Netflix Premium in the Netherlands: €13.99 a Month in Chrome, €15.99 in Firefox | Hacker News Reader

Netflix Premium in the Netherlands: €13.99 a Month in Chrome, €15.99 in Firefox

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26 pointsFreak_NL12 comments

When using certain user-agents the result is either €13.99 or €17.99

Run this command a few times:

  curl -s -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0" -c /tmp/curl-cookiejar -L 'https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform?locale=nl-NL' | grep -Eo '"planPriceAmount":{"fieldType":"String","value":"[0-9]+\.[0-9]+"}'

Yeah, not sure why this is causing such a freak out. Is this not standard A/B testing? Maybe A/B testing user agent isn't the best differentiator, but at my current gig, we've considered pushing a pricing difference based on Mac vs PC as Apple products are more of a Luxury device compared to the average PC.

It could even be a persistent fingerprint issue. Perhaps their A/B system is fingerprinting, and the two browsers are consistently fingerprinting in such a way as to produce a more deterministic split.

The market will pay what the market will bear, so if you don't like the higher price, then don't buy. Game the system and shop for the lower price if you want to drive the price lower.

These kind of 'freakouts' are just the information asymmetry between sellers and buyers being reduced. The buyers very reasonably assumed they all got the same price, and they're upset that this turned out to be false.

They're probably instinctively aware that, if they allow too much of this price discrimination to creep in, they'll be poor no matter how much money they make, as the prices they're charged will adjust accordingly.

As a Mac user, macs are not luxury devices. They are a little more expensive for a vastly (in my opinion) more coherent and Unix-y experience, in comparison to Windows machines. In reality I spent a few hundred more on a computer that I’ve used going on 5 years now, recouping the extra cost with a few more hours of freelance work.

If any software I use suddenly charged more for Mac than Windows, I would use a different product immediately.

How is more expensive for a better experience not a luxury product?

A better experience here means just a little bit more bearable to use, not a luxury product experience.

I'd equate it more to the difference between spending an extra $100 on a solid pair of boots which last 4x longer (cheaper over time) - we're not talking diamond-encrusted phones here

(That said, Apple are doing a great job of losing this value prop)

When I've bought Macs they've often been an older model - luxury-pricing-wise that's nothing next to an Alienware or Surface

According to the participants in that Twitter thread, the prices are somewhat randomized in a certain range (€13 to €18).

Some people suspected that this might be A/B-testing similar to the tests Netflix ran in Italy, but others are reporting that the price they end up with after going through the subscription process matches what they were initially shown.

>others are reporting that the price they end up with after going through the subscription process matches what they were initially shown.

That's consistent with an A/B price test.

"A Netflix spokesperson gave the site the same response it always provides when asked about similar tests, that not all users will see the prices, and that Netflix might never use the new tiers. The test can still be very revealing for the company, as it’ll inform Netflix how much customers might be willing to spend for access and how price hikes might be perceived by new users." https://bgr.com/2019/02/28/netflix-price-hike-more-expensive...

That is the Italian test, but when I try to open a new account I get shown the exact price shown to me in the 'test': €15.99 in Firefox that is (but this will be random for anyone giving this a go).

Freedom comes with a price.

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