Used to be rumored that Easyjet did this.

I thought it had stopped now.

Only this morning I was checking flight prices to Madrid and having been interrupted, at work, I had to abandon and retry 30 minutes later.

The flight prices had gone up by approx £20, so maybe there is something in this

I had heard this but I have haven't noticed it especially on the Thomas Cook site that I seem to be using a lot at the moment. In fact a flight I booked a week or so ago has just gone down by £30. Grrrr! Another one I booked had actually gone down by £20 when I went to book the day after having seen it.

Hhhmm never heard this before, I don't think it's true.
I know prices increase and decrease.
I've been lucky that when I book it's usually cheaper than what I've expected to pay by previous prices.

Easyjet and Ryanair have done this for years.

Easyjet and Ryanair have done this for years.

Not sure that this can be true.

I check Ryanair's websites most days sometimes more than once a day when I really want a good deal.

Sometimes it doesn't work and the price increases but at other times I've got some brilliant deals for myself and friends or family.

In July I booked my return flight weeks before my outbound one because the price was good.

I then checked prices for the outbound twice a day for a few weeks finally booking when the price suddenly dropped saving myself about £70 on 3 flights.

It did only stay the cheaper price for a matter of hours so if I had not been constantly checking I would have missed it but if the cookie idea was definitely true surely it would have known I was looking and not dropped for me at all?

Don't know about dropping cookies on us I am not convinced personally, but Easyjets flights tend to go up consistently throughout the seasons, so best deals to be had as soon as flights released.

Whereas Ryan are a lot less consistent and their flights go up and down in price more often as they have 'so called' sales. So potential bargains for the patient ones.

Scheduleds and charters operate different systems anyway, if I was checking Portland or Thomas Cook for a package I would always delete cookies anyway just incase.

I'm a bit naiive when it comes to computers. Can you tell me where I can find this cookies please, as I often book flights and holidays independantly.

Do ferry companies do the same?

I wouldn't put it past them! You can easily delete cookies. Click the Internet Explorer icon on your desktop with your right mouse button and choose the menu option Properties (or if you have it open from the Tools menu, choose Internet Options) In the middle section of the General tab under the heading of Temporary Internet files there is an option to Delete Cookies. Bear in mind that if you do delete them, other sites that remember you before having to log in, will also have lost that information.

Helen

A cookie is a small file that certain internet systems write (and usually leave) on your PC. There are some valid reasons for this, for instance if you are using something that requires you to sign on with an account password it may leave a cookie with the time in it so that if you forget to log out your access will expire after a while to stop others using it. This is very important if you use a shared PC. Some systems use them like bits of paper you might make rough notes on if someone was asking you a question over the phone. Then as you make deeper enquiries the system can refer back to see the details you originally gave. Holiday Truths seem to use cookies so that the system knows when you were last logged on. That way new items can be marked with a sunny face.

The problem is that there are other reasons why systems leave cookies and this price fixing idea is one.

If you are using Internet Explorer look under Tools, then Internet Options then Privacy and see what yours is set to. If you are concerned set it to medium high and if you want even more control, whilst on that option click advanced then Overide ... and set the options to prompt. This will probably get annoying after a while but at least you can see who's leaving them. What really annoys me are systems (or more accurately, their designers) which assume that you will have Cookies set to the level they need and then either fail to work properly without saying anything or give an error message that doesn't tell you the right reason!

Or install 'browzar' - it deletes all cookies when you close it down.

There was certainly some truth in this when I booked flights with easyjet last christmas . I worked out that it was cheaper for me to do my booking of 6 seats in 2 seperate bookings (basically booking 6 seats took me into their next price banding) but easys system knew what I was up to and altered the price accordingly for me when I tried to make my 2nd booking. I double checked using my elder daughters pc and the price was cheaper on hers so I got her to make the 2nd booking saving me about £130 for the 3 seats.

I have also been told a similar thing happens when you use insurance comparision sites and that once you have used one of these all insurance companies will know what you have been quoted and you wont get it any cheaper . dont know if its true

lyn

If you are using Firefox as your browser you can delete individual cookies, so if you think this is happening then just delete all the cookies from that site.
You can also block sites from putting cookies on your computer,but you have to type the web address of the site first.

My Sister told me about this happening a couple of years ago as it happend to her when she was booking a block of flights, the prices went up within half an hour.

This definately happned to me last year with otbeach. I had to book 5 adults into three rooms and because it kept putting us into 2 rooms, i booked the single room first, when i tried to book the 2 doubles the price had shot up. Next day on my work pc the price had returned to the original lower price.

I use several different computers and the prices are the same . They are going up up up.

Wow, that's crazy! I can't believe how sneaky they are!! That's happened to me before, it went up 3 times in about 2 hours!