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wolvoleo 2 days ago [-]
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.
ungreased0675 2 days ago [-]
It’s strange how Amazon employees don’t think an auction represents market prices. I’d say that it perfectly reflects market prices.
wolvoleo 2 days ago [-]
They don't "think". They just say what legal told them to say.
applfanboysbgon 2 days ago [-]
> 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.
steveBK123 11 hours ago [-]
The mechanics of this are really bad and speak to the difference in regulations between ad exchanges & stock exchanges.
Rather than running a real auction, since they are the beneficiary of a higher ad bid, then run a bot that calculates the "best second price bid" just so accurate, that the winner pays their full bid.
The way "second price auctions" are advertised to work is that they incentivize bidders to put in their real max bid, because the winner only pays the 2nd place price + $0.01, so if the bids are $5, $4 and $3.. the winner pays $4.01 ...
Instead Amazon constructed a fake ad bidding bot & pushed up the second price by placing higher bids. And in cases that the Amazon bot won the auction, they still gave it to the high bidder at their bid price! This became noticeable when bid winners were getting charge their bid price which should be rare in second price auctions! Its win-win for the Amazon bot to bid high because they never actually pay for the ad themselves.
ActorNightly 2 days ago [-]
Ah yes, we blame the most of the problems in society on advertisers, but when those advertisers get screwed over, its... bad?
anon7000 2 days ago [-]
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.
applfanboysbgon 2 days ago [-]
Yes. Fraud is bad. Any other questions?
heavenlyblue 2 days ago [-]
In which way are advertisers like Google or Amazon screwed over?
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 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.
Matt Levine had a good write-up of it - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-09-01/ama...
Rather than running a real auction, since they are the beneficiary of a higher ad bid, then run a bot that calculates the "best second price bid" just so accurate, that the winner pays their full bid.
The way "second price auctions" are advertised to work is that they incentivize bidders to put in their real max bid, because the winner only pays the 2nd place price + $0.01, so if the bids are $5, $4 and $3.. the winner pays $4.01 ...
Instead Amazon constructed a fake ad bidding bot & pushed up the second price by placing higher bids. And in cases that the Amazon bot won the auction, they still gave it to the high bidder at their bid price! This became noticeable when bid winners were getting charge their bid price which should be rare in second price auctions! Its win-win for the Amazon bot to bid high because they never actually pay for the ad themselves.