Thus seems to ring true, that what you don't pay in price you often pay in time or comfort.
On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
241–250 of 433 posts
Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#242"Silly Europeans. Regulations for privacy and data ownership are government overreach and anti-market.
"Oh no."
Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Incognito mode solve this problem? I thought it mostly prevented data from being stored on your local computer; I did not think it was effective against tracking.
It improves tracking by fisabling your ad blocker.
Maybe in Chrom*, but not in Firefox.
Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you get that time back with interest in how easy it makes the check-in process. Push notification 24hrs in advance, check in and automatically download boarding pass. Phone has your boarding pass at the airport, as well as push notifications for gate changes. Phone has the baggage carousel information and terminal maps with food and restrooms called out.
Yeah....I get all that on all but the cheapest of discount airlines just by downloading their apps. This is not a "loyalty perk".
Why would you have the app and not sign up for the program?? It's no extra work, and it's not like you're avoiding being tracked. Especially with an airline.
Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again: airline yield management is a deep and arcane art. We get glimpses of it through their public policies and pricing, and we can guess at some things through public financial statements that disclose or let us calculate their CASM/PRASM/etc. But the moral of the story is it's not as simple as "selling the seat is always better".
My response was to the statement that the “cheap seats” are very low margin or money losers. The airline and first class ticket buyers needs the economy passengers just as much as vice versa. With the existence of economy-only planes and lack of 1st-class only planes, I’d argue that the “cheap seats” are what makes aviation viable, rather than being a money-loser.
> With the existence of economy-only planes and lack of 1st-class only planes, I’d argue that the “cheap seats” are what makes aviation viable, rather than being a money-loser.
On a typical flight, the revenue probably follows a Pareto distribution--20% of the passengers (first class) provide 80% of the revenue--but at the paper-thin margins of an airline, you still need the other 20%.
Economy-only flights are usually from economy-only carriers, which trade even thinner margins for not having to worry about the annoyances of catering to first class passengers.
Economy conditions are increasingly terrible because cost-sensitivity and easy-to-verify sources of pain (nonstop vs. layover flights) have a greater effect on consumer behavior than seat size and other creature comforts. With these conditions getting increasingly worse, economy flights become increasingly more cost-effective, and perhaps it becomes increasingly harder to keep the pampered first class passengers on the same airline or even the same plane as the economy passengers.
Also, first-class tickets aren't even at the very top of the market any more than Audi and Lexus are at the top of the automobile market. The top of the market is in charters and private jets. An airline that flies planes only for first class passengers is close enough to a charter airline that they might as well become a charter airline and bypass TSA and the other associated miseries of air travel.
Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#246Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you think they weren't going to leverage your phone number in other ways when you furnished it for "improved security"?
I distinctly remember reading "and we'll never use this number for other purposes than security". Everybody (including HN) was pushing for 2FA. People followed.
Pushing for 2FA != pushing for SMS codes. TOTP (Google Authenticator and friends) doesn't reveal any personal data.
Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was lucky enough to fly Global Services on United through my old boss' account at my old company. Flew internationally a couple of times and the level of attention was insane. Get to airport and they walk you to the lounge, past security, and then come grab you when you're ready to pre-board (before everyone including military). My connecting flight was delayed by 20 minutes, cutting down my connection time to 50 m…
Global Services is insane. Qualification requirements are insane, too. It's invite-only, based on unpublished criteria. It's speculated that when based at a hub airport like SFO, it takes about $75k in annual spend on full-fare United first of business tickets. There are a few other ways to qualify: fly 4 million miles with United, marry a million-miler who has GS, pre-pay $250k towards airfare for your company, or $…
Yeah it's totally nuts. To be honest, I regret seeing the other side and knowing I'll never taste that again ;)
Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#249The most obvious example of this in daily life is through airlines, where the difference is pretty transparent and you get night-and-day better service by being a loyal customer. With top status with AA and UA (EXP and 1K), you connected to U.S.-based very senior phone agents right away, who always make sure to take care of any issue that arises. 50min delay on your AA flight? No problem, sir, we are rebooking you on…
Tangent: Are there other people here who just refuse to sign up for any of these programs? I have family members who are super into frequent flyer programs, credit card points, etc, etc. But I don't like the cognitive load they introduce, and I don't like having to figure out how much I'm being manipulated in any given interaction. I get that I'm missing out on goodies, but they're paying for those goodies somehow, s…
I think you can find a happy medium.
I have a JetBlue card that I use for everything non-food spending. That gets me a free flight a year.
I have a capital one card I use for food. I get rewards. Every few months I get $25 back. I could hyper optimize, but nah, I'm happy with the system.
I have friends who do the whole shebang and I agree, it's too much: the focus is to keep you focused on pulling out that card because that's what CC co's want. More spending.
I am traveling a lot more for work, and I'm considering switching to a different card, but I still have no plans of going "all out" and card hopping.
Re: On Hold for 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't work on 90% of the HN crowd Hahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhaha. No.
You're right, not 90%. But predictive modeling requires a bunch of data points. This is probably one of the most privacy aware crowds on the internet. If you go to the extremes, sure, everyone is trackable. I don't work for any of these companies, so I don't know what I don't know. Feel free to elaborate.
The more you try to obfuscate your online sessions (eg: by disabling browser features, disabling JS, removing fonts, removing WebRTC, using the privacy-aware browser-of-the-day, etc. thus making your fingerprint even more unique), the more you stand out from the regular users crowd, the more automated tracking machines/algos get interested in you as an abnormal datapoint, the more you are paradoxically at risk of being tracked.