Last night and also this morning I checked a holiday with Monarch Holidays and both times it gave me a reasonable price. After a discussion with my family I then decided to book it (about an hour later) and the price had all of a sudden gone up over £200!
I just thought it was a new price and that I was just unlucky.
Anyway, as it had gone up we decided to see if we could get a better deal in town. We couldn't! so we came home and my wife had another look at the earlier holiday with Monarch on her laptop and she got the original price to come up! Weird I thought, maybe it's come back down?
So I checked it again on the main computer and it was the £200 higher price, even though my wife is sat next to me with the lower price?
So I went into my cookies on the pc and deleted the Monarch cookies and searched the holidays again! Guess what? I got the original cheaper price!
Cheeky Monarch!
It seems they place a cookie on your pc and if you price up a holiday a few times the price seems to go up making you worried and hoping that you'll book it! Although nearly the opposite happened with us as it made us look elsewhere!
So if ever your price has suddenly gone up try clearing out your cookies!
I don't know if other Tour Operators do this too!
Ryanair do this as well.
They know that people will come back after doing the first search if they are the cheapest. This sort of practise shouldn't be allowed.
They know that people will come back after doing the first search if they are the cheapest. This sort of practise shouldn't be allowed.
Wow that is sneaky and as I only have one PC I would never found found that out - thanks
deleting cookies before returning should cure the problem [its the cookies that tell the suppliers computer that you have recently looked at least once]
This is all so true.
And I think that cookies even seem to influence whether or not the little banner on the Thomson website offers you the latest incentive money-off code or simply doesn't show.
The websites are all getting much cleverer these days. You may find that completely unrelated websites suddenly seem like magic to know what you are interested in, and pop up extra teaser adverts.
Facebook and Google are much into these games.
I use CCleaner daily to mop up strange junk which gets dumped on my PC, this keeps the speed decent and gets rid of the cookies. However there's a downside. Some websites now INSIST on keeping stuff on your machine in order for them to function. An example is Tesco Banking - if you avoid them messing with your machine by cleaning it, then they require for every transaction, that you reply a special mobile phone code they text you.
Which is really inconvenient.
And I think that cookies even seem to influence whether or not the little banner on the Thomson website offers you the latest incentive money-off code or simply doesn't show.
The websites are all getting much cleverer these days. You may find that completely unrelated websites suddenly seem like magic to know what you are interested in, and pop up extra teaser adverts.
Facebook and Google are much into these games.
I use CCleaner daily to mop up strange junk which gets dumped on my PC, this keeps the speed decent and gets rid of the cookies. However there's a downside. Some websites now INSIST on keeping stuff on your machine in order for them to function. An example is Tesco Banking - if you avoid them messing with your machine by cleaning it, then they require for every transaction, that you reply a special mobile phone code they text you.
Which is really inconvenient.
Yeah, be careful deleting all your cookies as you may have to re enter all your saved passwords. In this instance you can easily just delete the Monarch cookies and leave the others if you so wish!
I found this out lat year when my friend in Essex and me here in Manchester were booking a joint holiday, we got completely different prices. My computer showed a banner (Thomson) offering a code for £50 off whilst my friends' didn't ! We managed between us to book the cheapest prices !
It has been mentioned several times over the years on here about cookies tracking your search and inflating prices, airlines are particularly bad for it so always remember to clear your cookies then double check the price.
Thanks for passing this on - I will be more careful in future!
Very interesting......
Can I ask how you delete a specific cookie from the computer?
or should I post that question in the computer forum?
Can I ask how you delete a specific cookie from the computer?
or should I post that question in the computer forum?
On Firefox its - Options-Options - Privacy then show cookies - but if you are like me - there are 10000s!! and its a major job to remove ALL references to Thomson/First Choice/Thos Cook etc - I normally clear all cookies and then start again!!!! 
I think you only have to remove them once and they are gone no matter how many times you looked at the site. So if you know you viewed the site at 10 am on wednesday you can look at that exact point quite easy!
On Firefox you can go to Tools - clear recent history and then choose 1,2,3,4 hours ,today or all
thanks I'll give it a try 
good warning Chivas. Pity we dont have a thanks button 
This problem does not only apply here. A couple of months ago youngest son rang me at 9.00pm to say he wanted to go on holiday the following day for a week. After discussing he decided he would go to Cyprus. He started searching for a suitable holiday and so did I. I then rang him and suggested a particular hotel with Thomson at a price of around £700. He was also looking at the same hotel as it happened but said I had the price wrong as it was £900.
We compared links and they were slightly different. The tracking identified he was in the London area and so showed a higher price - We are in Huddersfield. By using the link I provided he saved £200.
I might add that it was the first time he had ever been on the Thomson site and has not been on a package holiday since he was 17 and booked with a travel agent ( he is now 36)
If he should go on another package he will find it first and then ask us to check the price here UP NORTH and see if it is cheaper for us to book it for him.
We compared links and they were slightly different. The tracking identified he was in the London area and so showed a higher price - We are in Huddersfield. By using the link I provided he saved £200.
I might add that it was the first time he had ever been on the Thomson site and has not been on a package holiday since he was 17 and booked with a travel agent ( he is now 36)
If he should go on another package he will find it first and then ask us to check the price here UP NORTH and see if it is cheaper for us to book it for him.
It's disgusting really that it goes on!
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