Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firefox!?

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c627627
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Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firefox!?

Post by c627627 »

EDIT: THIS WAS THE CAUSE, thank you Vitesse:
Vitesse wrote:How many times had you previously visited that site on Firefox? On Chrome? On IE? This is a standard method of pricing, employed by many websites - especially in the travel sector. If you have a cookie on your system which indicates you've visited previously, they know you're interested, so they bump up the price a little. The uninitiated just think 'Oh, that really cheap rate must have sold out while I was shopping around. It's still a good deal though. *Click*' If you'd cleared your site cookie first you'd probably have got the lower price.
===========

Original post:

I've noticed this before but finally decided to pin it down today.
Look at this crap, it is reproducable right now.
Same exact web site.
Same exact hotel.
Same exact room.

They are charging people a 6.66% premium just for using Firefox over Internet Explorer and Chrome.

If this is legal, is there anything we can do about this?

Proof:

http://c627627.com/IMG/Other/FirefoxCostsMore.jpg
Last edited by Daifne on December 16th, 2017, 8:56 am, edited 3 times in total.
Reason: removed img tags. Size of image breaking forum format.
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MarkRH
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by MarkRH »

Interesting.. if you change the user agent in Firefox, does the price change?
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malliz
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by malliz »

Yes it is illegal at least in my country. Vote with your feet and tell them why you wont be a customer
What sort of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
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Vitesse
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by Vitesse »

How many times had you previously visited that site on Firefox? On Chrome? On IE? This is a standard method of pricing, employed by many websites - especially in the travel sector. If you have a cookie on your system which indicates you've visited previously, they know you're interested, so they bump up the price a little. The uninitiated just think 'Oh, that really cheap rate must have sold out while I was shopping around. It's still a good deal though. *Click*' If you'd cleared your site cookie first you'd probably have got the lower price.
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c627627
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by c627627 »

Vitesse is correct.
I have multiple Firefox profiles and this is due to cookies not being 100% cleared, resulting in a higher price on an unclean Firefox profile.
Thank you.

You are also correct that this is not limited to travel purchases.
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c627627
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by c627627 »

Interesting tidbit: I used a User Agent Switcher Add-on
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... -switcher/

to do what was suggested earlier in the thread and found the price to be lower by $1 when using Firefox under IE8 Agent, rather than a clean Internet Explorer 8 original.


I will be booking more hotels soon and will definitely be experimenting with all this and posting the results.
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Wiggam72
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by Wiggam72 »

I don't travel much these days, but a few times year I will help a friend or relative shop for travel. I have the add-on Cookie Auto Delete installed. I've only been using for about 6 months or so.

Will that prevent the problem the OP presented? If it does, I'll pass the word on to those that don't have it. I've installed it on PC's I set up for someone.
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c627627
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by c627627 »

Here's what I found: Absolutely the prices fluctuate across browsers depending on what cookies you have in them.
Not only that, I found that they increase the price by 10% if you use a cash back site like ebates.
So you're getting 4% cash back but you are paying a 10% higher rate (sometimes) and that's a net loss of 6%.

The only way to avoid paying a premium is once you're finished your research and know what you want to buy, either clear out all cookies or use a different machine / phone / tablet to see if the price is the same with / without cashback sites and on different browsers. But your time is also worth $ so this isn't worth saving just a couple of $.
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Vitesse
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by Vitesse »

Image
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lovemyfoxy
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by lovemyfoxy »

OT, a little--
Watch what happens with the death of net neutrality. The cost will be passed on to us.
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Reflective
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Re: Why are sites charging us a premium just for using Firef

Post by Reflective »

Try using this site which searches all rhe hotel booking sites for the best deal. https://www.hotelscombined.com

Here's the results I got for the Narita View Hotel, Japan for the dates you mentioned.
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