Discussion
Well, this is cute. I looked up an #AirCanada flight in Firefox and then pasted the URL into a Chromium window where I was logged into my Aeroplan Super-Elite account. Air Canada added $300 to the flight price when I tried to load it from a logged-in browser. Hell of a customer loyalty perk!
I bought the ticket in my non-logged-in window, then added my FF number to it.
@pluralistic I've had an onlineshop show a higher price a product when using search, and a lower one when using list filtering. Dark patterns everywhere. https://cweiske.de/tagebuch/computeruniverse-doppelprodukt.htm
@pluralistic loyalty is punishable.
JFC, that's terrible.
@pluralistic Somebody told me once to use library computers to escape airlines’ maximum-possible-pricing algorithm, since it is essentially impossible for them to perform any sort of tracking or identifying there.
I haven’t tested this but it feels like a good idea?
A coworker in sales told me that he always uses private mode to shop for flights/travel. Something to do with cookies talking to each other that ratchets up the prices.
@pluralistic
Out-effing-rageous 🤬
@pluralistic searching for holiday flights yesterday, KLM offered to "hold this price" for me for the low low cost of €180
@tstruthers @pluralistic i don't know why and it's almost unbelievable, but austrian.com (star alliance!) keeps showing stable prices over weeks, no matter how often you look it up from the same IP+device. it's almost an uncanny feeling, there must be something wrong with the world if an airline doesn't try to screw you online.
@tstruthers @pluralistic i don't know why and it's almost unbelievable, but austrian.com (star alliance!) keeps showing stable prices over weeks, no matter how often you look it up from the same IP+device. it's almost an uncanny feeling, there must be something wrong with the world if an airline doesn't try to screw you online.
@tstruthers @pluralistic i don't know why and it's almost unbelievable, but austrian.com (star alliance!) keeps showing stable prices over weeks, no matter how often you look it up from the same IP+device. it's almost an uncanny feeling, there must be something wrong with the world if an airline doesn't try to screw you online.
@tstruthers @pluralistic i don't know why and it's almost unbelievable, but austrian.com (star alliance!) keeps showing stable prices over weeks, no matter how often you look it up from the same IP+device. it's almost an uncanny feeling, there must be something wrong with the world if an airline doesn't try to screw you online.
@tstruthers @pluralistic
KLM didn't respond when I told them I have a medical urgency that I can't take the flight back and don't know when I will be allowed to fly. A week (a stent and a doctor's follow-up/approval) later when I tried to get my flight back they said they can only give me a voucher for a portion of the flight I didn't take (a couple of hundred dollars), tried to sell me a $1400 punitive one way ticket AND they never even sent me the voucher. Ever. I bought a Lufthansa ticket for $800 and got back home. Btw their office in the country doesn't even deal with your problem. They make you call the country you bought the ticket from , the US which famously makes you wait on the line for 45 mins before you hear a human voice.
We are screwed, guys. We are so screwed. They don't give a shit anymore.
@pluralistic maybe they got a deal with the other platform where you get extra discount?
@energisch_ I pasted the URL with its identifiers from Firefox to Chromium, so as far as the Chromium window (where I was logged into my Air Canada account) knew, I was being referred there by Google Flights, same as the Firefox window (where I wasn't logged in). Firefox was about 25% cheaper.
@pluralistic @energisch_ this can easily be explained: the URL doesn't have the Google Flights referral. That might be stored in a cookie or in their database and you have a session ID. Countercheck with a private browser windows in Firefox.
@chx @energisch_ I confess that I'm baffled by the ardor to find an alternative explanation. The major airlines routinely boast of their surveillance pricing plans and programs. The people who develop, consult on and manage loyalty programs brag that frequent customers don't notice when prices go up. AC has a monopoly on the route.
The same URL in two browsers, one logged in, and one not, produces a 25% premium price for the logged in session.
Occam's razor applies.
@pluralistic @chx @energisch_ Besides whether logged in or not, check browser capabilities: firefox can be configured to delete cookies when you close firefox. Other browsers might not do that. Also, see if you get a different price when using a laptop at a coffee shop, possibly trying different towns. Maybe there is a surcharge if your Internet connection is physically located in a "high rent district".
@chx @energisch_ Even if you stipulate that (for some incoherent reason) Air Canada offers discounts to Google Flights users, that is *still price discrimination against its frequent fliers.*
@pluralistic @energisch_ alas, this is a case of incompetence not malice. They offer a special fare for certain OTAs and the department arranging that fare didn't coordinate with the very very disjoint department who handles frequent fliers. Not sure whether this makes sense. I am merely saying Air Canada is incompetent and not malicious. But they are *very* incompetent there's no doubt.
@chx @energisch_ You have enormous confidence that this airline, a monopolist, on a route where it has a monopoly, which has already boasted of its algorithmic pricing and its ability to do first-order price discrimination, an industry-wide trend boasted of by the vendors hired to do this, is not doing this, entirely on the basis of some a priori assumptions for which you have offered zero evidence.
Do you work in AC ops?
@pluralistic would be interesting how AirCanada can explain this
@energisch_ it's because I'm a frequent flier, so they assume they already have my business and can cheat me without losing it.
Yet another level of #enshittification :
Provide customer loyalty benefits to help secure your very best customers, then turn the tables and screw them for that very same loyalty.
@pluralistic Yes, we've seen this. ALso, the price goes up if, logged in, you leave and come back later!
@pluralistic Huge OpenSource fans airlines, typically. 🦊
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
@pluralistic and prices are higher when you search with an expensive tool like an iphone or ipad. I tested that already 20 years ago(!) when I had to book flights and hotels for my managers. And today they cheat you even more.