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Comment by alister | Hacker News Reader

It's not the Right and Wrong interpretation that matters here -- it's the spin. Orbitz is probably run by a bunch of techies, and techies don't understand PR. Orbitz messed up in how they spun their story to the Wall Street Journal.

They could have spun their story to say that Mac users have a greater preference for, say, the Westin, Hyatt, and Marriott, whereas Windows user prefer Super 8, Days Inn, Motel 6, and Econo Lodge.

Then they would have gotten an uncontroversial story out of the WSJ -- possibly even a positive story.

This reminds me of the Coca Cola vending machines that would automatically adjust prices upward from $2 to $3 on hot, sunny days. This was met was public hostility. If instead they had promoted their machines as automatically discounting their normal price of $3 down to $2 on cold, non-sunny days, then no one would mind.

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> If instead they had promoted their machines as automatically discounting their normal price of $3 down to $2 on cold, non-sunny days, then no one would mind.

I have a hard time believing anyone would fall for that spin.

Really? You believe that people fall for Nigerian scams and click on shady ads on the Web, but not that framing a price increase as a discount (a tactic practically every grocery store in the world uses) would make many people feel better about it? I think you're drastically exaggerating the average person's resistance to marketing.

A very small proportion of the general population falls for Nigerian scams, so I don't think that's a good example.

I still don't think it's reasonable to say that "I have a hard time believing anyone would fall for a Nigerian scam." Enough people do it to make it hugely profitable for the scammers.

And falling for a Nigerian scam requires a much higher level of gullibility and a higher level of buy-in from the victim than merely letting somebody else set your expectations with careful phrasing.

My point isn't that everyone would fall for it, but if there are enough people who fall for more blatant scams that you can build a hugely profitable business off them, there's certainly a considerable number who would fall for this.

What percentage of people fall for Nigerian scams? One per hundred thousand? One per million? One per ten million?

A marketing campaign with that rate of success would be an abysmal failure.

See my earlier reply to mikeash: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4162587

In short, enough people respond to a Nigerian scam to make it one of the country's biggest industries. And that requires constant, active participation in the face of a blatant scam that gets less plausible at every step. Passively allowing your perception to be shaped by how an idea is presented is many orders of magnitude easier.

Especially since people generally have an idea of what a Coke from a vending machine costs, and $3 ain't it.

In the UK, "fixed penalty notices" (parking tickets) cost e.g. £35 if you pay them within 14 days, or £70 if you pay them later. This is spun as an "early payment discount", but can also be viewed as a "late payment punishment".

A surprising number of people seem to think that they are getting a bargain if they pay early. I appreciate "a surprising number" is not a highly accurate data point :) I am currently reading Cialdini's Influence - some of the research suggests this method of offering the carrot before the stick do work.

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