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Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

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Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#81

Post by hackernewds »

yosito wrote: post #67

I've been flying internationally 10-15 times a year for ~10 years. Different routes and destinations each time. I've spent a lot of time searching for hacks like this that let me save a few bucks on flight tickets. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you find that a flight is cheaper depending on which country's website or currency you use to book. Flight tickets are priced dynamically using a variety of factors to determi…

Chase Sapphire travel insurance is limited only to evacuation and transport anywhere >100km from home state.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#82

Post by homami »

Based on my experience traveling between Europe, Middle East and Asia:

- for return flights I always get different fares based on the origin. At least for the airlines that I travel with it does not matter what my IP is, but where my origin is.

- depending on the airline or the hotel booking service, I get higher fares if I book with an iPhone (including their apps) or a Mac comparing to when I spoof my user agent to Windows. The difference can be substantial.

- for hotel bookings, my IP location used to make a big difference. I guess these days the services just became better at finger printing and detecting VPNs.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#83

Post by hiq »

kleene_op wrote: post #64
rhtgrg wrote: post #4

Recently I paid to book better seats on an Air France flight and since the website was a hot mess (specifically the payment portal) I tried various VPNs to try and get through. To my surprise, prices were significantly different (about ~20% variation) depending on country, and it was most expensive in...France. This was on a flight that had already been booked from the US long ago.

I just looked at the prices for the cheapest ticket next month from France to Japan, first from the airfrance french website and then from their japanese one. Cheapest ones in France are around 700-800€ when japanese ones are around 41,000¥ (~300€). This is crazy.

Are you sure it's not because the prices on the Japanese website doesn't include taxes and surchages?

Japanese website:

> All amounts are in JPY. Taxes and surcharges are excluded.

French website:

> All amounts are in EUR. Taxes, surcharges and booking fee are included.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#84

Post by nolok »

qwertox wrote: post #80

Somewhat related: If you rent your car via sixt.es instead of sixt.de, you'll get it for a lower price [0] [1] [0] https://www.sixt.es/betafunnel/#/offerlist?zen_pu_location=7... [1] https://www.sixt.de/betafunnel/#/offerlist?zen_pu_location=7...

I wanted to ask "Is it a VAT thing ?" but Spain actually has higher VAT so no

I'm pretty sure it's illegal in the EU for the same company to give a different price to customer depending on where they live in the union, I assume they get around that by being "not the same company" but sixt spain and sixt germany instead ...

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#85

Post by tarunupaday »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #3

I travel to my home country once a year to visit family, but have it set up so that my origin for the round trip is the home country (ie XYZ-SFO-XYZ rather than SFO-XYZ-SFO). The ticket is generally half the cost, which adds up when you're traveling with family. I can only do this because I consistently travel to that same place every year, otherwise I wouldn't be able to swap the origin. It also requires you knowing…

I used to do the same about 15 years ago.

I was living in DC area but was traveling to Bay Area every week (mon to fri) for work.

I always booked fare in reverse with Friday evening departure (from sfo) and Monday morning ( from DCA) return. A Saturday night “stay” apparently made it a leisure fare which was way cheaper than Monday to Friday fare which was way more expensive. (Like 4x more). [ this was United Airlines btw].

My understanding is that this does not work anymore (at least for US domestic). Airfare are all priced for one way (return fare is just the sum of two legs).

However, difference between what business travelers pay and what leisure travelers pay is huge (see hertz rental prices or Marriott hotel prices for saturday vs Monday).

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#86

Post by medstrom »

yosito wrote: post #67

I've been flying internationally 10-15 times a year for ~10 years. Different routes and destinations each time. I've spent a lot of time searching for hacks like this that let me save a few bucks on flight tickets. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you find that a flight is cheaper depending on which country's website or currency you use to book. Flight tickets are priced dynamically using a variety of factors to determi…

Another hack is timing. Often I've taken a day off on either Friday or Monday when I'm travelling over the weekend -- the difference in cost can be as much as a day's wage.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#88

Post by vesinisa »

hackernewds wrote: post #81
yosito wrote: post #67

I've been flying internationally 10-15 times a year for ~10 years. Different routes and destinations each time. I've spent a lot of time searching for hacks like this that let me save a few bucks on flight tickets. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you find that a flight is cheaper depending on which country's website or currency you use to book. Flight tickets are priced dynamically using a variety of factors to determi…

Chase Sapphire travel insurance is limited only to evacuation and transport anywhere >100km from home state.

Yup, I have separate travel insurance from a reputable domestic insuracne company that I trust. My credit card also has a travel insurance from a multinational insurance company that I had never heard of before. The bank didn't even bother sending me the insurance policy terms when issuing the card. I would never dare depend on the credit card's travel insurance. Because travel insurance is one of those things that you don't really think about until the moment you need it. And that's usually also the worst possible time to discover that you've been sold snake oil..

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#89

Post by textread »

Somewhat related: Over the counter medicine is significantly cheaper to buy from Thailand, Indonesia and India [1].

Medicines in the US cost 50 times their cost in Thailand.

[1] https://static.toiimg.com/thumb/imgsize-23456,msid-72197131,...

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