Ferry/Flight prices always go up, Caching?

[snowie]

Some time ago there was mention here that prices always go up, every time you go back to a website.

 

Solution was to reset a PC parameter? or clear the cache; or something else.

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction. Thread or repeat advice

 

thanks

alan b

 

 

[fairweather camper]

I have just been to the same site 3 times and the price quoted was the same each time ?

[lennyhb]

Clear your cookies, Easyjet are the most notorious for it.

[Guest JudgeMental]

YES! clear your cookies! and browsing history...plus saved porn sites while at it.....do it every time you visit the same site.

 

I want to book some flights to Sri Lanka for Christmas but cant do anything until after I get the go ahead from consultant end of the month, not many flights left but prices seem stable but expensive..I'm holding my breath *-)

 

with ferries you need to book at time of NEC shows (twice a year) when the cheap codes come out.....You get till June to change them for free. I have changed my 2 crossings twice each so far (Italy summer - Spain Autumn)

[BGD]

Although I've been out of the aerospace industry for some years now, the plane seat-pricing system for all airlines that I was aware of certainly used to be NOT based at all on the number of visits by internet booking users, but upon a logarithm based upon number of seats sold for that flight, and time left to flight departure.

 

When booking for a given flight was released, the first (say) 10 seats offered would be advertised at a discount price....to enable the carrier to say that seats on that flight were "available from £X".

The next (say) 10 seats advertised & sold would be at a slightly higher price; etc etc etc.

This stepping-up of prices as the plane gets fuller and fuller peaks usually about 24 hours before scheduled departure.

 

But then the selling price of any remaining seats usually comes back down again, often quite sharply, simply as the Carrier tries to get at least some revenue for those last seats and reach plane capacity.

 

These last-minute seats are sometimes offered via specific 3rd party companies, such as Lastminute.com, on an agency commission basis, rather than via the carriers own internet booking facility. That is why you can sometimes find on a carriers website the plane shows as "full", but a lastminute type agent can still get you a seat on it for later today/tomorrow.

 

The industry trick used always to be that to get best value you EITHER book instantly the flight becomes available (maybe 6 months ahead), or if flight dates were a bit flexible, leave booking till the day before, or even better the actual day of the flight.

Those two extremes are of course difficult/impossible for most people, which is why price-setting works the way I described above. Airlines are in business to maximise profit for their shareholders.

 

 

[Derek Uzzell]

I suspect it's a myth that automated on-line booking systems monitor the activity of people researching fares and, each time you return to a booking website, the fare-price increases.

 

As BGD says, for airline booking systems the software will involve algorithms that adjust fare-prices according to seat availability/demand and a flight's time of departure. I would have thought using cookies to inflate prices raises serious privacy issues and I'd be interested in having more background to lennyhb's authorative statement that "Easyjet are the most notorious for it".

 

It has been claimed that cookies are used to affect airfares, but I tend towards the view that the rises in fares are a result of the booking systems 'lagging', rather than the systems actually exploiting cookies proactively.

 

These are a couple of links worth looking at:

 

http://paulinefrommerbriefing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/clearing-your-caches-to-get-better.html

 

http://elliott.org/the-navigator/no-airline-cookie-conspiracy-what-about-this-trail-of-crumbs/

 

Plainly, if you feel the need to constantly wipe your computer clean, that's your business. But I don't and, as I worked in IT for 26 years in a government intelligence-gathering organisation, if anyone might be expected to suffer from 'the-machines-are-snooping-on-me and-out-to-get-me' phobia, you might think it ought to be me.

[lennyhb]

It has been published many times about Easyjet, it is illegal to do it in the UK but guess what Easyjet's severs are not in the UK. I have personal experience of Easyjety when looking for flights after logging on a few times throughout the day after 3 or 4th time prices go up clear cookies and back to original price.

[colin]

lennyhb - 2013-05-09 4:42 PM

 

It has been published many times about Easyjet, it is illegal to do it in the UK but guess what Easyjet's severs are not in the UK. I have personal experience of Easyjety when looking for flights after logging on a few times throughout the day after 3 or 4th time prices go up clear cookies and back to original price.

 

Yep, told my friend to clear his cookies and he got back to a lower price with Easyjet.

[snowie]

Thanks to all who responded; whether it's real or imagined, I think cookies are best treated with respect/caution,

Thanks for opinions

alan b

[Guest JudgeMental]

Imagined?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

[Guest 1footinthegrave]

JudgeMental - 2013-05-10 6:08 AM

 

Imagined?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

 

 

Yes Eddie provides the the information above, this is also the reason I believe under EU law that websites now have to inform you of cookie use, but fail to say why they use them. :-S

 

I'm also alarmed how it is I can search for something, then have targeted advertising of that type of product in my email software, yes big brother, or someone definitely is watching you. 8-)

[Guest JudgeMental]

1footinthegrave - 2013-05-10 6:57 AM

 

JudgeMental - 2013-05-10 6:08 AM

 

Imagined?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

 

 

Yes Eddie provides the the information above, this is also the reason I believe under EU law that websites now have to inform you of cookie use, but fail to say why they use them. :-S

 

I'm also alarmed how it is I can search for something, then have targeted advertising of that type of product in my email software, yes big brother, or someone definitely is watching you. 8-)

 

 

Yes this targeted advertising because of cookies really annoying! For ages after you even buy a product it pops up on further completely unrelated Internet activity ! *-)