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

travel.stackexchange.com

261–270 of 339 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't even have to be voluntarily in the sense of "making a decision to". More like voluntary in the sense of "have no specific need to". In the most developed countries, children are now more of a burden than a gain, which is why women are having fewer of them every generation. Not only because they're expensive, but because they are often born unhealthy (physically, mentally, or both) and are a large, often un…

I get your point and am on neither side of the fence here, since I do not think, we should rely on individual action at all. I just want to add to the conversation, that somehow your reasoning strikes me as a bit selfish. It is of course true, what you are writing. Still reading it, makes me sad. I am missing some higher meaning. Who cares about a career in the end? A career in our system is just a story of someone,…

It is absolutely incredible that your sensible comment gets down voted, but it says a lot about the diseased state of mind of some of the people commenting and voting here.

The "career" is a great lie and joke. Imagine choosing to exterminate your heritage in order to please short term goals of politicians or company owners who at best see the career worker as a cost center on a spread sheet.

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

#262
post #250
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your concern about CO2 emissions and the effort you're making to reduce your own carbon footprint. It's important to be conscious of our impact on the environment. I wanted to share some of the ways I also work to reduce my carbon emissions and help address climate change. While it's true that I have taken a number of international flights over the past decade, I am very conscious of my carbon footprint…

Where do you buy carbon offsets? I don't fly nearly as much as you but I would like to buy offsets when I do fly (and in general.)

I use Wren (YC S19) which is a monthly subscription (pay what you want) for projects like biochar, tree planing, and refrigerant destruction: https://www.wren.co/projects

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

#263
Did this years ago with a travel package company. Due to the drop in value of the British Pound, their published prices in the US and the UK that had been near par at the start of the year, had become imbalanced. As these prices were in printed catalogs that were good for a year, I was able to save a significant amount of money by booking through the UK site and using a friend's address in Bath. The company did question it at first, noticing that my passport and credit card were both from the US, but once I said I was visiting a friend in the UK and booked from her computer, they let the transaction go through.

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

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why book through Kiwi or Skyscanner if booking through Chase earns triple rewards points.

Chase (and AmEx) travel sucks to deal with if you have an issue with your flight. Much better to book direct so you can deal with the airlines directly even at the cost of losing 3x. Same deal with points, much better spent by transferring out to an airline or their partner vs using them for 1cpp on one of the cards OTAs.

The funny (unfortunate) thing is that this used to be the opposite - years ago, Chase's in-house travel service was as close as you'd get to a white glove phone support experience in this day and age.

Then they outsourced it to Expedia, and the hold times went up and the efficiency and sanity of the whole process of dealing with any minor adjustment to your flight or travel plans degraded precipitously.

It seems like in 2021, they bought the company that was providing the backing technology for the in-house version of the service and have ditched Expedia again, so maybe this has gotten better since my last stint of big international travel?

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

#265
post #39
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of price discrimination isn't powered by surveillance capitalism. Using the example in the first answer on the stackexchange, this is nothing more than selling the same ticket at a different price to someone walking up to a United counter in USA compared to someone walking up to a United counter in AU. Surveillance capitalism powering price discrimination sounds scary, but there seems to be few examples of…

> This type of price discrimination isn't powered by surveillance capitalism Ok in this particular example of price discrimination it isn't. Yet. Sure. Now imagine you wan't to power it buy surveillance capitalism to get more of that surplus and current laws and norms are no object. What would that look like? How close do you think we will get to that? How fast? [1] Think vendors will keep much of that captured surpl…

I am not a lawyer, and I am unsure, but I am under the impression there are limits on which variables health insurance companies can vary their prices on. I think health insurance is another example of classic price discrimination costing normal people money. Hospitals will charge different amounts of money for the same medical procedure and the same level of car depending on which insurance is getting billed, or if no insurance is billed. This is caused by thousands of accountants negotiating in advanced.

I am actually not worried about Surveillance Capitalism powered Price Discrimination in it's current state. It is probably happening already, but not to a wide degree. A few things would make me worry, and they are also mostly things that are opportunities for price discrimination.

* There is no cash option. There is no resell option. There are no advertised prices.

* I must disclose personal information to do business, before the prices are revealed. You can link your travel agent website with social media, but you can also guest checkout from a public library.

* Comparative shopping is hard/impossible. Ideally the information age actually empowers consumers on this one. This doesn't stop companies from varying prices based on individuals, but it does put downward pressure on prices. Cartels and price collusion can negate this.

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why book through Kiwi or Skyscanner if booking through Chase earns triple rewards points.

Chase (and AmEx) travel sucks to deal with if you have an issue with your flight. Much better to book direct so you can deal with the airlines directly even at the cost of losing 3x. Same deal with points, much better spent by transferring out to an airline or their partner vs using them for 1cpp on one of the cards OTAs.

If there is a security issue with the airline better that the intermediary has your payment information rather than the airline. When Cathay Pacific got hacked I was glad I had booked with (RIP) Vayama. Of course if this is an airline like Thai Airways that has you present the payment card at check in this might be pointless (and of course Apple Pay has obviated it too)

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

#269
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…

I found it often works with https://ctrip.com (Chinese airline booking service).

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

#270
I have one hotel hack, that works especially well for conferences when rooms are almost fully booked and prices are high. Book a hotel room with no charge for cancellation. Then, the day before arriving (or even the day of arriving if you're still able to cancel), check for rooms again. There's often nicer rooms that become available at the last minute due to others cancelling, at a lower price.
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