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How To Beat Online Price Discrimination

Posted by Soulskill on from the complain-until-they-give-it-to-you-for-free dept.

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.

4 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Do not browse on a Liinux desktop! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  2. Insight from Bennett Haselton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. Contradiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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?

  4. Instead by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.