My answer to this is always “I opened an incognito window, effectively the same thing”
Airlines ABSOLUTELY change their prices if you repeatedly check routes to a city. I have watched them change by over $100 over a few hours a day when contemplating a trip using their flight searches.
I now do all the flight route and time checking with a browser private window, no location being served, and VPN with an exit far from where I am, then use a phone on a cellular network to do any booking or vice versa in order to prevent tracking or some sort of identifying hash they might grab.
It’s such a cheapass scam to basically gouge a customer based on interest.
Why does everything have to be such a fucking scam?
Scams improve GDP
I’m not an economist, but this is probably technically true
GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced in a country. A legal scam can hide as a service and get counted.
This is why cars are good for GDP but mass transit isn’t, because a lot more cost goes into a car than a bus on a per rider basis.
The same goes for health insurance. Simply paying a doctor for services is far less GDP than paying an insurance company who then pays the doctor after taking a cut.
Once you realize what GDP measures a lot of what countries do makes sense.
if i burn down your house, the gdp grows, because lot of people now have work rebuilding it.
Not surprised. Always book tickets in private browsing, preferably with a VPN. Expect to get upcharged otherwise.
In countries that are not the US, they just don’t stand for that shit and make it illegal.
You’re not wrong, but we don’t all have the capability to move to another country, for both legal and financial reasons.
We’re not saying Americans should move somewhere else; we’re saying Americans (collectively) need to fix their broken ass country, looking at others for inspiration.
Easier said than done OFC.
I am going to vote unlike millions of Americans who don’t
Ideally that would be the case but there’s non-US countries that also have this shit unfortunately.
JetBlue is hardly the first airline to fall into the limelight for potentially changing its prices based on a user’s browser history.
The Federal Trade Commission has studied surveillance pricing methods since 2024, and found retailers often used people’s personal information to set individualized pricing information. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said he “directed staff to start examining” if new disclosure rules are needed by companies during a Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month.
According to a California audit last month which analyzed open network traffic across more than 7,600 popular websites scanned from California, over half (55%) of sites set advertising cookies even after users explicitly rejected them. More than three-quarters (78%) of consent banners failed to enforce the user’s choice at all, while Google ignored 86% of opt-out requests.
or, OR… We could ban the fuckery
The best I can do is give tariff refunds to companies and fuck over the lower class.
Earn $10B doing illegal stuff, settle with the FTC for a $10 million dollar fine and don’t have to admit wrongdoing and/or a deferred prosecution agreement with no teeth or oversight.
Not likely under Trump sadly
