A friend has also seen Southwest do that. If he’s searching for a flight, and then goes back to book it a day or so later, it’s higher. But not on wife’s computer, where no search was done. Grrrr…!

I hate it so much. Seriously. It feels like it should be illegal.

YEP. I would strongly like surveillance pricing to be illegal.

Teacher/military discounts? Sure! Off-season discounts, when a business is short on customers? Sure!

But different prices for two customers based on each individual’s “likely price toleration” a la Amazon or Instacart: no.

“We know from your camera-read license plate in the CVS parking lot who you are, and have instantly pulled together your desperation index: you have a small kid and it’s 2am and you’re scheduled to work tomorrow and you’ve recently searched online for “fever of 102F and moaning” and also searched for where generic children’s tylenol can be found at an open store nearby and there’s nowhere else open right now and you just got a paycheck and your insurance has an ER copay of $100. In conclusion, you’ll be willing to pay at least $30 for that generic children’s tylenol in this situation instead of the normal $4…” Then ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Playing off individual peoples’ desperation or state of distractedness or lack of options to gouge them specifically, charging them through the nose for what they have to buy, without them even knowing how much they’re getting bilked? NOPE. (and ditto for gig labor payments: figuring out when people have quit their other part-time job since their gig labor job has been paying well enough and *then* lowering their payment-per-job as much as will be “tolerated” in their new situation: evil, should be illegal. Pay the same for the same amount and quality of work rather than doing this garbage of “hm, you have a credit card bill coming due, we can pocket more profits from you and keep you working longer hours while you’re trying really hard to pull together this amount of money.”)

That’s terrible! Good grief.