is this legal?

Or, if you have a fancy new browser- turn on "Private" browsing (it blocks cookies & doesn't track the visited sites in your browsing history).

Although, I am pretty sure they created the Private browsing feature with porn sites in mind.

@Brian Aubry:

Ummm, why wouldn't it be legal? You've never seen a new customer offer before? They're everywhere.

In the olden days I would find cheaper prices just switching from IE to Opera. I guess they figured Opera users were more web savvy and would shop around.

@ionerox: Probably for porn sites, yeah. But it's also useful on airline sites. Airlines hate you shopping around.

That's a clever one, but clearing cookies can be inconvenient.. I like staying logged into my email, FB, etc, consumerist.

Added advice might be similar to what ideagirl suggested: Keep a second browser around just for uses like this (e.g. switch from FireFox to IE when shopping online, and clear cookies on IE regularly).

@ionerox: Disabling cookies can ruin a site's functionality though..

How would this work for us to take advantage of? I have an amazon account already, so when I find the deals and login to my account, will I lose the deals?

I've always been curious about this type of reporting on this site.

If a business finds ways to exploit or rip off a consumer, everyone is (righteously) all over it.

Yet if a consumer finds an exploit to 'beat' the business (legitimate or otherwise) - it seems OK to not only do it, but to let everyone else know about it.

It also works to register with the site to use their "wish list" feature and / or fill your shopping cart, then do not complete the sale.

I estimate about 60% of the time, I'll get an email within a week or less offering a discount.

Obviously if you are a 'almost' customer, you are the very hotest prospect and most sites will give you an incentive to return, before you have time to purchase elsewhere and their window of opportunity slams shut.

Sites like amazon rely more heavily on log-in information to purchase products. So once you log in, wouldn't the cookie issue be a non-issue?

@Brian Aubry: Why would it not be?

@NotChoinski: Easy scenario.

You're shopping for a flat screen TV. You go to a number of sites. Some of the sites offer an incentive price or other special offers, maybe free shipping.

You decide where you're going to buy and return to the site. Since it, via the cookie, knows you're not a 'new' visitor, it presents a higher price or less desirable offer.

Clearing cookies enables you to potentially receive the offer they have already made (and I think unfairly withdrew upon your non-cookie cleared return).

This is not cheating the merchant, this is removing the merchant's ability to cheat YOU, via electronic bait and switch.

I wonder if shopping exclusively with Chrome's incognito feature would work. That leaves no traces, right?

@Brian Aubry: Some browsers reject cookies... and you're allowed to delete your own cookies anytime you want.. no company can force you to keep them.

So really, even if it was illegal, there'd be virtually no way of enforcing it.

@Brian Aubry: Seems the same as if Comcast or Verizon offers cable at an introductory rate to new subscribers.

@SkokieGuy: Various retailers do this with gift registries also. If you register and add items, they give you discounts on those items left in your registry after the wedding day/date of birth/whatever passes. I know Crate & Barrel, Target, and Macy's all send us 10-20% off coupons for anything we had left in our registry after my wife and I got married.

@emona: I think you can turn cookies off in IE, that would do it too.

Best Buy's e-commerce website is notorious for this as they use the information to track 'good' and 'bad' shoppers. There are models which watch for people who put a lot of stuff in their cart just to get prices and then never checkout. This is a great way to see that you don't get offered certain deals.

@trellis23: Amazon is the biggest offender. Numerous times I've put items in my shopping cart and returned a day later only to find the price has been jacked up 10%. Then, surfing into Amazon with a different browser I get the lower price.

They're lying, cheating Rats. But they do have decent prices overall.

I've encounteredthis many times with illuminations.com. The difference between clicking through to the site from an e-mail vs. a "rebate" site (ie. ebates.com) vs. an online ad can be quite big. It's also interesting that e-mail click-thrus will vary in discounts depending on which e-mail accunt is used. It makes me somewhat paranoid to always wonder if I am getting the best deal.

Just be careful deleting all of your cookies. You might be locked out of banking or work related sites and have to spend time to prove your identity again.

@ideagirl:

No, it's just that your IE cookies aren't used in Opera.

"Yet if a consumer finds an exploit to 'beat' the business (legitimate or otherwise) - it seems OK to not only do it, but to let everyone else know about it."

Isn't that how capitalism is supposed to work. Don't want me to "beat your deal"? then offer me a straight forward, no haggle price without add-ons, etc. Otherwise, loopholes are fair game.

2005?

Hell, Amazon was ripping off repeat customers as far back as the dot-com bust.

[news.bbc.co.uk]

Brian Aubry: An analogy would be if you went into a store you've never been into. The salesguy says "I'll give you a 10% discount if you buy today." You aren't sure if you want it, so you walk out.

The next day, you come back and ask if the 10% discount is still available. The sales guy recognizes you and says no. He gambles that since you returned, you probably shopped around and realized you can't get a better deal elsewhere so he doesn't have to sweeten it any more.

But instead of buying, you leave again and send in your spouse to see if (s)he can get the sales guy to offer the 10% discount again.

Deleting cookies is the online shopping equivalent of sending your spouse into the store. All that deleting the cookie does is prevent the website from recognizing that you're a repeat visitor.

@NotChoinski: So what? It's not called the Sunshine Rainbow Everything In Life Is Wonderfulist. It's the Consumerist. Emphasis on CONSUMER.

@tkozikow: Are these models hot? If so I'm ok with them watching me put stuff in their carts. Hell some people pay for that service.
LOL I'm just kidding.

Although it looks bad of them for doing so its all within their right. The same thing happens in every business. If you go into my business and ask me for a price just to leave to get it somewhere else don't expect me to let you know of any good deals in the future.

There isn't anything more wrong with this than the company offering you a different price just because you've been to the site before.

Now manipulating amazon gold box deals to get 5% off normally undiscounted merchandise....

@SkokieGuy:

I have ~60 items in my amazon cart - some in there for a few years. They are in there to either have on hand for when I need to round up to $25 or to wait until the price drops.

I check it almost every day to see what price changes have occurred (it tells you if items have increased or decreased since placing them in the cart) and have bought several items this way.

@nerdychaz: Add it to your cart first. Once in your cart, I think the deal will be preserved.

@quail: You are right, if you become a cookie-deleter you also have to be a password-rememberer. And you have to remember your favorite pet's maiden name and where your highschool mascot was born and so forth.

Personally I am all in favor of frequent cookie-zapping. It's a good idea either to memorize your login info or keep it safely written down -- don't trust your cookies to remember that stuff.

@quail: From the Help Desk: Getting "locked out" means your login ID and password no longer work. You do not get "locked out" by deleting your cookies. You simply have to enter your user ID and password again. If you find that you can't use a work-related or other legit site because it has to use cookies to manage your session, adjust your browser settings to accept cookies automatically for JUST that site and to delete cookies that hang on longer than just for the session.

IE7Pro (free program for Internet Explorer 7) allows you to decide on a per-cookie basis which cookies to accept and which to reject. It's bloody amazing how many sites have links to Amazon and Yahoo.

@ScottRose: yay for Opera.... F12-> disable cookies.....

or get www.kejut.com/operaportable for temporary uses if the site really needs cookies to load

i just use privoxy which gets rid of most cookies

In specific regard to hotels associated with casinos, the ultimate in cut-price rooms is found when one gets a gambler's card from the casino and types in the number to identify oneself as a repeat customer.

Even if you only blow $5.00 to $20.00 on a slot machine per trip as lark, hope springs eternal in the heart of the casino. During winter, I visit Harrah's in Atlantic
City on at least one sunny but cold day to enjoy their glass-domed solar heated pool area as a form of methadone to treat my Carribean beach addiction.
[www.harrahsresort.com]

They are a short drive from Manhattan, so it is a cheap trip, if one buys enough drinks from the bikini-clad pool servers to stay at the pool and avoid the casino itself.

Sometimes, loyalty is rewarded.

@Brian Aubry:

Absolutely its legal. Retailers are free to discriminate pricing by almost any classification. Only certain suspect classifications - race, gender, etc. - raise legal problems.

@Corporate_guy: @67alecto: @67alecto:

I tend to see the opposite happening in Amazon's shopping cart. For example, I as looking at a monophonic cartridge for a turntable--a pretty good deal at $25. I put it into my cart and went to a couple of other sites to check out some reviews of the cartridge. When I went back an hour or so later, the price had gone up to $90!

Granted, most of the increases aren't that dramatic, but on the whole, I'd say I see prices on my 'cart' items go up rather than down.

Vayama. I'm not sure if it's a case of cookie clearing or if pricing is really that volatile, but I cleared my cookies on a lark and the next search I performed produced a result that was $250 cheaper than previous searches for the same route.

Deleting cookies is especially important when shopping for airline fares, especially if you have bought tickets from a site before. If you bought a ticket for $500 to Florida lets say, then they know that you will be probably willing to pay that price again, so they wont offer you lower prices.

I figured this out with the travel sites. I would spend hours deciding on a flight and the prices seem to just go up and up..Then clear the cookies, and they were back down where i started! Try it

@ScottRose: Or do like I do for "sensitive financial sites" - have a seperate Firefox profile for them, complete with Adblock Plus, Noscript and other security settings set to high.
You can even use them at the same time if you set it like:
firefox -P "Bank Profile" -no-remote

@quail: Any financial web site that lets you log in to look at your account shouldn't be letting your browser remember any login information (and especially not passwords) anyway.

@speedwell: I allow/deny on a per-cookie basis in FF and I agree that it seems like most sites are trying to place third-party cookies in addition to their own.

@67alecto: I have hundreds of items in my cart just for this cool feature! There's one item that has been dropping 5 cents a day for the past month; I'm waiting to see how low it goes. I just wish amazon did it for gift lists too.

CCleaner (FileHippo) will clean them out every time you start your computer.

The future is "Local Shared Objects" aka Flash cookies. Sites are moving in that direction since people now have an easy time of blocking and deleting cookies. Go here to see what is on you machine:

[www.macromedia.com]

@Corporate_guy: Most online stores use a cookie to identify your cart, so you can't add to your cart unless you're logged in and accepting cookies.

@jfischer: Definiately. And Harrah's in particular seems to like to grab hold and never let go. At some point, perhaps, I will give in to their never-ending stream of postcards & offers.

I ran into this with Overstock.com. It made me decide never to buy from them.

@tkozikow: This is a great way for them to turn away paying customers.