How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight

Re:How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight by rjd on Wednesday January 22, 2014 @06:22PM (#7106090)

I've been doing this for years. After I noticed most places are cheap to get to but flights are expensive back. I noticed the same business model was in place from the other direction. So just fake the country of origin and you get cheap to and back.

The other one is clear your cookies before booking. Places create fake demand by disappearing the cheap flights on you if you shopping around. If you clear your cookies the cheap flights will return.

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Re:How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight by cwp on Thursday January 23, 2014 @09:39AM (#7108382)

So you book two one-way tickets? AFAICT, that's usually not cheaper.

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Re:How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight by rjd on Thursday January 23, 2014 @03:27PM (#7110966)

Yeah thats right, quite often to holiday destinations they run specials like flights to Croatia $200, but you try and get a flight back $600. They recoup the costs on the return flight you need to take.

But if you're in Croatia you can get flights to London $200 etc... geofenced deals marketing deals to try and coerce people into taking holidays.

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Re:How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight by homersapien on Thursday January 23, 2014 @10:43AM (#7108807)

No, he changes his country of origin to C then books a round trip from A to B. It is sometimes cheaper that way.

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Re:How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight by rjd on Thursday January 23, 2014 @03:32PM (#7110996)

That actual works as well, don't book anything from South Africa I found out as I was booking my mates flights. You could knock several hundred off by going through an Australian or UK proxy. I believe from memory it was the same agency as well. Just changing the domain brought up vastly different prices on the same flights.

But no as I mentioned above lots of holiday destinations have cheap tickets inbound, but out bound are expensive. I first noticed it travelling from London to Croatia.

It was like $200 flight to Split, but the flight home was double or triple. I hopped on a proxy, and found I could get the reverse deal from Split to London. $200 to London, $600 back home to split. So I started gaming the system.

The agencies are hedging on the fact you have to take the return flight. So they coerce you into the cheap flight to location X, but claw the money back with the return flight which I guess the vast majority of people have to take.

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