Comparison of PO fares

[david63]

To all of you IT people please can you advise.

I travel quite a lot and only need the flight. I use sky scanner which is extremely good showing all airlines and the prices.
Recently I clicked on a couple of dates , chose one and was redirected to their site to book.
This week I have received an e mail from the other company with a message saying they had noticed I had been looking and obviously not found anything suitable . I found this quite scary as I was looking on my mobile phone and put in no personal details so how did they get my e mail address.??

My first guess would be that you have booked a flight using your phone at some point and at the time you entered your email address which has probably been stored as a cookie on your phone - it is also possible that they have stored your phone/email address on their database.

Another possibility is that you have your email address on your phone somewhere and it picked it up from there.

Many sites use tracking cookies to keep track of you (P&O use over 100). One way to stop this happening is to use a tracking cookie blocker - in the last 12 months I have blocked over 85k tracking cookies.

[Andrea S]

David, Thank you

I receive my e mails on my mobile so yes the information is there and I have used this company before so they could tie up my phone number and e mail address.

I have just googled re blocking cookies and when I understand it ( age showing) I will go down this route.

This has made me very aware that all the time I spend browsing on line or using comparison sites somebody is able to 'see' what I am doing. I do find this scary.

[barney]

You should be scared Andrea

The amount of information available, specifically about you, is monumental.

A mobile phone is really a tracking device that allows you to make calls.

I've seen The Terminator. I know how it all ends

[Quizzical Bob]

I've just had a look at the Getaway price for a shortie we are/were tempted for August. After knocking off £50 last week (still need at least another £50 off), PandO have just bumped it back up again.

Loads of cabins at Vantage fare available, none of the sittings nor Freedom dining waitlisted.

Who are these people that set the prices??

Just a word of caution...

Some websites will increase the price the more times that you look at an item. Amazon is one of them.

I have heard that but never seen any evidence of it ... it would be a folly because it is so easy to get around and check ... and if it where the case then I am sure there would have been an outcry before now. So at the minute i put it in the realms of urban legend (that may have been tried ages ago by one or more vendors).

Amazon is a curious one though ... I have seen prices jumping all over the place but then realised that what had happened was that the same article was on multiple pages and it depended on which page I picked after searching ... in one example a WD hard disk drive I was after was 20% cheaper on a different page .. both supplied directly by Amazon.

Hi Ken,

My son, who is in this line of business, has demonstrated this on the Amazon site by logging in on a different PC.

[emjay45]

You should be scared Andrea

The amount of information available, specifically about you, is monumental.

A mobile phone is really a tracking device that allows you to make calls.

I've seen The Terminator. I know how it all ends

Barney
My son who is much more computer literate than I am is always telling me that if you know what you are doing, you can find out most things about most people because of the internet. Yes it scares me too

[Silver_Shiney]

You should be scared Andrea

The amount of information available, specifically about you, is monumental.

A mobile phone is really a tracking device that allows you to make calls.

I've seen The Terminator. I know how it all ends

Barney
My son who is much more computer literate than I am is always telling me that if you know what you are doing, you can find out most things about most people because of the internet. Yes it scares me too

During my short-lived membership of Facecloth, it offered to help me find former colleagues at [place of work]. I didn't tell it where I work......

[david63]

During my short-lived membership of Facecloth, it offered to help me find former colleagues at [place of work]. I didn't tell it where I work......

FB trawls through the data on your computer, without your permission, - which is why I will not use it.

[melsea]

Have just done a quick tot up on the latest Vantage/ Getaway fares on P&O website. There are at present 142 getaway fare v's vantage. All varying in prices of those getaways that are much lower than the vantage and others whereby I would not consider them as getaway due to the very small amount reduce.
There doesn't appear to be any systematic reason or logic as to what cruises will be reduced or the amount of that reduction, or even when it is sailing. The next one on offer is for 4 Aug 2013, the more distant dates on offer are those for the sectors of the various world cruises and those fly cruises to the Caribbean.
Of those 142 on offer 92 are on Family Cruise ships, 42 on the Adult only.
We have booked a getaway for the Aurora USA/Canada cruise which was a good price for this type of cruise it has of today gone down quite a bit and I will not be telling my OH this.

So really to my mind P&O are having trouble filling all the ships and not any particular type, size or age of it. In fact the ones have the most getaway fares are in the family ones with Azura & Ventura having 26 each. Admittedly Aurora has 24 and Oceana 15. Adult ships Oriana & Adonia have 15 each also.

So all said and done there is no formula or reasons as to why one cruise will be reduced or not...

We have never paid full price for any cruises we have taken even before the getaway fares were introduced. We have always sailed with P&O for no particular reason other than if the price is right and for us they are value for money for what we get. We have looked at other cruise lines and so far have not seen anything that falls within our target price, when they do we will go. Having said that when others have been at a good price we can't go for one reason or another, typical.

It's the only way to travel isn't it????

[Capt Black]

Now that the early booking discount for 2014 cruises has ended, I see that a cruise in Feb from Southampton which we're tempted by is now a Getaway fare.

I think it's about the same as the Vantage fare was while the 5% discount was still on.

Hey ho.

[GillD46]

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it - we are on a 24 night Black Sea voyage on Queen Victoria in Sptember 2014. Another pasenger doing the same voyage suggested we compare the Queen Victoria price with the Aurora price. An entry level suite on Aurora is £900 pp MORE expensive than the Queen's Grill on Queen Victoria, which is astounding especially given the sublime food provided in the QG!

Someone, somewhere has really lost the plot!

[Anne D]

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it - we are on a 24 night Black Sea voyage on Queen Victoria in Sptember 2014. Another pasenger doing the same voyage suggested we compare the Queen Victoria price with the Aurora price. An entry level suite on Aurora is £900 pp MORE expensive than the Queen's Grill on Queen Victoria, which is astounding especially given the sublime food provided in the QG!

Someone, somewhere has really lost the plot!

Hi Gill

Have to agree. I too did a check on the Aurora prices for suites and like you found them more expensive than the QV Grill suites.
IMO The advantages of the Grills far outweighs having a suite with P&O where apart from the usually very nice suite and butler you don't get any of the extra facilities that you receive with the Grills. I shall certainly continue to go with Cunard .

Anne