Comments on: Do travel sites use cookies to dupe you into paying more?

By: Bonjour! 7-18-11 | La Femme Frugale

Bonjour! 7-18-11 | La Femme Frugale — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:07:18 +0000

[...] - Airlines’ websites are spying on us in order to get us to pay more. We booked flights for a trip to Seattle last night, and when I went to purchase them after shopping around a bit, I got a pop-up saying the fare was no longer valid; I went back to re-select the flights and the fares were higher! But my husband went to the same website with his computer and the fares were still the lower ones that I had initially wanted. For further explanation (as we’re running out of time and The Hunchback of Notre Dame here is trying to shut the laptop on my fingers as a way to tell me it’s time to go), read this. [...]

By: traveller 111

traveller 111 — Wed, 12 May 2010 17:11:30 +0000

well, the thing that I noticed is when i check for flight fares, i usually check tha rate just for 1 person .. then whe i get to the booking, and actually check up fare for 2 people, the rate works out higher per person !!! why is that ?!?! every flight is charged with extra tax, and surcharge .. and blablaa ++++ so why bump up the flight rate wether you are travelling alone or not ?!!

By: Thomas Rush

Thomas Rush — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:42:08 +0000

I’ve seen a slightly different issue. I search Expedia for flights (without hotels) to Prague. About an hour later I went to youtube.com and they started showing me expedia ads for hotels in Prague. In the old days cookies from one site were not readable by any other site – this was for security reasons. Somehow youtube.com told expedia that it was me who was watching and expedia delivered an ad targeted to me – how otherwise did a hotel ad for Prague come up on youtube when I had searched only on expedia? Somehow they’ve clearly circumvented the privacy of cookies per site.

By: Sithe

Sithe — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:45:10 +0000

I know this is happening. At home I was checking on prices. When I checked later (anywhere from 5min to 24hrs later) the price ALWAYS went up. When I cleaned cookies out of my computer, the prices was ALWAYS cheaper. I tried it at work, also. I checked a prices and rechecked 5 min later. Then I knew my suspicions were accurate. I used a co-worker’s computer immediately and got my original lower price. I remember a sticker I once saw – “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you”.

By: Expat

Expat — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:36:10 +0000

This absolutely happens with hotel websites! I used to be an admin and booked travel for multiple executives. It was my responsibility to get the lowest price possible, be it through our travel agency, or other websites. Often I would get a great rate from a hotel website – for my first individual (I needed to book individual reservations with different credit cards for expense purposes, rather than using booking multiple rooms in one name, with one card). When I would try to get the same rate for my next person, using my computer, the rate was no longer available. But if I went to one of my boss’ laptops, voila! there was the same low rate. I would have to use a different computer each time, to get them all the same low rate. To me it seemed obvious this was due to the use of cookies.

By: Fida

Fida — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:47:09 +0000

I agree fully with Rick Damiani. I worked as a travel agent and I know how quick the cheapest seats can be gone (an how bizarre the fare classification is). At least on our booking system we could see how many seats were left in which price category, and an agent can hold that spot for a certain amount of time. But if booked on the Internet one has to go all the way to see if the fare initially offered is really available – just checking prices is not enough.

By: Rick Damiani

Rick Damiani — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:40:06 +0000

Far more likely is:

- The flght in question is close to running out of seats at that fare
- Your inqury causes the seat to be reserved, pending confirmation, so you can complete the transaction at that price if you choose to do so.
- You check elsewhere and in the process remove the rest of the seats at that class
- Going back to the original site, you get quoted a higher fare, becasue all the other seats at the lower fare class are ‘pending’

The real culprit here is the bizarre fare rules most airlines use. With so many fare classifications, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a different fare paid for every occupied seat on a given flight.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:55:11 +0000

This absolutely happened to me on the US Airways website. I had a one-way fare on the BOS-DCA shuttle quoted at $71 and it was switched on me 5 minutes later. I ended up paying $109 one way, $38 more than I had hoped. I wish that I read this article earlier…
Thanks for the info for the future.

By: Eduardo Soares

Eduardo Soares — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:48:49 +0000

It happens to me all the time. I always book travel for a whole bunch of friends. But as I use Apple, I reset the safari and i can get the cheapest fare every time i do a search.

By: don

don — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:27:06 +0000

http://www.itasoftware.com does not require registration, you can search as a ‘guest’. I am registered as i use their service regularly. You can click on a fare and show all of the codes, and email that to your travel agent. It sometimes provides me with fares and routing that my travel agent was not shown on her system. I ALWAYS book through my travel agent internationally – they really earn their $ and it is absolutely necessary to have someone on your side when something unanticipated occurs overseas.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:59:46 +0000

Can anyone use the ITA website? I see that you have to register but wasn’t sure if any “Joe Sixpack” could use it or if you had to be a travel agent…

By: Meg

Meg — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:50:33 +0000

This happens to me frequently because I shop the airline websites as well as the online agents. Now I go to itasoftware.com to get a good idea of what the lowest fares should be, clear my cookies and search sites where I can buy the fare. I also find that most of the time, the airline sites will be cheaper than orbitz/travelocity/expedia/etc…

By: Joe Farrell

Joe Farrell — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:52:54 +0000

Here is my story – and you can reproduce it at will. It is a corrollary of the search cookie deal here.

Go to a travel website – enter a search with the time you want to fly. You get a choice of times that are NOT when you want to fly – but which are cheaper or have more convenient times for the carrier.

Then, go to another browser, looking at the times and flights with the cheaper tickets and put in THOSE times – the flights will generally come up – WITH A HIGHER FARE.

So, what you need to do, if time is important to you, put in a time diametrically opposed to the time you want to travel – say, 6pm if you want to travel at 7am, the website programming will think you want to travel at 6p and give you the cheap 7am flights.

The simple thing – open the cookies and LOOK at them. It is really clear that tracking is going on – you need to delete ALL cookies for a specific time frame around the time that you did your first search.

Or, just come back the next day when the cookies will have expired in most cases.

another example. I was on USAir’s website to book a ticket from New Haven CT to CHS [to get six total segments to qualify for preferred status until Feb 2010]. When I first looked in the AM fares were $99 each way – when I came back in the afternoon they were now $119. When I opened another browser moments later – they were back to $99. Same flights, same day. You cannot tell me that something is not going one there. . . .

By: Ed F

Ed F — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:15:40 +0000

On an extremely limited basis, I was able to “prove” the theorem that multiple searches result in higher fares. I did 3 things: I was signed on at work on my work PC and got higher fares within a very limited time-frame. I then accessed the same websites (plural) from another PC in the office and was able to find the original pricing. I then deleted cookies, empltied temp files, etc. on my own PC. Searched again and, again, got the original pricing.

I’m not given to paranoia, thank you. I am given to testing and trial and error.

As before, a very limited test but my premise is: yes, cookies and temp file influence pricing. (Of course, I suspect lots of searches would also tell the travel/airline servers that there’s a lot of interest and they can price accordingly. However, to get the original pricing in the limited timeframe suggests it IS cookies. (Sorry to go on.)

By: Debbie Stevens

Debbie Stevens — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:30:51 +0000

This happened to us while booking a flight on Frontier Airlines from Fort Lauderdale to Denver. My husband and I were travelling with another couple. While sitting at our computer, we booked our flight first and seconds later, while still at our computer, our friends booked their flight and the flight and the price increased by $13.00…not much, but noticeable.
In the past we’ve searched for flights on one computer, returned to the site and found that the flight was full…We then went to the site from another computer and found available seats……coincidence??? Not so sure about that!