The will bump prices based on forecast demand but that’s for everyone, not just the person whose recently browsed.

I would have thought it will be illegal to apply different prices to different people?

Prices do change quickly across the board in the travel industry though. If you go back to it at a later date, there’ll be a good chance it’s changed, for everyone.

Exactly butcher. That is why trading standards got involved iirc.
Anyhow think there’s been enough confirmation from others that you don’t need to clear cache & cookies as you’ll get the same price as everyone else at that point in time.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc[/video]

[contains sweary bits, justified]

Well I went incognito as I checked a bunch of prices for flights to Dubrovnik in 2 weeks time and then went back and booked the first one I looked at for the same price started with. Not exactly a scientific sample but I’m happy.

Yep once somebody can post the screenshots from the difference browsing tracked and untracked I’ll believe it’s targeted. Nobody managed that yet? As for the group thing there will be pricing across the plane so if your group buys the last at a band the next will buy more expensive seats and so on. Virgin and qantas here tell you how many are left at the price.

Balancing demand with price is clever though, persuade those who are price sensitive to take the 6am flight and late night option while saving space on the nice times for those who are willing to pay for it.

Still £49 this am in normal mode and private.

It’s not illegal to charge people different prices for the same products. Do you think everyone who bought a brand new Ford Focus yesterday even from the same Ford Dealership got the same price and deal? The price is just what a vendor offers in exchange for a given product or service. They can offer whatever price they feel like and change it at will and that price can be negotiated and the purchaser can decide if the price is good or not and ultimately decide to buy or not.

Airlines stimulate demand by flexing seat prices – and they’re in constant competition with other airlines and the only way they can compete is to flex the ticket price. Not a Trading Standards Issue – unless there was some form of organised price fixing going on.

The thing that I would have thought was a trading standards issue is advertising a flight for a tenner and it actually costing you £60 after all the taxes and other hidden charges are slapped on after you’ve bought that £10 flight.

Local authorities do not have school holidays at the same time. Consequently I find the prices from East Midlands and Stansted vary considerably in response to local demand. This has saved us lots, even on cheap flights.

I thought it was well known that prices go up and up.

Forget your cache, it’s your I.P. address/location services you have to mask.

Frankenstein – Member
I thought it was well known that prices go up and up.

Yes but it’s not personal and it’s not based on you – hence nobody can post a pic of 2 separate devices showing 2 prices at the same time, If I try and book flight from here in Oz I reckon I will get the same price as you, the extra traffic may cause a price fluctuation and an increase but it’s not targeted to you.

Yes but it’s not personal and it’s not based on you – hence nobody can post a pic of 2 separate devices showing 2 prices at the same time

So you’re saying I’m lying?

It’s up now to a huge £50.49

Same price private and same price using my work phone.

I can only see one pic you posted Drac.

The one pic that showed the same price as North, who said it had gone up as he’d browsed the day before.

and that being the point, the price changes but it’s not personally targeted to you

Prices are unlikely to be static so it’s unsurprising you’d see them go up even without any clever stuff going on in your browser. The process behind it is probably not as simple as is just continuously raising them either.

But it’s probably a safe bet there’s plenty of clever stuff going on in your browser that’s aimed at you specifically as well as feeding into the ‘bigger picture’ changes. A while ago I needed to book a Friday and a Sunday night at a well-known budget hotel chain. Both nights were £45. Booked the Friday, and when I went to do the Sunday, boom- £80. Switched browsers and back to £45.

Forget your cache, it’s your I.P. address/location services you have to mask.

Nope, I’ve deleted their cookie and had the price drop 50% and then booked the flights at the cheaper rate (having had the price jump between first and second time looking).

Easy Jet a few years back.

IP address isn’t that useful if you think about offices, Unis, schools, librarys, where 100s of people are NAPTed behind a single (or handful) of public IPs.

and that being the point, the price changes but it’s not personally targeted to you

Errr! Did you read the title?

We booked flights to Alicante from Newcastle a few weeks back for flying this Saturday. I used skyscanner and went direct to the easyjet site, all in tracked browsing mode. Every time the price was the same, due to faffing around we took 3 weeks to finally get the flights booked. They never went up and are still the same price now.

A lot of this may be explained by the booking system reserving seats whilst people go through the purchase, but not actually finalising. As has been said, there’ll be a certain number of seats at each price, and once they’re gone (or temporarily appear to be gone), the price will go up (and might go back down if the cheaper seat purchase isn’t finalised).

An example from when I booked a train the other day: I found a train and clicked through to reserve a seat, but had to dash out before I paid for it. I came back a while later and my session had timed out, and when I went to book the same train, the price had gone up. I suspected my timed-out session had caused the last seat in that price band to get “stuck” as reserved in the system, so I left it and came back the next day. Luckily, the seat hadn’t been booked and it was back down at the previous price.

No reason why this couldn’t happen on e.g. Easyjet.