel my stress levels rising and if I'm lucky I'll finish buying it before all the cussing and ranting force me to close the tab before I damage my PC.
Someone had to do it.
Could someone clarify this for me "putting the items in your shopping cart without buying them right away", how will this make the item cheaper? When i put something in my cart i already know how much it is.
'steering' exists in meatspace, and most consumers actively embrace it. Take the average supermarket. High value items are placed at the edges of the aisles so you'll see them first. floor tiles are set in different sized to influence your cadence and ultimately how long you spend in a particular section. the 'landing zone' of a supermarket features specially illuminated produce first, typically directly in the path of locomotion. loyaty cards belch coupons for related goods and services the grocery store wishes to 'move' that may be of a lower or higher price point. milk in the front of the store costs more than milk in the back, and its tagged and tracked through the payment system differently. Baskets are commonly difficult to find and carts have since 1970 increased 60% in size in order to induce the shopper to buy more.
bars and resaraunts do this as well. by pricing well drinks closer or identically to call drinks, the bar discourages patrons with less income. happy hour is cheaper than saturday night, and cheaper still than valentines evening.
Good people go to bed earlier.
For each person, they're displaying a price at which they'll sell to that person.
What part of this is "false"?
Do you also consider frequent-buyer discounts, loyalty programs, and targeted electronic coupons to be "false advertising"?
This has been going on for a very long time, but those who have used Skyscanner (and found prices rise the more searches they run from their IP address) will know that deleting cookies alone isn't anywhere near enough. I have tested this myself years ago and had different prices for the same long haul flight on my PC using home router vs. mobile phone using cellular data. Rather than booking the flight over cellular data I waited a few days and the price on my PC returned to normal. Does anyone have any other ways (elaborate or otherwise) around this problem? Why is it fair that the IT illiterate have to pay a premium for goods?
Yeah, this is one I've never really understood. I used to think that you had to use the intermediary sites since when I was younger, my parents either always used agents or third party sites once we got Internet access.
But when someone pointed me to http://matrix.itasoftware.com/, which just lists flights and prices instead of actually letting you buy, I never went back to the annoying third party sites. I've never really gotten a deal on the third party sites that was any cheaper than just looking up the cost on the informational site and buying the itinerary straight from the airline, nor have the hotel deals been any cheaper or different for me than just booking the hotel independently. I know that my folks like it because it's all of the prep-work done from one site, which is a fair point, but I personally just haven't seen the benefit.
we (wife/I) own three vehicles: an 08 Odyssey (kids), an 07 ES350 (her primary) & a 13 IS350C (my primary).
if we go to a restaurant in my convertible instead of van & matre dei recommends the surf & turf special that's fine, if they add $20 to the "market price" b/c the valet tipped them off (& gets $5 kickback) that should be criminal! TFA sounds a lot more like the later...
Sadly advertising and pricing are not required to be universal - as a retailer you aren't telling the person a lie about the price, you're just not telling them that you are likely to sell the item for more/less to the next customer. Whether this is a moral practice of course is an entirely different question.
Markets keep getting more and more efficient, and that means there are fewer and fewer "tricks," by which I mean consistently getting a better price without working at it.
None of which is to say you "ought" to work for lower prices - how much is your time worth? You could almost always save another dime by waiting and looking more. Just check a few different products at a few different sites, and you will do OK. Don't settle into a rut, like "oh I have Amazon Prime so I just get everything from them," unless the convenience is worth getting milked.
Because they aren't changing the price based on skin color, disability, or any of the other protected classes. They are doing it to non-protected classes of people, which is which swell and dandy -- according to the law.
Instead, how about we just fix the problem outright....
Setup 3 computers.
1 with a white guy
1 with a black guy
1 with a woman
make sure the appropriate people are logged in, not logged in, have cookies, etc...
Show the price differences.
Snap a picture, smiling white guy, sad black guy and woman...
Post it to twitter and let the general public make their usual incorrect inference.
Watch the hilarity ensue and the entire idea of variable pricing die in fire.
This looks like the electronic equivalent of haggling in a shop [bazaar]. Contrast this with the [anglo] best-price, take-it-or-leave it across multiple competitors. As a consumer, I vastly prefer the latter. As a seller I might prefer haggling (tied customers), but only if I have power when I buy (often I'm as tied).
A consumer negotiating with a seller is a grand delusion. The seller knows far more about their costs and market demand than you ever can. They spend their careers at it. All you can do is walk away, hopefully there are competitors. IMHO, this is the great different between First- and Third-World economies -- competition in the former, and very-restricted (cronyism) in the latter.
So I stay away from anything that looks like haggling (even MiR). That is my only choice.
An example of this price-adjusting practice is when we needed to order an advertising banner for my wife's business. I did a little Google searching and found halfpricebanners.com had what we wanted at a good price so we used them. A couple months latter we needed another banner so I went to their website and was surprised by the price it quoted for exactly the same kind of banner - about double as before. Being the Internet nerd I am, I surmised something was going on so I went back to Google and did the same kind of search I had done before which again produced their link. Sure enough, if I go to their site from Google (not just from their ad, even the organic listing) then their prices are half of what is offered to people who go straight to their website. From then on we always used Google first to get the "Google discount".
Well, what are the bounds of this before it becomes illegal?
OK, you're a frequent customer, and I'm willing to give you a discount. Sure, fine.
Now, imagine someone charges you 10% more because you're not white. That's obviously going to be pretty illegal, one would think.
If the mechanism for this, or the fact that it's even happening isn't transparent, then it's fairly arbitrary.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It is more like a food chain charging a higher price for food in an airport or across from the sports stadium than they do at their general locations. They are using market information to adjust prices in order to maximize profit - exactly what a business is expected to do. In this case, they are using information they have about the consumer, such as previous buying decisions to gauge desire, and adjusting the offered price in an attempt to maximize the sale price. Legally, as long as they do not knowingly use information regarding a protected class as a criteria then they aren't breaking any laws (using where the person/connection is coming from, say a rich area versus a poor area, is still debatable if it is legal - some precedent says yes and some says no). Many or most people still feel these practices are shady.
hunting for the cheapest price online is not how you fly for cheap :)
Of course not. Chuck Garabedian showed us the way:
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
That's an interesting point. I think you'd have a hard time demonstrating discrimination against a protected class, though.
Agreed, but using your example I suspect that retailers will only charge some black people 10% more, along with some white people, based on their purchase history. This wouldn't be illegal. However as this area of marketing and price discrimination becomes more sophisticated and retailers have more data, I can see a future where, due to a few factors, a protected group would end up with universally higher prices from a store from a statistically significant sample. It is just a matter of time before someone does this experiment and retailers start squirming.
"Do you also consider frequent-buyer discounts, loyalty programs, and targeted electronic coupons to be "false advertising"?"
I don't know about false advertising but what I don't like about those programs is that they transfer money from my pocket to the pockets of people who I don't think deserve my money. They are a way for people who don't like to jump through hoops to subsidize the lifestyles of people who do like to jump through hoops.
I try to avoid companies with those types of programs, but of course its hard. My best way is to use the local grocery store that doesn't have a card. Often it's simply impossible to both buy what I want and also not get burned by those programs.
Any company that makes me feel like a chump is on my shit list and I try not to buy from them anymore. Bilking me for more money than your other customers is a top way to make me feel like a chump.
" It's like offering cheaper drinks on ladies night. Just because you aren't part of what ever group that they offer a discount to, doesn't make it false advertising."
No, that makes it discrimination.
Let's take two people and have them shop on the internet right next to each other so they can see the other persons screen. Same computer systems, same browser, same store. Everything is the same, down to having never bought anything from the store so there is no prior business relationship incentive in play. There is only one difference - one person is logged in, the other is not.
They go to the same item. The person logged in is told $4.99. The person not logged in is told $6.99
You can bet money the person not logged in, having no logically-based disadvantage versus the other person, is not going to be happy about that at all.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
At a HD I asked for something that I couldn't find and the employee said it was online only. I checked it with my phone and compared to Amazon. Right there in their store I ordered if from Amazon due to lower price. If HD is charging mobile users more, I suspect I'm not the only shopper who takes a few seconds to compare elsewhere.
But there is still the disparate impact of their actions even if entirely unintentional which could make this practice illegal.
Time to offend someone
yes, become a radicalized member of ISIS and get a free trip out of the US.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
How difficult would it be for a firefox plugin to alter HTML headers like HTTP_USER_AGENT & HTTP_REFERER to convince the sales site that you are a poor student ? The on-line sites will howl - but if it is OK for them to profile to charge me more, then I believe that it is OK for me to game them.
how is this *differant* than a physical store charging *differant* prices based on physical *trates* like skin color or gender? They are discriminating against people who *arent* savvy enough to game the system...seems *shadey* at best and pretty illegal to be honest.
What should be illegal are your poor English skills. Your teachers should be brought up on charges.
Metadata, baby! Once they geolocate you they will presume much about your skin color, age, etc.
A guy from the Gold Coast will see different prices than a guy on the South Side.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
How long until someone offers a service that explores multiple paths to a particular item (mobile, customer, non-customer, cleared cookies, items-in-cart, etc.) at a particular retailer and provides the best price?
No, that makes it discrimination.
Although most people don't realize this - Discrimination doesn't break the law, except when done against a very small list of federally protected groups.
Giving senior citizen discounts? Cool. Giving non-senior discounts? Crime! "Ladies' night"? Kosher. "Mens' night"? Treif! Scholarships for blacks? Awesome! Scholarships for whites? You gonna get raped, son.
Unless Amazon specifically has code in place to detect screen readers or "old people typing" or Christian-themed plugins, they can charge whatever the hell they want, moment by moment.
A few months ago there were reports of how the website from the French rail company was increasing the price of the ticket in your basket to make you feel you had to buy before it would increase even more.
you have to buy a car web site
But when
What part of this is "false"?
Better yet, what part of that is "advertising"? They're not calling the product to your attention, they're telling you what the product you're already aware of costs.
You would need to prove that 80% of those discriminated against were of a particular protected class. There is no way you could do this.
There is case law (I don't remember the particular case name, sorry), where a city had to close down a sidewalk in front of a school for a month for road construction. A person in a wheel chair sued the city because they were unable to reach the handicap ramp in the front of the building (but they were still able to get to the zero-barrier entrance on the side of the building). Since the city didn't go out of their way to discriminate against a particular class of people (they inconvenienced everybody), they didn't win the case. Now, had they only shut down the sidewalk immediately in front of the ramp, the results would have been different.
That's nice. I still have a right to complain about it.
:)
Yes, you can. And they can discriminate against you for complaining about price discrimination.
"Ladies' night"? Kosher
Nope. State courts in California, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have ruled that ladies' night discounts are unlawful gender discrimination under state or local statutes.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You can get prices on Google Flight search too . They even get you seasonal historical price data , which is useful when you are planning ahead
The way to use travel sites is to find out the cheapest flight, then book it through a travel site using the travel site branded credit card. Usually that gives you a 3-5% discount (usually usable only on the same site, but some cards give you outright cash).
Or I must say this was the way to use travel sites, because many airlines, especially international ones will give you less "miles" if you book through a third party site. That is sometimes worth a 5% of the ticket value, negating the cashback on the card.
Recently the game has moved even further, with airlines cheapening the "worth" of a mile, suddenly making cashbacks on credit cards valuable again.
My best way is to use the local grocery store that doesn't have a card.
if you want to save money on groceries just shop at Aldi's if there is one near you (there probably is if you live in the eastern US). cheaper than walmart by at least 25% and no shopping card needed.
just make sure to bring a quarter for the cart unlocker and throw a few reusable bags in your car or scavenge any empty carboard trays off the shelves because they don't bag and you have to buy bags if you want them (6 cents no biggie)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
It depends upon how the price is presented. If the price presented is as being 'the price of the product' as in the price to all customers or the price of the product to that person. Obviously if you are not declaring that the price is not the product price to all customers but specific price to that person, that you are fraudulently misrepresenting the nature of that price and how it was achieved.
The big lesson here, is when it is so easy to get a price on the internet don't get just one but get at least three from similarly reliable providers. Size of company is of course no measure of reliability as the modern trend of throwing as many lawyers as needed at unhappy customers to try to silence them as well as spending huge amounts on deceitful advertising to try drown out complaints that get past the lawyers, is now normal business tactic, ahh, the benefits of deregulation, 'NOT'.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
http://prefbar.tuxfamily.org/ could do that. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
If that 6 cents were no biggie, then why does Aldi make you pay it? If that quarter for the buggies were no biggie then why do they make you pay it? Is it going to be a biggie when they start making you pay for a cashier instead of using a self checkout? I bet you didn't think your friendly Aldi tip was going to turn in to such a biggie huh? :)
You're right about the price being about the same but what you failed to remember is that I'll get it in 2 days. When you go with a non-Prime vendor, you might get it in 2 days, but it'll probably be 3 or 4 depending on the USPS. What I've noticed quite often is a shipping charge (even free) usually means it's coming from China so you're going to wait much longer. I've even bought an item that was Prime and had it replaced with a shipped from China version which I promptly called Amazon about and made them refund me the purchase. Even if you and timeOday believe I'm getting milked, I can still get a 24pack of toilet paper cheaper on Prime than going to Walmart, so that is one hell of a milking I'm getting, lol.
Now about bastards who fuck: The following statement is a hypothesis and only an hypothesis based on semi-solid rectal science. The author does not believe he is better than a bastard. Reader discretion is advised!
Being called a bastard is supposed to be an insult spouted off by those who think they are more righteous and better than you. One typically insults a lesser person to make themselves feel better but most importantly to remind said lesser that they are scum, will always be scum, and should wallow in their misery. So the premise is that a bastard should be unhappy. You know what makes me happy? Fucking. So you see, two bastards fucking are probably enjoying themselves and we just can't have that can we? Better to remind them that their mother's were whores and they need to get back to the self loathing as soon as possible.
Counter-predatory-pricing botnets: It's only a matter of time.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
How does Camelcamelcamale avoid itself being fooled by the same tactics described here?
They are offering a product at a proposed cost. How is this not advertising?