Dynamic pricing on Expedia - is it legal / ethical?

Lemongrass

I recently booked a hotel on Expedia.com. I did my research and found the hotel I wanted, which was listed as costing £567. I wanted to book through Quidco to get cashback, so I opened up a new browser and navigated to the hotel through Quidco. When I got there, I was now quoted £601 for the same room, even though the price remained at £567 on my other browser (I refreshed the page to check).

I believe this is called 'dynamic pricing'... possibly to take account of any cashback I was about to earn. My question is, is this fair / legal? And does it happen often?

wealdroam

Lemongrass wrote: »

I recently booked a hotel on Expedia.com. I did my research and found the hotel I wanted, which was listed as costing £567. I wanted to book through Quidco to get cashback, so I opened up a new browser and navigated to the hotel through Quidco. When I got there, I was now quoted £601 for the same room, even though the price remained at £567 on my other browser (I refreshed the page to check).

I believe this is called 'dynamic pricing'... possibly to take account of any cashback I was about to earn. My question is, is this fair / legal? And does it happen often?

Open a second window without using a cashback site. Does the price remain at the lower level?

I suspect that it is nothing to do with cashback, more likely that the higher 'interest' in a particular item, the higher they feel they can push the price.

Whichever it is, yes it is legal.

Sorry, I don't know how to answer the "is it ethical" question.

bod1467

Try going via Quidco using a separate web browser.

cono1717

Or open the browse using its private mode (Usually Ctrl+Shift+N)