A word of advice about flights

[dieselboy]

I've been looking at flight tickets to get to Arizona in October. Last week the cheap ones were around the 450 mark. Then, when I wished to buy them they were a little over £500. So I kept checking back hoping they would go down, but they didn't. Then I noticed on one other site they began to go up further so I bought the cheapest tickets at the slightly increased price.
I check out of interest tonight and they're back to the £450 mark again. Did they just wait for me to buy, or what?

[Overland Tonka]

Easyjet and others appear to do the same....I used to book alot of flights and as soon as you keep searching it seems to know what your doing and ups the price sending me into a tail spin...(see what I did there?) oh well please yourselves....I got wise to what was going on and just waited till the next day.

[Sancho]

Did you look on a different computer today?

The crafty buggers send you a nice little cookie that remembers what flights you searched for and puts the price up everytime you check again.

[dieselboy]

I've used my work PC, and I have the ability to VPN to clients offices and use their servers. All reported same price until I got home and used my home machine again.

Problem I had was that we scrapped going away in August because I kept checking back and the flights just went up and up until they were over £1000. Didn't want that happening this time! lol

[flounderbout]

Its often worth searching for cheap package holidays instead. If you are booking reasonably near to the departure date, there are usually some that cost susbtantially less then the flights. Get there, dump the hotel/transfer etc, and hey presto...

[Apache]

With the major national carriers, I often found it was cheaper to go direct to the airline than the 'cheap flights' websites too.

[dieselboy]

Its often worth searching for cheap package holidays instead. If you are booking reasonably near to the departure date, there are usually some that cost susbtantially less then the flights. Get there, dump the hotel/transfer etc, and hey presto...

I'll have to look into that, thanks!

With the major national carriers, I often found it was cheaper to go direct to the airline than the 'cheap flights' websites too.

With the airline I paid the same price, but right now the broker is about £50 cheaper for the exact same flight & times.

Going with Virgin-Atlantic direct there are "no flights" and with a broker they're close to £700. Strange?

[BigBobE]

your problem there is the likes of ryanair and easyjet leave a cookie in your computer, every time you search for the same flight details prices go up.... so thats why you were getting 450 from all comps till you went onto your home one to book, a good mate of mine sells the hard for doing this to ryanair, and a lot of other large corporations....

[flounderbout]

Did you look on a different computer today?

The crafty buggers send you a nice little cookie that remembers what flights you searched for and puts the price up everytime you check again.

Isn't this an urban myth? I'd take some convincing that this was technically, let alone commercially, feasible...

http://www.tnooz.com/2011/04/12/news...an-urban-myth/

[slobodan]

Isn't this an urban myth? I'd take some convincing that this was technically, let alone commercially, feasible...

http://www.tnooz.com/2011/04/12/news...an-urban-myth/

No, Waitrose online do it as well, I was trying to decide which flavour jam to add to my basket, and before I knew it it was £74 a jar!!

[gary-r]

Its often worth searching for cheap package holidays instead. If you are booking reasonably near to the departure date, there are usually some that cost susbtantially less then the flights. Get there, dump the hotel/transfer etc, and hey presto...

yep agree with that - ive saved hundreds with last minute holiday bookings. if your lucky the hols in the same place you are going and you can use the transfer too

[Vultch]

I'm pretty sure Amazon do the same as well, a printer I was looking at kept creeping up in price every time I logged on to look at it, it went up £60 I purchased it elsewhere closer to the original Amazon price.

So would cleaning out the cookies on my machine solve this or does their server remember my IP address.

[Apache]

No, Waitrose online do it as well, I was trying to decide which flavour jam to add to my basket, and before I knew it it was £74 a jar!!

[NiftyNev]

No, Waitrose online do it as well, I was trying to decide which flavour jam to add to my basket, and before I knew it it was £74 a jar!!

Now that made me laugh.

Nev

[flounderbout]

I'm pretty sure Amazon do the same as well, a printer I was looking at kept creeping up in price every time I logged on to look at it, it went up £60 I purchased it elsewhere closer to the original Amazon price.

So would cleaning out the cookies on my machine solve this or does their server remember my IP address.

This makes no commercial sense. Ordinary economic behaviour suggests that the retailer will gradual reduce prices until the consumer bites, not increase them. Certainly my experience is that Amazon always email me offers with the same or similar products that I have been looking at, gradually reducing the price over time. Which makes sense. But effectively saying to a customer, "hey - you know you didn't buy this great product at X price? Well now we've raised the price - how about it!?" is unlikely to be part of Amazon's marketing strategy.

The airline industry is a different one in one sense, in that the demand is more price independent and more circumstance dependent, but it still doesn't make sense to actively drive customers who have expressed an interest in your products to your competitors (which is the obvious effect of raising a price they have just seen).

While sites obviously use cookies for advertising etc, I strongly suspect the whole cookies-leading-price thing is a complete myth.