Airlines are increasingly looking to adopt AI in their pricing and some have been vocal about it. Several people have asked me whether American Airlines is using customer data to decide how much to charge for upgrades, so I asked them about it and I surveyed numerous passenger reports.
In several cases, American’s customers say that the company’s best, most loyal customers are being charged more for first class upgrades – that the higher your AAdvantage status, the more you sometimes get charged. American Airlines, though, says it just is not true.
In numerous examples posted online, passsengers who don’t have AAdvantage status, and don’t spend money on the airline’s credit cards, appear to be able to ‘buy up’ from their coach seat to first class on the same flights for less than passengers with status. I’ve found similar examples shared by passengers at both Delta and United, where higher status customers report being asked to pay more.
I asked American Airlines what’s going on and they are adament that not only do they not use AAdvantage status to price paid upgrades, but they do not use any customer data to do it at all. According to a spokesperson,
American does not offer upgrade pricing – or any flight pricing, for that matter – based on personal customer data such as AAdvantage status, previous purchasing behavior or likelihood to purchase prediction. Offers are determined using established analytical models that consider factors such as time to departure, seat availability and historical demand for a specific route or flight.
Let’s see if we can figure out what’s actually going on – and what may be coming.
Airlines Now Upsell First Class For ‘Tens Of Dollars’ Making Free Upgrades Rare
Upgrades used to be the best benefit of being loyal to an airline. Now, they’re rare, because the carriers prefer to take $40 from anyone who will spend it rather than making a first class seat available to a customer that spends $30,000 or $50,000 a year on tickets (or $200,000 a year on their airline credit card).
When you buy a coach ticket, there will frequently be an ‘upsell offer’. And if nobody is taking those offers, airlines will then lower the price and lower it until someone bites – and only give a complimentary upgrade to their best customers if no one will pay. United and Delta pioneered this, and American has begun to catch up.
Airlines have moved from selling only 10% of the seats up front 20 years ago, to half a decade ago, and now to north of 70% (Delta reports ~ 87%). As a result, the main motivation for staying loyal to an airline is gone.
That’s the new world as a frequent flyer, and it’s a strong reason why the best status is really ‘mid-tier’ that gets you extra legroom seats, free checked bags, and priority boarding so you don’t get stuck being forced to check your carry-on bag.
Customers Report Airlines Charging Higher Status Members More To Upgrade
Numerous customer data points sugest that the higher your status, or perhaps the more you spend with the airline, the more they charge you for paid upgrades. American’s customers have been documenting the upgrade offers being made on the same flight, at the same time, to different customers with different levels of status. For instance,
- Two passengers booked at the same fare on the same flights saw wildly different upgrade prices. One was an Executive Platinum member and was offered $523 for one flight and $277 for the other, for a total of $800. The other was a Platinum Pro member (one status level lower) and was offered $146 and $252 for a total of $398. So the top tier member was literally asked double the price to upgrade both segments.
- Another Executive Platinum reports ofers that were “nearly double” their companion’s. And an Executive Platinum whose Gold wife saw an offer of $140, while his offer was $300 on the same flight purchased at the same price.
There are older examples where a Gold member got a lower upgrade offer price than their Executive Platinum parent, but also one where three different passengers with different status all saw the same offer. Recently, three different passengers with different status report getting the same upgrade offer. So price certainly does not always vary with status!
- It’s not the case that higher status always means getting charged more, if at all
- But prices for the same upgrade on the same flight do reportedly vary – even for two passengers looking at the same flight at the same time
- And there are several side by side cases where the higher status member seems to get worse prices
On Delta, I found an example where a Platinum member and no-status wife on the same flight from Buffalo to Atlanta, at the same ticket price, report being given different upgrade offers: $84.93 for the member with no status, $278.43 for the Platinum. Another Delta customer reported receiving a cheaper offer as a Platinum member at the exact same time compared to their Diamond companion.
On United, here’s an example of a silver receiving a $1,300 international business class upgrade offer while a Platinum was asked over $2,000 but ticket differences mean we can’t overread this data point.
Broadly, though, all of the major airlines seem willing to take cash from any member over giving an upgrade for free. At Alaska Airlines we see a top tier elite complaining that paid upgrade offers fell from $1,420 to $750 to $200 to $40 prior to boarding. Upgrades on another flight were being “fire sold” 24 hours out – anything to avoid clearing elite members into first class.
Why Would An Airline Decide To Charge Its Best Customers More?
These examples of upgrade prices that vary by passenger when checking offers for the same flight at the same time look like they are request-specific, with pricing segmented by customer – that there doesn’t appear to be one universal upgrade price per flight at a given moment in time.
So members theorize that their airline is using the information that they have about you – which could include profile data like status; historical spend; card spend behavior; prior upgrade purchases, and other information – to infer and score willingness-to-pay.
American Airlines describes efforts to enable “relevant, tailored offers” and “shopping results tailored to AAdvantage membership benefits.” It’s a service that companies explicitly sell: request-specific dynamically-priced ancillaries calibrated to trip details, shopping context, demand, customer preferences, and customer segment. However, an airline might also just deliver offers they believe a customer wants, rather than pricing offers based on what they know about the customer as an individual.
Why Customers May See Different Upgrade Prices Today
The largest U.S. airlines are carrying over 500,000 passengers per day. Most of those are buying coach tickets, and many of them are being offered upgrades.
- First class cabins on many planes are small, for instance just 8 seats on American Airlines Airbus A319s (though they’re adding a row of first). Someone cancelling, or someone buying a seat moves the needle on what the airline wants to charge.
- With 200 million passengers in a year, that’s a lot of upgrade offers. And there are going to be outlier anomalies.
- Cases where the higher-status member sees a higher price will be more shocking than where the elite customer gets a discount, so are likely to be overrepresented in reported (selection bias).
We’re not seeing this behavior all the time, or even necessarily a majority of the time. So I don’t think we can conclude very much, although I think there’s a strong reason to expect some airlines to try personalized pricing for upgrades just as some plan to do for airfares. American, for its part, offered to look at specific customer reservations to figure out what actually happened where prices for two customers diverged the way I described.
Personalized Pricing Will Come To Upgrades!
Delta says they are increasingly using AI to set ticket prices. So far that really just means taking the human out of the loop managing price changes, where people have been a bottleneck.
At their 2024 Investor Day, though, Delta said they were working on personalized pricing with specific prices on specific flights determined for specific customers. As their President put it,
[T]his is again a full reengineering of how we price and how we will be pricing in the future. ..[O]ver time, we think this is going to get melded together, that it’s going to be really just offer management. That we will have a price that’s available on that flight, on that time to you, the individual. Not a machine that’s doing an accept reject and a static price grid.
The same company that Delta works with on AI fare-setting, Fetcherr, also lists Azul, Virgin Atlantic (49% owned by Delta), Westjet (15% owned by Delta) and Viva Aerobus as clients. Azul was actually first to acknowledge it publicly in 2022. JetBlue partnerd with another company for this, FLYR, and flydubai and Lufthansa use PROS.
Since “personalized pricing” has become politically toxic, the airline has assured lawmakers it is not using AI to set individualized ticket prices based on personal data, but that was more a description about today rather than a commitment about the future (the way they’ve actually talked about it to investors).
Historically that’s not really different than what airlines have done since deregulation. Every passenger on the plane pays a different price for the seat. Here in these upgrade examples, though, two passengers buying the same thing at the same time are offered different prices, and the only thing different between the two looks like the airline’s bet about their willingness to pay. It makes a certain sense to want to get more money from the customer they think will pay more.
American’s adamantly says that’s not what’s going on. The airline’s CEO Robert Isom has put Delta on blast for that kind of pricing strategy and committed not to do it as well.
I don’t think it’s appropriate. And certainly, American, it’s not something we will do.
My assumption has been that American is behind with the technology, and their bet is that the personalized pricing politics is toxic. I suspect it’s a position that will age poorly.
“Personalized pricing” will be a way that airlines gain confidence in offering discounts without undercutting prices offered to customers willing to buy at higher fares. They don’t want seats to fly empty, but don’t want to sell them cheaper than necessary to customers buying at today’s higher fares. So customized pricing, offered to the ‘right’ passenger, becomes a way to make lower fares available for some customers (and therefore also on average) rather than higher prices. But how these systems get calibrated matters quite a lot.
Airlines May Find Personalized Upgrade Pricing Enticing
Elite customers are precisely the ones that have flown first class before and may value it more than the average flyer. They also may, on average, be in a stronger position to pay more. They may have purchased upgrades before, they may travel premium regularly, and airlines know if they spend heavily on discretionary purchases outside of travel.
In contrast, low-status flyers may require a lower price to convert on a paid upgrade offer. Someone who never buys first class may only bite at $49 – $149. That is incremental revenue and the airline isn’t risking selling the seat for $50 – $150 that the customer might buy for $299.
In contrast, if top tier elites who pay for premium learn that buying coach and waiting produces cheap paid upgrades, the airline is training its most lucrative customers not to the buy first class up front.
- In fact, not buying first up front may be the best strategy anyway – wait for an upgrade offer and if you don’t get a good one, cancel the ticket and use the credit to buy the first class seat.
And it’s also notable that cancelling a ticket and buying first class can sometimes be cheaper than accepting an upgrade offer. Always compare the price of a new first class ticket with the value of your coach ticket plus the upgrade offer.
Corporate travelers often aren’t looking at the price of coach plus upgrade at all, just their out of pocket cost. Some passengers buy coach tickets in Concur per corporate travel policy, and then spend out of pocket.
The problem with an approach that says ‘we should charge our best, most lucrative customers more’ is that they may generate higher ancillary revenue for upgrade upsells, but less revenue for the airline as a whole when they learn not to be an airline’s best customer.
Looking for the most ancillary revenue and converting paid upgrade offers at the highest price possible could disincentivize customer loyalty and cobrand card spend from precisely the members responsible for an outsized portion of an airline’s revenue.
How Personalized Upgrade Pricing Could Damange The Airline’s Business
Targeting higher prices to the customers deemed most likely to be willing to pay more for an airline’s premium product also likely targets customers who are already buying the airline’s premium product and using its credit card.
Delta Air Lines took in $8.2 billion in revenue from American Express in 2025, and previously disclosed a 39% margin on SkyMiles. That would equate to $3.2 billion in profit from Amex, or a majority of profit at the airline for the year.
American AAdvantage drives billions to the airline’s bottom line, while the business is just break-even overall. Total cash compensation from credit card was $6.1 billion in 2025.
Maximizing upgrade revenue by charging an airline’s best customers more is probably individually rational for the people responsible for selling upgrades, but bad for the business if the result for credit card customers is that:
- The more they spend, the higher status they earn, the more first class costs them
- The more they spend, the more points they earn, the less each point is worth when spent for upgrades
This narrow maximization would turn status-earning and card spend into a negative which undermines the economic driver of the business.
With American Airlines status is earned via ‘loyalty points’ rather than price of tickets, credit card spend directly earns status in an uncapped way and faster than at pears. Therefore the effect on them would be even greater than at Delta (where miles are already worth less!) and United. (An interesting internal data point from 2022 at American: 65% of AAdvantage elites in New York earn their status with credit card spending rather than flying.)
There are all sorts of factors the airline can consider when it tries to determine how to price upgrades for an individual customer, like fare basis; original fare paid; booking date; trip purpose (proxy, is it a one-way? are there multiple people on the itinerary?); hub captive versus connection; time to departure; remaining first class seats; paid sales forecast for those remaining seats; number of customers on the upgrade list; sales channel; the customer regularly checking upgrade pricing in the app; prior paid upgrade purchases; AAdvantage status or rolling Loyalty Point total and cardholder status to name just a few.
But if the outcome is that the business’s most valuable customers get charged more they’ve got the incentives backward because the customer learns they should avoid being seen as a valuable customer – even if the top tier elite only gets charged a higher price some of the time, and even if they might even get a lower price occasionally.
United should be giving Jamie Dimon’s best customers a better deal than the average flyer off the steet. Delta should be giving Stephen Squeri’s best customers a better deal than the average flyer off the street. American should be giving Jane Fraser’s customers a better deal than the average flyer off the street.
Two years ago I actually wrote that I expected the value of miles would eventually “vary with that member’s AAdvantage status” when spent on upgrades although I have to admit I thought that higher status members would see more value for their miles, not less.
As status members see fewer and fewer upgrades, an alternative is that an airline do just that and offer them a better deal on upgrade pricing rather than creating a disincentive to earn status and spend on their card, when they sell miles at a 53% margin, when billions of dollars are at stake, and when the industry as a whole loses money on actually moving planes from one city to another.
The problem is that with airlines, sometimes the people that are losing billions of dollars drive things like upgrade pricing, which have detrimental effects on the parts of the business that make money. These are large, complex businesses with politics, fiefdoms, and often poorly-designed incentives. And so I fully expect for airlines to optimize narrowly for things like ‘maximize upgrade upsell revenue’ at the expense of overall revenue and profit for the business.
When y’all have finally had enough, it’s beyond time to better regulate Big-Tech and AI, preserve our personal data privacy, and actually protect consumers, including better guardrails for these corporate pseudo-currencies and loyalty programs. (Or, ignore that noise, and enjoy the enshitification…)
The lesson is to fly different airlines on a regular basis and avoid appearing loyal to any of them.
This is just a thought. If there are 3 unsold first class seats and person is offered a paid upgrade for $300 perhaps the seat is held momentarily while the passenger decides. In the mean time, there are 2 unsold first class seats so the next passenger sees a higher upgrade cost. And so it goes. Possible?
“That’s the new world as a frequent flyer, and it’s a strong reason why the best status is really ‘mid-tier’ that gets you extra legroom seats, free checked bags, and priority boarding so you don’t get stuck being forced to check your carry-on bag.”
-That’s really why I like being AA Platinum (OneWorld Sapphire). Its not too difficult to achieve and works well enough to get decent seats in economy (and I’ve had upgrade offers often) + earlier boarding. Flying on QR for example with family in economy allows me to get 1 extra luggage per pax, extra legroom seats for free, lounge, etc.
Hopefully I’ll be making it to lifetime Platinum soon (a few hundred thousand miles away).
Gary,
Just wondering – will “personalized pricing” equally come to prices of the underlying seats. I am certain that any airline would be eager to know, for example, which customers are willing to pay any price for first class.
Or do the airlines know that they would pay a substantial price were they to “go there”?
What you don’t point out is that upgrade offers are dynamic. They can change from day to day or minute to minute. Generally the offers start very high and come down as departure date nears. It’s incumbent upon the flyer to monitor these offers to get the best deal. Why is this a problem other than for @1990 that believes everything in life should be free.
For the most part the offers are fairly decent if you’re willing to go in and check your reservation every couple of days, particularly starting at T-30 days to departure. There are some routes that are more expensive. I’ve never seen SAN/MIA for less than $500, even on redeyes with no meal service.
How is this any different waiting to see if an actual airfare goes lower?
@1990 – we just did here in NY – passed a first in the nation law (One Fair Price Act) a few days ago banning personalized surveillance pricing.
@Peter — It’s gotta start somewhere. Glad NY is leading the way! Go Knicks!
@George Romey — Try again, but without using a strawman argument. Sensible consumer protections are not wanting everything for free; it’s getting what you paid for and were promised. You really should know better.
Nice article, Gary. Just a few weeks back (June 3), the Wall Street Journal ran an article “What Is Personalized Pricing—and Why Are Lawmakers Scrambling to Ban It ?”. They noted that “So far in 2026, more than 50 bills across more than half of U.S. states have been introduced addressing a variety of pricing practices that involve analyzing consumer data through AI or other automated tools…” As for American Airlines, my personal experience aligns with your commentary, and there’s zero doubt in my mind that they engage in this practice right now. As for their reply to you, they told you that they don’t because there are no repercussions from this, but I’d love to see their response under oath before Congress !
Makes sense from a business standpoint. Doesn’t have to be personalized (as in using specific travel history or passenger data). Just charge more for higher elites. Those passengers probably value first more and will pay more. This is the future of pricing. Just like concert surge or event specific pricing airline and hotel prices will continue to be more dynamic
@Dave: That seems more than likely. The way to check it is to price the upgrade as a non-elite, then as an elite. Then try the reverse. If you see the same discrepancy both ways, it’s real.
Interesting post as I find uber and Lyft to do something similar
They seem to know magically what I will pay for a ride and shy of the surge pricing I receive lower pricing than other friends and family members receive
Once a ride is overpriced I’m in a taxi private driver or uber or Lyft
Be a free agent and not like the flock of sheep out there waiting to be slaughtered
Free agency, especially for business travel. Since I started reading all these posts I quit booking for status. I’ll keep whatever benefits I have now on UA, DL, AA and Alaska, but no longer will I search out a particular carrier. Loyalty gets you nothing but early boarding and bags anymore for the most part.
BTW for advocates of bills that ban personalized pricing there are many ways to “skin the cat”. With AI and predictive analytics leading businesses have the tools to accomplish the same thing regardless of any such law. Also business owns the data, not the consumer, so I’m not sure these state laws will pass SCOTUS muster. Don’t look to the nanny state to protect you – learn the changing rules and adapt.
Great article. I jumped off the loyalty hamster wheel 10+ years ago, as things started devaluing. I then did mostly paid (discounted) first as a free agent, and now my expense people bristle when they see ‘First’, even when within policy, so I had to change my buying patterns.
As a mostly business traveler (75% travel), I recently changed all my business to Southwest. Sure, no upgrades, but my experience so far has been that I can get extra legroom in the forward rows at the last minute, and that’s all I really need. Exit row legroom is more than I’ve had in Delta, AA, or United First…lol….so I grab exit row for longer flights.
I exclusively buy the Choice (Biz Select) tickets … it’s still considered ‘economy’, and within 3 months, I’ve hit the top status and now have companion pass for my wife. I love the new 737Max configs with the larger bins, in seat power. I don’t have to play games when using my miles. I minimize my time in airports at all costs, so lounges don’t matter. Overseas trips are business class on a customer-service capable, foreign carrier, always.
I’ve found the SWA staff to be as friendly as they were before Elliott made their changes, so I’m not negative about the ‘new SWA’, as others. SWA has a compelling product in this new model, and I’m really liking the uncomplicated nature of the relationship. I feel that my loyalty is appreciated, unlike with the others.
I thought “from each according to their ability” was the new national motto for the Democrat party. Really, what are you folks with so much ability to pay complaining about?
@OF1944ATX: Your story is an example of how Southwest can profit from price-insensitive travelers. You were exactly the customer they wanted to attract!
Phone hold times for Southwest have increased, especially for elites, but you still get a native English speaker.
As for me, my only big gripes are funds expiration and exploitive pricing. The old Southwest believed in treating its customers better to build loyalty. In 2026, everything is transactional and short-term. There’s no going back.
The future of “upgrades” is auctions. Change my mind…
@Gary: You don’t say it explicitly but you infer that it is a financial loser for airlines to sell upgrades at $40 rather than give them away to elites.
But the question is: Does the evidence support this? I would suggest it does not. That is why we see the sale, rather than the gifting, of upgrades becoming increasingly prevalent – internationally.
@Peter: “we just did here in NY – passed a first in the nation law (One Fair Price Act) a few days ago banning personalized surveillance pricing.”
Making New Yorkers worse off. Price discrimination allows product to be sold that would otherwise not be viable.
But is anyone surprised that New York politicians are passing laws that make the citizens worse off? They have instituted 15%+ state income taxes and can’t name a single major public service that Florida or Texas doesn’t get.
@George Nathan Romey: Price checking can be automated.
@L3 “it’s complicated” there’s a model where there’s a minimum amount of value elite customers need to keep them on the treadmill. upgrades are one piece of that value proposition.
A $40 upgrade may be offered at the same time at least top tier elites are likely to clear their upgrades. And those result from situations where on a given route and day there are too many first class seats, even though overall there may be too few on an aircraft.
I’d suggest that offering more than 13% of inventory as inducements to true top tier flyers makes sense, since that 13% clusters on certain days and routes that may not be what your best customers fly. I’m not saying it does not ever make sense. I do think overall the trend towards monetizing every seat and working hard to avoid upgrades may be a net financial negative, if it undermines cobrand card spend which is actually profitable.
@L3 — Oof. Awful ‘hot-take.’ Besides, your favorite, BILT, is all about NYC.
@Denver Refugee – I took advantage of an auctioned upgrade on Air NZ a couple years ago. Seeing half of their biz seats were unsold about a month out, I bid $200 for HNL-AKL and got it. Supposedly, my “odds” were low per the bid page, but with so many unsold seats I figured it was worth a shot.
I’m a no status DL customer and a couple months out I frequently see good prices for “basic” F (non-refundable) for SEA-LAS-SEA, my most common trip. In September, the difference between basic economy and low level first was about $140 round trip, and first was only about $110 more than economy with leg room (which I need). Heck yeah, I’ll do that.
I am not for extra regulations. But when company does this, it becomes important to get more regulations.
All for it
Elites are almost entirely OPM these days and dont pay for their own tickets to begin with.
If you are an OPM flyer in economy your boss is the issue not the airline
LOL. So much shilling for major corporations on here… and yet, when devaluations or disappointments impact them, directly and personally, most folks do not act the way they post. No, they’re pissed that the airline sold their status complimentary upgrade for $29 last-minute to a no-status scab. Bah!
(@Gene, I know… WFBF…)
(@Alan, you’re not wrong…)
I don’t own shares of the Big3 (unless they’re in one of my ETFs). If they reported to me they had gone from selling, say, 50% of F seats to 90%, I’d be pleased. The upgrade lists are crazy long today. If you have 4 unsold seats, 90% of the 40 on the list will be disappointed. Sell 2 of the 4 for $50 each, the airline makes $100 more and 95% of the elites are disappointed. I understand why they like the money for the small rise in unhappy elites.
@L3 – let’s say we go into a supermarket to buy a dozen eggs. Cashier scans my information and charges me $5 which is what they assume I will pay for the eggs based upon lots of information they somehow have about me, that either “I consented to giving them because I really wanted the supermarket to have lots of targeted personal information about me” or that “they somehow obtained”. Now you go in and they charge you $6 based on the data they have on you.
You’re telling me you are okay with that? If so, might I suggest that you are more of a fan of progressive taxation and New York than you might otherwise think that you are. It’s just that you’d rather companies be the ones to implement progressive taxation policies. Seems to me that’s a government role.
But look, today was a day that folks could take NYC’s amazing 24-hour a day public transportation system (that lets people efficiently go places without cars) and walk (walking!) to a celebration of the Knicks in the Canyon of Heroes. Not going to get me down today! Go Knicks!
Any airline that charges me a different price than someone else for the same seat, or anyone else that it happens to, we must unite and file massive class action discrimination lawsuits against that airline, or all airlines that start to pull this garbage. Burybthem forever! If we must bankrupt EVERY airline in the USA, so be it. Enough of their rampant theft, fleecing, and predatory pricing and discrimination. Duevthemnintonoivian, then let the industry rebuild with honest stockholders and NO GD Ai Smelly stuff.
@This comes to mind — I know you’ll say you don’t read my stuff, but I have a counter-factual experience to yours. AA long-haul, extremely low load, everyone upgraded, and then some. Nearly 100 seats empty in the back. Wild. (Wonder if it’s just time of week, direction, etc.)
@Brent — “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!”
@Peter: Taxation is not voluntary.
Scots in Boston and Japanese in Dallas were cleaning up after themselves after enjoying World Cup festivities. Knicks fans in NYC were buring down the city and smashing up vehicles.
Those New Yorkers in Manhatten who went to work paid state tax of 10.9% and Mandami tax of 3.876%, as well as Federal tax. Workers in TX paid no State or local income taxes.
@L3 — Unless you’re actually based in NYC, you’re just relying on Fox News and similar anti-blue-city propaganda. I believe Peter is based in NYC (as am I), so I trust him over you on this. And, if you’re based here, you’d know, sure, some fans get/got rowdy, as they do elsewhere, when their team’s win, but, NYC remains alive and well, and cleaned up nicely, after Saturday, and today’s parade. Basically, I think you’re just spreading disinformation, like the tired ole ‘big-city scary-bad’ trope.
@1990 @Peter — Getting Knicks championship gear from Fanatics with the 10×10 Paze shenanigans?
@Peter go buy a car. Guess what? You’re best offer will be more than some less than others. Why? They use their experience not-A intelligence to determine how much you can and will pay. Buy that meal at lunchtime M-F, you get it for $15. Same meal is $22 evenings and weekends. Every student at most university gets their own unique price: the “sticker” price minus a financial aid package tailored to that student. Lawmakers are willing to ban personalized pricing for airfares, supermarkets, etc. (but no car dealers or universities). But, they will never touch dynamic pricing. If all potential pax can get the same deal a 13:42 on 07/07/26, but the price is lower or higher fir all at 13:47, that won’t be banned.
Cut up credit cards and wifi. Buy a nice house, plant flowers, stay home and watch them bloom. Take a nap, relax. Live long, peaceful and happy.
Fair value is what a willing buyer will pay a willing seller in an orderly transaction. What’s the problem? It is literally how a free market works.
@L737 – got one $10 gift card and then couldn’t get any more, but yes, probably will make a bunch of individual item purchases for $10 off each! Got some good merch already… but could always use more!
@L3 – didn’t answer the question – you’re ok with walking into the same supermarket, scanning a loyalty card that has data about you, and then the computer spitting out different prices for groceries than the person at the self-checkout kiosk next to you?
(NYC has its problems like anywhere else, but it’s doing just fine, thanks very much, and if you don’t want to come and visit, no worries, the 65 million folks that come to visit or do business will take your place).
@This – no issues with dynamic pricing as long as it is applicable to all. Personalized pricing is a totally different thing. Especially with airlines – when there’s one or two airlines that fly a route that you need to take and you are therefore captive to a very small number of companies, it’s a totally different ball of wax, no? The car price dance is annoying (plenty of experience with it), but at least there are tons of car dealerships that you can try to play off of each other.
@1990 – I mean, the sanitation department in NYC is excellent, including after yesterday’s parade. Would never know it happened because of their hard work.
@Peter: And you are happy paying 20% of your income in taxes for which you get no useful services versus Texas or Florida that pay 0% for the same thing?
Duh!
@L3 – still haven’t answered the question. Of course lower taxes would be nice, as would lower prices, but you’ll be surprised to hear that people in NY also make more money than folks in other cities. So if you are in a 100k a year job in Dallas but get 150k in NY, paying an extra 20 in taxes still nets you an extra 30. So it’s all relative.
But as I already said I do receive things I can’t get in Florida – notably a reliable public transportation system that connects me to world class culture. It’s not a hard trade off.
@Peter: Have you ever heard of a “useful idiot”? The local politicians love people like you.
@L3 – the new Pee Wee Herman documentary is pretty good. So in honor – “I know you are but what am I?”
Engage on the merits or don’t! Up to you.
CoPilot’s definition of a “useful idiot” “Unwittingly serving as a propagandist for a ruthless movement or devious leader while only seeing the cause’s positive aspects” I think we can work out who that applies to!
Lol
It’s called “surveillance” pricing.
And there are no ‘Tens Of Dollars’ upgrades — and none of your many examples in the post qualify as such