My wife was online last night to buy our 2018 wall calendar from Amazon --
--since nobody knows what year it is in the first two weeks of January it makes sense to us to buy the calendar at a steep discount, especially since it is pretty much a decor item anyway --
-- and she made a joking comment about all the "You May Also Like" suggestions and Amazons use of cookies.
That comment reminded me of a CBC story I saw just before Christmas (link bellow) where they showed online shopping sites vary prices depending on your browsing history. I mentioned it to her and we did a test.. the original price she received was $12.99 plus shipping and there were 2 left. She cleared her cookies, shut down her browser, started a proxy server and tried again. After she reloaded there were 26 left at a price of $10.99 with FREE shipping. (we couldn't get back to the original price or there would be screen caps)
The story from Marketplace shows that this trick is not 100% but there is a strong case to be made for it. We have two computers in the house so from now on we will let cookies accumulate on hers (since she needs to run IE for work) and I'll keep mine cookie free..
(I hope this link is not ban-able .. they are a PUBLIC broadcaster)
January 10, 2018 at 08:53AM
