3 hoursGood on that JetBlue employee for showing a level of empathy. They were probably fired for it, but at least they went out with a bang.
- 10 hours
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.
- detren@sh.itjust.worksEnglish4 hours
I haven’t had this happen to me with European airlines I think. Is there maybe some law forcing them to keep steady prices? From what I’ve seen (though I don’t fly that often) prices don’t really fluctuate and just rise with more demand, with some last minute tickets going for pennies.
- Squizzy@lemmy.worldEnglish3 hours
If you check on a flight regularly it will show you a different price. That increase you are seeing is your own interest raising it.
Never accept cookies, use blockers
- Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
Because: “fuck you!” that’s why!
aka: uncontrolled late stage capitalism
- 14 hours
I’m not an economist, but this is probably technically true
- 11 hours
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.
- 14th_cylon@lemmy.zipEnglish10 hours
if i burn down your house, the gdp grows, because lot of people now have work rebuilding it.
Yup. But, that dollar changes hands far more times in the society with higher costs. That’s a good thing, assuming costs don’t dwarf income
- hayvan@piefed.worldEnglish5 hours
Each time money moves: one trade happened. Someone bought, someone sold something. It’s all activity. Money moving around fast: a lot of activity, people getting what they want. Money sitting still: stagnation, no work done, no production etc.
That’s the theory. Of course reality is a bit more complicated. People doing volunteer work is often net positive for humanity but won’t show up in economic metrics.
- 2 hours
There’s also the fact that a lot of those dollars moving are against people’s will or for stupid, inefficient reasons.
If we each paid each other a thousand bucks an hour not to hit each other then that grows GDP without doing anything useful.
- Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish57 minutes
Every time I trim my head I remind myself Im stealing the gdp increase from the state and chuckles…
Of course, I also chuckle when I burn sticks in the spring because Im burning faschists (from the latin word fasces) so my sense of humour is not very high
Ok, but why should people get what they want?
I’m in Vietnam at the moment, lots of people work simple manual jobs and just get by. They don’t have a lot, but they’re friendly, welcoming, and generally happy.
Meanwhile, the weekend before last I was in Singapore where loads of money is constantly moving around … and it did not feel like a good place to be.
A 300MM Ferrari and a 300MM new hospital generate the same GDP.
- 8 hours
Oh Uber absolutely does this! I drive for them occasionally, and sometimes I’ll see price hike a little and not for very long. Then I tried to use it one time drunk at a bar ~2 miles away. Checking back and forth for about an hour or went from ~$70 to ~$30. And shocker, the driver said he was only getting a few bucks on the surge premium.
- Alberat@lemmy.worldEnglish3 hours
one time i saw uber was $60 bc i was in downtown so i walked into a residential area and it dropped to $30. the driver came from downtown to pick me up.
- Fondots@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
I once bought a couple copies of a book as an inside joke for a couple friends.
It was not at all a popular book, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ve never heard of it or it’s writer, and odds are you’d probably hate it if you did ever read it.
I think when I bought them they were going for about $5 a pop.
And immediately after I ordered them the price shot up to like $15
I can only assume that the algorithm assumed that something happened that made that book popular all of a sudden, instead of just one asshole buying a couple copies to give to his asshole friends as a joke.
Took a few months before the price dropped down again.
- 8 hours
Was the book Ulrich Haarbürste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm?
- 7 hours
It’s actually one of my favorite books. Despite the title, it is shockingly wholesome and, I can’t stress this enough, it is in no way sexual or erotic in any way.
- flandish@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
this … sounds like the kind of reply that may be true or may result in an odd new kink.
Not surprised. Always book tickets in private browsing, preferably with a VPN. Expect to get upcharged otherwise.
- pulsewidth@lemmy.worldEnglish12 hours
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.
- 11 hours
I am going to vote unlike millions of Americans who don’t
They say you can’t be arrested for anything you do in a voting booth. There’s a dude who smokes a joint every election as a protest and to prove a point. I plan to just sit down and cry when I get my turn in the booth.
- 8 hours
- lost_faith@lemmy.caEnglish59 minutes
Good ol doug fraud, screwing Ontario at every chance. At least his buddies are doing fine… Wish this province would realize how bad the con(artist)s for our future
- Pycorax@sh.itjust.worksEnglish11 hours
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.
- 12 hours
The best I can do is give tariff refunds to companies and fuck over the lower class.
- FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish11 hours
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.
- 11 hours
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.
- yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish10 hours
My answer to this is always “I opened an incognito window, effectively the same thing”
- unitedwithme@lemmy.todayEnglish8 hours
That didn’t matter for me recently. On a site, flights in cart, looked at rental car for <5 minutes and the outbound flights jumped ~$60/ticket in that time “due to demand” when the flight was 80%empty…
Got on my phone, on data (so new browser, new IP) still prices are higher. Hopped on my old phone over VPN to change region, checked out a different leave date, checked a couple, went back to my original date and flights were $40 cheaper (so still $20 more than before) but they gotta know based on Geo IP and time of inquiries it’s probably all the same person, smh.
What a scam!!
- yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish5 hours
Yes but I more meant about them skirting accountability by making them clear their cookies
