I've seen this at airlines too. I look at a flight, see an ok price, spend 10 minutes checking with my boss for the days off and go back to book it and it's 40€ more.
Last time I saw this I tried it from a colleague's phone and they got the original price. Refreshed both and the difference remained.
This should really be illegal. And I believe it is here in Europe. That other shit that Chinese sites do ("another user just bought one of the last few remaining!!") is illegal here too. In the end I didn't take the flight and booked the next day from home when it was the cheaper price again.
> The FTC quoted an Amazon senior scientist as explaining that Amazon raises prices by using “an invented auction participant representing how much Amazon thinks that particular ad slot is worth.” An Amazon senior VP in charge of ads said internally that in Amazon’s auctions, “the second price isn’t set by an actual bidder, but rather by” Amazon itself with a “proxy 2nd price that we calculate,” the lawsuit said.
> The lawsuit quoted an Amazon employee as writing in a 2024 message, “We don’t tell them about the surcharge, we let them assume [it is] GSP-based.”
White collar criminals love putting their crimes in writing, don't they? Not like there's any consequences for it. Seems doubtful that, despite employees literally admitting to it, Amazon will be charged a fine that makes this more than a cost of doing business, that will exceed the profit of the fraud, and of course there will be zero criminal responsibility for the individuals in charge of this racket.
No, on Amazon, consumers get screwed over. Buying an ad so you show up at the top of the results is basically the price of admission on Amazon… seems like more then half of results are ads, so everyone has to buy them for any visibility. Which just makes it more expensive for consumers.
I've seen this at airlines too. I look at a flight, see an ok price, spend 10 minutes checking with my boss for the days off and go back to book it and it's 40€ more.
Last time I saw this I tried it from a colleague's phone and they got the original price. Refreshed both and the difference remained.
This should really be illegal. And I believe it is here in Europe. That other shit that Chinese sites do ("another user just bought one of the last few remaining!!") is illegal here too. In the end I didn't take the flight and booked the next day from home when it was the cheaper price again.
It’s strange how Amazon employees don’t think an auction represents market prices. I’d say that it perfectly reflects market prices.
They don't "think". They just say what legal told them to say.
> The FTC quoted an Amazon senior scientist as explaining that Amazon raises prices by using “an invented auction participant representing how much Amazon thinks that particular ad slot is worth.” An Amazon senior VP in charge of ads said internally that in Amazon’s auctions, “the second price isn’t set by an actual bidder, but rather by” Amazon itself with a “proxy 2nd price that we calculate,” the lawsuit said.
> The lawsuit quoted an Amazon employee as writing in a 2024 message, “We don’t tell them about the surcharge, we let them assume [it is] GSP-based.”
White collar criminals love putting their crimes in writing, don't they? Not like there's any consequences for it. Seems doubtful that, despite employees literally admitting to it, Amazon will be charged a fine that makes this more than a cost of doing business, that will exceed the profit of the fraud, and of course there will be zero criminal responsibility for the individuals in charge of this racket.
Ah yes, we blame the most of the problems in society on advertisers, but when those advertisers get screwed over, its... bad?
No, on Amazon, consumers get screwed over. Buying an ad so you show up at the top of the results is basically the price of admission on Amazon… seems like more then half of results are ads, so everyone has to buy them for any visibility. Which just makes it more expensive for consumers.
Yes. Fraud is bad. Any other questions?
In which way are advertisers like Google or Amazon screwed over?
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Source: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/08/... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526082)
See also, Seth Godin's recent blog post, "The Amazon tax" https://seths.blog/2026/08/the-amazon-tax/
Discussed here, with 719 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345263