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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Just a anecdotal data point: a few months ago I took a trip overseas and had to do it on a pretty short time schedule (<a week). As a grad student this is obviously tough to budget. So I load up my Mullvad Browser and jump around VPN points. Everything was breaking. They very much did not like that browser and the VPN was the cherry on top. But because of this effort I saved about $500 (NYC seemed to be the best location fwiw and I'm on the west coast and flew to Asia).

This felt rather insane and anti-competitive. Each time I changed any variable (including restarting the browser) the price changed and those warnings about number of tickets left would dramatically vary. There is no doubt that that these companies were lying to me. How am I supposed to price compare and we have a competitive market when it's stochastic with high variance? I know airlines claim to work on auctions and economists love auctions, but this wasn't even an auction. This was they knew I was in a bind and just added a dice roll to the price. That's only something a monopoly can do. I don't think this is about being able to select seats, check bags, or buy food.

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> There is no doubt that that these companies were lying to me.

They're not lying to you, the 'number of seats left' refers to the number of seats available at that price - in the lowest available fare bucket. Not on the plane itself.

What you ran into are called point of sale restrictions. Lower fares are made available to people buying in different markets.

They don't really work on auctions, they charge everyone what they think they'll pay.

If something is that confusing and misleading then it’s still dishonesty

If the recipient is deceived, its a lie, regardless of weasel words

Who's been deceived? You were offered a price, and you can pay it or not pay it. If you pay it you get your ticket. I don't really understand what the deception is.

Is it any more of a deception than someone who comes into a store with a coupon getting 10% off, while you, without a coupon pays full price? Or any more of a deception than Target charging higher prices at outlets in SF and NY than they do in Texas? Or not telling you how many more of an item is around back?

The person who was pressured by the false statements of ticket scarcity

They're not saying there's only that many seats left on the plane - you can get a sense of that by pulling up the seat map. They're saying there's only that many seats left at that price point. It's incumbent on the buyer to know that I think. That information is not hidden.

Which is a useless statement with dynamic pricing. It's ONLY there to put pressure on the visitor.

It provides information to the searcher. If I'm looking, I generally search for 1 seat, even if I eventually plan to book for a few people. It's useful for me to know how many people I can book at that price point.

>They're saying there's only that many seats left at that price point.

...which is a lie. If the tickets stop selling the price will drop. If there's a signal indicating a future spike in demand they will jack up the price irrespective of sales.

It might, or it might not go down in response to a lack of sales. Some airlines continue to segment their customers by elastic vs. inelastic demand. As departure date approaches their customer mix changes, and it might make sense to raise prices instead of lower them even if it leads to unsold inventory. After all there's a secondary market for unsold inventory - frequent flyer mile redemptions.

Its not as cut and dried as you're making it out to be.

It is accurate at the time presented. You can buy N seats for $X each, before the next seat is more expensive. That's all you can really ask.

Let's say that you and I each buy an airline ticket. We're sitting in the same coffee shop and buying it at the same time from the same airline provider. We're both buying the cheapest ticket available. Let's make even another assumption! Suppose we can buy the same ticket! Would you find it deceitful if we were shown different prices?

Stop lying

Right, why on Earth would anyone call making up new definitions of "seats left" and "lowest fare," changing the price based on purposely hidden variables and not admitting it, and tricking users into believing extra fees are necessary "lying?" I'm sure it's all clearly posted somewhere. It reminds me of a passage from a famous book of marketing advice:

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

They always say “seats left at this price,” and the “lowest fare” is in the context of the current search results, which are individual, not in the context of all searches by everyone everywhere, which seems an unreasonable standard.

That doesn't capture the range of their dark patterns. I am literally testing this now. I am on Delta website going through the booking process (redirected form Google Flights). The price at Google Flights was $578. Delta website is showing that 1 seat is available (at this price). When it prompts to select the seat there are no seats available at this price. I am offered to upgrade to Comfort+ for $60. I am already 10 min into the process. And just to preempt your possible argument: when I go to the previous page it still shows that 1 seat is available at this price.

Google Flights runs on a cache, so it can be out of date. This is mentioned in their fine print somewhere.

Delta's own website should be accurate though. I think this is actually legally required. If you can take some screenshots and contact customer support I guarantee you someone will get yelled at, and you may get some sort of compensation.

I know this because I was once the person who would get yelled at (not for Delta). If you could include the time and your local timezone, as well as the market (your country or VPN country) that would help out the person who's going to get yelled at.

Just to clarify, I say "yelled at" as a bit of an exaggeration. But these customer reports were always a big deal where I worked. It usually boiled down to a stale cache issue. But because the airline controls the cache and ticket inventory[0], cache invalidation should be perfect, sans a few ms latency.

[0] Kind of... Not really. It's a mess how the systems really work. But they do get messages for each ticket purchase.

I have shared the screenshots in this thread.

https://imgur.com/a/X923fSo

I don't trust Delta enough to have any desire to reach out to them.

Your use of the word “seat” is overloaded - the one in fare search buys you passage on the plane. More formally we’d call that a ticket. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to assign a seat during checkout if the ones available for complimentary assignment have already been assigned by others.

And that’s not a problem, if you don’t care where specifically you sit. Once check-in opens you’ll be assigned a seat. Including from the inventory that normally requires you pay extra. Without an additional fee.

If you do care where you sit you can elect to pay extra in advance.

A “seat” in the search results is booking passage on the plane. You are looking at optional, complementary advance assignments. Those are taken at the moment.

I hope that clears it up!

I wouldn’t call this a dark pattern - some airlines like Southwest don’t even let you select seats at all! Some airlines require you pay a fee for any and all seats, mostly low-cost carriers. This is just an example of unbundling. If you value a specific seat assignment you can pay for it. If you don’t, no problem, your flight is cheaper.

That's not what the clear explicit agreement between the two parties is in this case. Why do sellers list any product details at all?

Both Google and Delta have this in writing: I am paying for a seat I can select. If that's not included in the sale - no problem, don't list it.

I am not against seats being sold unassigned. I am not against charging an additional fee for being able to select a specific seat. And this argument is not about that.

The dark pattern is listing "free seat selection" and "1 seat available" before I choose this flight and agree to continue the booking process, while then changing the value of the product by asking me to pay an additional fee for the seat selection. The seats in the main cabin are available (see screenshots). They are just not available for me to select for free. If Delta knows that there are no selectable seats at this price left on the flight, why do they include that in the listing?

I am really not sure where this disconnect is coming from. I am not arguing against all additional fees, not arguing against seating being assigned at check-in. Just make it clear before I commit to the process, so I don't waste time. This is the definition of a dark pattern.

> Both Google and Delta have this in writing: I am paying for a seat I can select. If that's not included in the sale - no problem, don't list it.

No they don't, and no you're not lol. You're paying for transportation from the origin to the destination. Not on a specific flight number, not on a specific number of connections, not on a specific mode of travel even. Seat selection in advance is an optional service that may or may not cost money. You're getting a seat. Not a specific seat, not until you go through the selection. Your fare entitles you to free selection subject to inventory.

In fact the contract of carriage actually requires them to get you from the origin to the destination by whatever means is reasonable and appropriate. The CoC actually allows them to substitute your flight for a train or bus if reasonable and appropriate. The way it's written a horse and buggy may work too. United has codeshared along the northeast corridor with Amtrak historically. Even busses. For instance from Ottawa to Montreal Air France had one with a flight number that connected to an onward Paris flight.

That's something I could see someone being upset about, but the definition of 'seat' (once you know, you know forever) feels like a weird hill to die on. The interchangeable use of 'seat' and 'ticket' is an English colloquialism.

Note that Delta considers Comfort Plus a separate cabin not Main Cabin. If there's no Main Cabin seats at check-in they'll upgrade you.

> That's not what the clear explicit agreement between the two parties is in this case.

The explicit agreement is actually to the Contract of Carriage. For instance. [1]

> Delta will exercise reasonable efforts to transport you and your baggage from your origin to your destination with reasonable dispatch, but published schedules, flight times, aircraft types, seat assignments, and similar details reflected in the ticket or Delta’s published schedules are not guaranteed and form no part of this contract. Delta may substitute alternate Carriers or aircraft, change its schedules, delay or cancel flights, change seat assignments, and alter or omit stopping places shown on the ticket as required by its operations in Delta’s sole discretion.

Seat selection forms no part of the Contract of Carriage.

Credit where due to Delta, they even have it in Plain English! Not just legalese.

[1] https://www.delta.com/us/en/legal/contract-of-carriage-dgr

Thanks. The next time I submit my "interest in availability" of a "certificate" for "transportation from the origin to the destination" on a "web service" affording a "data exchange between a service provider and a private entity requesting the certificate", I will make sure to hire a team of lawyers to look into ToS of all parties involved.

How could anyone confuse the words "free seat selection" and "1 left at this price" with anything other than "you are buying whatever, we really don't care and can charge for anything we want regardless of what's written in any listings". Silly me.

Saying that, I think I am starting to get it. My mistake was not looking into the origin and the legal definition of the word "seat" before attempting to book a flight.

But just to make sure I resolve this issue once and for all, could you please help me with a few more legal definitions?

What do these words actually mean: "reservation", "flight", "buy", "payment", "free", "selection", "person", "destination", and "confirmation"? Thanks again!

Let me put it plainly for you. You are buying a seat in a cabin on a plane at a price point. Which specific seat may vary. Everything else is on a best-effort basis.

Does this really diverge from your expectations?

I'm having a hard time believing someone could be confused by this.

Do the people who design these dark patterns get paid more than honest people?

What are the LinkedIn keywords used to identify these roles?

Is it along the lines of “growth hacking?”

There has to be a name for this job and I am just too dumb and naive to know it at the moment.

Help, please.

I'm just going to quote hanzmanner (in the sibling's children's comment)

> For a tech forum it is surprising how many commenters in this thread don’t understand what are “dark patterns”

I think people just don't get it. Maybe because people just aren't thinking about how things couple and the interactions. Maybe because no one wants to be the bad guy so don't think too hard about it? There could be a lot of reasons. Could even be that people are more worried about job security so just deal with it.

Fair enough. So how would someone brag about accomplishing this in their work history?

I ask this as a simple man who is looking for a job, and who is contemplating words that go on resumes.

Simplest: “increased division’s revenue in a complex and novel way?”

Or, even simpler “implemented dynamic pricing?“

> So how would someone brag about accomplishing this in their work history?

- Performed user studies that led to x% growth in product revenue

I don't think there would be anything that would specifically flag a resume entry as the employee being the one to implement dark patterns, but I'm just guessing here. Because things like dynamic pricing or user studies aren't inherently wrong. Dark patterns are wrong because they're manipulations. The clearest example being raising prices and then discounting them back to the same price. Amazon does this as well as Walmart.

I interviewed at a travel company. One thing someone said they didn't like about working there was that they're customers are really the airline and hotel chains that pay them, and anything that closes the deal at a higher price is what they'd do. UX "improvements" tested with A/B testing for sales optimization.

A/B testing, sales funnel, conversion rates

"Revenue Management"

This isn't dark pattern stuff, revenue (or yield) management is forecasting variable future demand for an expiring asset (airline seat, hotel room) and trying to optimally set pricing in order to match your supply along various points on the demand curve. Nobody's trying to "trick" anyone, just setting different prices and incenting early and flexible bookings while raising prices at high-demand times.

A bit more generally, they also ran into dynamic pricing or as it existed in every transaction before the 1870s, namely haggling.

It was only after the rather recent invention of the price tag that consumers themselves were commodified which always involves a level of abstraction and smoothing over of differences, in this case, by price.

Make no mistake, the reason it feels deceptive is that "Bargaining is always adversarial."[1] When one's economic milieu is the egalitarianism of being equal before price, of course bargaining feels deceptive, slimy, and wrong.

1. Bill Sanders, Frank Mobus, Creative Conflict: A Practical Guide for Business Negotiators, Harvard Business Press,2021

An unnecessarily kind way to coat the dark pattern that fuzzes the BATNA.

If I was able to haggle I might not have such a problem with it. But this cannot possibly be called haggling, as there is no ability to communicate with somebody and make a counter-offer.

You're haggling with a system and on its terms.

One of those ways of communicating is setting your location via VPN. This is just what it feels like to haggle with a non-human system. Would that we weren't required to set aside our own humanity to do this, but this is haggling for a more inhuman age.

You can't really haggle with a computer system can you? And even if we'd accept that as haggling the company has way more power in the transaction. This just seems allowing the company to capture ever more of the consumer surplus.

The computer gives you, the consumer, a lot of power. You can very easily comparison shop - not simply view the cost of flights from every other provider on the same day, but also a day or two earlier/later, and if you are flexible, a week or month later. You can mix airlines, or plan open jaws. You can see the price of a rental car for all or part of the trip. Before travel was sold online, you went to a travel agent and had far fewer options.

> They're not lying to you

That's correct. But it's correct in the sense of "technically correct". It's a language-lawyer type of correct that nobody actually expects when communicating in plain English.

Yes, they're not lying to me. They're simply being intentionally and willfully misleading.

When I was 8 and my parents asked, "Have you brushed your teeth?" to which I responded, "Yes." What they're really asking is, "Did you brush _all_ of your teeth?" and not, "Did you brush at least two of your teeth?" I answered that latter question. And I thought I was the smartest person in the world when I did.

Did you eventually make a career in law? :D

No, I'm a software engineer.

Software engineer is like a lawyer for JSON

Considering the possible alternative names for programmers:

Software Lawyer: we’ve got a code that ought to be well defined and straightforward to interpret, but a bunch of legacy rules have made it impossible to predict what anything really means without studying the system in great depth

Software Doctor: We’re trying usually trying to fix an absurd system ridden mysterious bugs while keeping it running. How it got into the state it is basically impossible to understand, it looks like they’ve just used parts for purposes totally unrelated to their intended use (the spine is totally in the wrong orientation).

Software Engineer: There is a rigid schedule posted on a board somewhere, but we’ve gone totally off the rails and have no chance of hitting any of those timelines.

Parents> “Have you brushed your teeth?”

8yo> “Yes” (last week)

It's misrepresentation

Yes, thank you. I think sometimes we forget how fuzzy language is.

If you're response is "well actually..." you need to think if you're providing meaningful feedback that would make the original claim meaningfully different (i.e. you're adding nuance that would shift perspective). Otherwise it comes off as if you didn't hear anything the original person said because you're missing the meat. Technical corrections are fine, but they should come with some indication of hearing the thesis. Let's try

> Well technically they aren't lying to you. It's the number of seats left at that price and that price can vary. So it is misleading but not technically a lie.

But to counter that claim, simply clearing my cache and restarting the browser would result in both the price and number of seats left changing. Not monotonically. Sometimes it'd be a lower price with more seats. I saw all four permutations! Now I'm not someone with all the airline data, but when this happens over the course of a few minutes I'm pretty suspicious of the results. The likelihood of that happening without manipulation seems rather low.

> I think sometimes we forget how fuzzy language is.

I'm willing to bet a reasonable sum of money that the folks that designed the dark pattern didn't forget how fuzzy language is. In my opinion, the entire spirit of the design of the dark pattern is in fact the complete opposite: to exploit the fact that language is fuzzy in an extremely targeted fashion with the express purpose of extracting as much revenue as is pragmatically possible from the customer.

why are you defending the shitty airline tactics?

I might be wrong, but my recollection is that the practice of changing the price based on user location has been challenged in court some time ago. It's appalling that companies do that. I will definitely follow your advice for flight booking though.

I’ve heard a long time ago that they’d also charge Apple hardware users more

There was a 2012 WSJ article about that [0]. I have both a Windows Surface and a MacBook. When looking for flights, I used both to check for prices in hopes to find better prices, but didn't really notice any discrepancy. I figured maybe they may be showing the same price due to both devices having the same IP address or something to that effect.

[0]https://archive.is/C0Hkb

Were you getting these different prices on the actual airline websites or on the aggregators such as Booking, kayak etc.?

United's website. Though I saw the same thing happening on AA. Google Flights had some fluctuation too but it wasn't always reliable to have the same price once visiting the actual website from the link.

It is hard to save with a VPN. Honestly, I manged only once to get a cheaper ticket with a VPN. Managed to buy an international aeroflot flight with a russian VPN IP that saved me 500 USD. But this was a one time incident.

Another good way in which these companies are lying is with overbooking, or legally selling more tickets than seats on the plane and hoping that the statistical rate of people now showing up will cover the deficit.

I agree with your experience, it does feel a bit insane, but just to point out this is the result of too much competition selling a commodity product rather than a monopoly.

Disagree. Consolidation is driving this behavior - smaller companies in a competitive market would not be able to offend customers to this degree. Certain routes are dominated by one "alliance" (cartel) that basically boils down to American, United or Delta. You have a few smaller brands like Alaska, Southwest (which has underinvested in their infrastructure), Jet Blue and Spirit (who are currently trying to merge), but it's not enough.

You need to break up the cartel model so that (e.g.) Delta has real competition for routes to Atlanta. If I look at nonstop flights from LAX to Atlanta for a random day (Apr 1, 2024) your options are: 1 American flight, 1 Alaska flight, 3 Spirit flights (way more expensive) or a Delta flight just about any time you want to travel. That's not "too much competition selling a commodity product" - it's what I would expect from cartel pricing. There is a thin veneer of competition, but Delta owns that route - 90%+ of traffic is going to fly Delta.

Fair enough, my experience is European where you usually have multiple options and most people decide by price.

I will say I was amazed by how few options I had to get from JFK to Denver and the price was insane relative to a transatlantic flight, so perhaps the market is structured differently.

What website or company was this exactly?

United. I saw AA do the same thing too though.

AA has also treated me like shit too many times. I got caught in that pileup delay post CVPR 2022 which resulted in several delays and they would not give me a voucher or hotel. I spent 36 hrs in an airport for them to just say "glad to hear you found a flight. Looks like we resolved your problem."

It's funny how you are cheating companies by impersonating customer from different areas AND demanding honesty about remaining seats on same premises. At least you should be content with your behaviour and demand.

To make it clear I personally have nothing against both approaches - by being on both sides of transaction at times.

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