Fun with Ebag’s pricing experiment

Introduction

I had $25 in Ebags money that was going to expire at the end of the month.  I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out what I wanted on the site, and eventually decided to buy some socks.  Then I vaguely recalled this article from Loophole Travel.  I needed this because my wife had been using a flimsy bag as her “purse” when she travels.  And since she likes to takes the pajamas and amenity kits on the planes, she quickly ran out of room, so I thought this backpack would help her store more stuff.  That’s when the fun began.

 

Initial price

Here’s the item.  I’d link you but you’ll know why later.  When I was first browsing the site, I saw this price, which I thought was a great deal.  I added it to my cart and was ready to check out at this price.

 

Cashback portal

The next logical step was to look on cashbackmonitor, and I noticed that Ebags was 12% off.  So I clicked through and noticed the price changed to this.

Notice the red “coupon added.  Additional discounts do not apply” text is missing from this picture.  This seems to be the “regular price” for the bag.  So I added this to my cart and used the coupon “HURRY” that was promoted on Ebags’ site for 20% off.  That would only get me down to $79.99.   I couldn’t figure out a way to get it back to $74.99.

 

New customer 25% off

I then decided maybe it was my browser cookies, so I launched a new private window and saw that popup.  I entered in my spam email address.  Waited for the link they sent, and sure enough, when I opened it, the bag was back down to $74.99!  I immediately checked out and was able to apply both my $25 rewards money as well as using a gift card I had gotten earlier from an AMEX Offer (another 20% off.)

 

Portal still tracks

The next morning, I was shocked to get this in email.  So even though I had checked out using the 25% link using an incognito mode, Splender still tracked probably due to a supercookie.

 

Lessons Learned

Ebags pricing is somehow embedded in URL links.  The funny thing is that I wouldn’t have even discovered all this if I never saw the $75 price to begin with, and now I’m not even sure how or why it gave me 25% off the first time since I didn’t click through using a 25% link initially.  Also, portals will track for Ebags, even if you don’t check out using the initial browser session, but this may be YMMV.

A reader added – If you leave something in your cart, they may email you a better price even.  Damn their games!