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Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

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Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#71

Post by mratzloff »

It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago.

I just bought tickets to Las Vegas on Friday. I got through the checkout process (choosing a flight and a hotel) and then they said there was a "problem" and kicked me back to the beginning of the process. I went through it again, choosing the exact same flights (with the same number of seats available) and the prices were 20-30% higher. The available seats were identical (I was buying for a same-day flight so there were only a handful remaining and it was easy to see that they were the same). I went ahead and bought since it at was the last minute, but I made a mental note not to ever bother coming back.

It's happened so frequently to me on this and other aggregators like Travelocity that it may even be intentional.

Perhaps they display competitive prices so they will be chosen by people who are comparison shopping (either manually or through a site like kayak.com). Then once you've asserted your willingness to buy by moving through the flight selection process they randomly restart you with higher prices on the (probably likely) belief that you have already mentally committed to Orbitz.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#72

Post by binarycrusader »

benmanns wrote: post #62

Another curious statistic: according to the sales numbers on http://www.humblebundle.com/ , Linux users on average pay more ($12.50) for the choose-your-price bundle than Mac ($9.99) or Windows ($7.98) users.

But you left out the counter-balance: far more revenue is generated from Mac and Windows users in total. So while Linux users are willing to pay more, there's far less of them willing to pay at all.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#73

Post by mitchty »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #36
mitchty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be easy enough to compare prices on windows/linux in a vm on my mac though. And take note of the companies that do it. Something else to add to comparison services as well, aka does site xyz.com discriminate based on os/browser?

Much easier to use an user agent switcher plugin while in incognito mode.

True, but user agent switching won't get around someone testing for browser features and ignoring the agent string.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#74

Post by natrius »

mratzloff wrote: post #71

It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago. I just bought tickets to Las Vegas on Friday. I got through the checkout process (choosing a flight and a hotel) and then they said there was a "problem" and kicked me back to the beginning of the process. I went through it again, choosing the exact same flights (with the same number of seats av…

The innocuous possibility is that prices change several times during the day of a flight, and price changes for incomplete orders cause bad system behavior and a strange user experience.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#75

Post by el_presidente »

tedunangst wrote: post #32
eridius wrote: post #7

Are they simply showing pricier offers, or are they showing the exact same offers but with the prices raised? The former is annoying but not inherently evil, but the latter would be terrible.

The article title is far less ambiguous than the HN title: "On Orbitz, Mac Users Steered to Pricier Hotels"

Hacker News shows more sensationalist titles to Hacker News users.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#77

Post by rwolf »

bigiain wrote: post #70
InclinedPlane wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on your moral code, of course.

We knew that _downward_ differential pricing worked (in terms of increasing conversions) - a popup saying "Hi, you're a return visitor to our website, we can discount this room rate 10% if you book today) always increased conversions. We sure as hell _experimented_ to see if the decrease in conversions by bumping margins (and hence prices) up was worthwhile in terms of total profit. I'd happily make an argument that…

Your phrasing here suggests that you work for orbitz or a similar company. Is that accurate?

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#80

Post by derda »

mratzloff wrote: post #71

It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago. I just bought tickets to Las Vegas on Friday. I got through the checkout process (choosing a flight and a hotel) and then they said there was a "problem" and kicked me back to the beginning of the process. I went through it again, choosing the exact same flights (with the same number of seats av…

It is also possible, that they show you a cached price first and one step before the confirmation they check back with the airline if they price really is the same. In your case the airline might have increased the fare, for whatever reason, shortly before you started your booking process.
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