I found an open-jaw ticket from June to August with Thai Airways for about 710 euros. Departing Brussels → Hong Kong, then Kuala Lumpur → Brussels.
I wanted to book the flight before going to bed on the same day I found it (a Tuesday! LOL). Guess what, it jumped to 766 euros. I was furious.
The next day, the same flights didn’t even show up on Google Flights. I was in panic mode. Only the crappy flights of over 800 euros with long layovers were shown to me.
Out of desperation, I cleared all the cookies on my mobile and laptop and set my VPN to Mexico, and used the incognito browser as usual. The fare I wanted was available AGAIN! I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I first wanted to buy the ticket on my phone, but it didn’t work, so I moved on to the laptop with no VPN installed. The good fare can still be found.
I instantly bought the tickets and now it feels so good to have peace of mind. I can finally focus on planning my itinerary.
I don’t get the psychology of making it more expensive the more you look at it. If I see the price drop on something, I’m more likely to purchase it. If I see it go up, I am going to keep searching for a better deal.
Olen said: @Vesper
To make you buy it now for fear it’ll go up more.
It’s a lot of money and these things add up. There should be some sort of price locking regulation on tickets, especially if they are flag carriers since they are state-backed.
@Zephyr
100%. I’ve literally had a ticket in my cart and in the middle of checkout, it raised by over $100. I was so furious I called United and they wouldn’t confirm if it used to be a different price.
Tavi said: @Vesper
It’s to stress you into buying it before it goes up again.
Plenty of shopping pages that have a clock counting down, unfortunately.
Amazon has it on free shipping.
I have closed many windows and never returned to it for that. I don’t think they’re always winning there. (I’m sure their metrics will say it’s working, but there’s a lot of bias going on.)
@Vesper
Depends on what you’re buying. With flights, there can be limited options for the dates you actually need, so if you see the price go up, you panic and buy before it goes up even more.
@Vesper
I just play it safe and use a ‘always private mode’ browser when flight shopping. Mullvad Browser is good for this, and for other activities where private browsing is preferred.
Valen said: @Vesper
I just play it safe and use a ‘always private mode’ browser when flight shopping. Mullvad Browser is good for this, and for other activities where private browsing is preferred.
@Vesper
More often than not, people looking at flights, especially if they do it multiple times, have already decided to go, so if they hike up the price, you’ll buy it anyway.
This is a common myth that actually holds no water. Your fare popping back up most likely had to do with you changing your VPN rather than clearing cookies.
Google Flights doesn’t use cookies to increase prices or hide fares. I’ve seen prices even go down. Fares can, however, disappear and reappear quickly, especially on non-standard routings.
Changing your geographic location with a VPN might have brought up results for a reseller still selling a specific fare, and I am glad you found the flight in the end. I don’t think the airline or Google Flights tracked your interest in the ticket and decided to increase the price.
I’ve searched for hundreds of tickets and have never seen better fares based on location, including with a VPN and use of incognito mode. Frequent travelers I know who have logged over 1 million miles have also never had luck with this.
Please keep using a VPN if you think it helps (it can’t hurt). I just think there is another reason why you found the fare again.
@Brett
I’m a MM and fly weekly, and you’re 100% right; it’s not cookies but dynamic pricing, delays in fare availability on different servers, and so on.
There was the famous glitch with American Airlines flights sold on the UK website that were always more expensive because it didn’t update properly with discounted fares for example.
The airlines don’t want flights to get more expensive for you; if you’re undecided, you may just end up not buying.
Oftentimes, there are also discrepancies due to accessing cached results from different servers, but that also doesn’t make a difference in which fares are actually bookable by the seller.
But people like to make up their own conspiracy theories anyway; everyone always thinks someone is out to get them specifically.