
Why are prices online so unpredictable these days? - ericglyman
https://blog.paribus.co/2015/06/28/why-are-prices-online-so-unpredictable/
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chrisamiller
The service mentioned here (Paribus) seems great, but there is no way in hell
I'm giving them unfettered access to my mailbox to scan for receipts. I
understand that the balance between privacy and convenience is different for
everyone, but this is way beyond my comfort level.

~~~
ericglyman
Hey Chris, one of the founders of Paribus here. Totally understand where
you're coming from. One of our key goals is to make a service that's so easy
to use that you never have to think about it (it will work in the background
to save you money on all your purchases).

Something that we often recommend is to create a separate email account for
just your online purchases and promotions. That way you can have the benefits
of automated price protection on your purchases, and fully separate your
personal account. Happy to chat anytime on this too -- eric@paribus.co

~~~
seanp2k2
That's a possibility, but managing a separate email account just to use your
product isn't a workable solution for many people. I'm sure you're aware of
[http://camelcamelcamel.com/camelizer](http://camelcamelcamel.com/camelizer) ;
could you do something similar?

~~~
ericglyman
Absolutely. It's a good point, but I think that option is actually even more
of a hassle in practice.

From much more experience doing this than I ever imagine I'd have, having to
enter each and every purchase manually, deal with alerts, and then manually go
back and forth with customer service is painful. There's more work to do on
our end (we're early stage). But extreme user simplicity is what we're going
for.

~~~
vixsomnis
Providing an option for manual forwarding for power users or the slightly
paranoid would be nice. I use a paid email service (Fastmail) to minimize data
mining, so I can't just make a new account for online shopping. I'd have to
either pay for a new account or set up a free one, but giving my purchase
history to Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo, would largely defeat the purpose of my
paid email account. Amazon already collects enough data on me.

I really like the idea of the service, though. It just doesn't work for me as
it is right now...

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biot
If you're looking at stuff on Amazon, CamelCamelCamel is your friend. Check
out historical prices for most items and create alerts for when the price
drops to what you want to pay for it.

~~~
mysql102
Try PriceZombie - over 100 stores and it does price comparison between them.

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Dwolb
It seems like a more interesting approach to take advantage of price
discrimination would be to execute 'persona swaps'.

That is, if Amazon is offering me a microwave at $100 and offering you the
same microwave for $120, could we digitally switch places so you could order
the microwave at $100 if you wanted?

A common method of e-retailer price discrimination is coupons so it'd be
interesting to do real-time swaps in these situations too.

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RyanShook
I tried out Paribus after it was on PH. It connected to my Gmail and Amazon
accounts, scanned for a couple hours but didn't show me any opportunities for
savings/rebates out of hundreds of transactions. Love the concept but probably
won't be coming back.

~~~
ericglyman
Hi Ryan, founder here. Just seeing now -- what happened on your end? Did
purchases fail to load? Nothing drop in price? Would love to be able to learn
from a not so great experience

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steaminghacker
i get this with flight tickets. they go up whilst im booking. If i don't book
but wait, they go back down. anyone know how this works?

~~~
aikah
Well they track your IP and have some models based on behavior studies where
they figured out how they can extract more money from you. In fact it is a mix
of algorithms and techniques, Tickets also vary depending on the day of the
week, the hour when you check the price, your location and even the browser
you are using or the OS!. I find it totally unethical but I guess that's what
"maximizing profit" means for these merchants.

~~~
seanp2k2
Yep, and so as a savvy consumer, I'm willing to modify referral URLs,
construct false histories by sharing cookies or making cookies specifically to
visit other sites which would lower my price, switch user agents out, and do
quite a bit of other stuff which would take me only a few minutes to save
possibly $50-100. My competition is the average consumer who will do none of
this, so in the arms race, I can always be far ahead of I'm willing to invest
some time to experiment and reverse-engineer the algorithms.

~~~
rokhayakebe
The Saving Game.

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comrade1
Install in your browser disconnect (2?) and cookie cutter (I think that's the
name - sorry, on cellphone). It's a completely different experience on the
web. Your cookies are deleted every session and all ad/monitoring links are
blocked.

Everyone thinks that this is the first time you visited their website.

~~~
JetSpiegel
"Self-Destructing Cookies" on Firefox.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-
destruct...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-
cookies/?src=search)

~~~
dopeboy
Is there an equivalent for chrome?

~~~
roymurdock
Edit - Try this: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
cookies/iahecg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
cookies/iahecghojagkcoehfhfknajofkokndjm)

