[HN Gopher] AT&T's website raising the price every time I refres...
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AT&T's website raising the price every time I refresh the page
Author : temp8964
Score : 252 points
Date : 2022-04-06 12:42 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reddit.com)
| bdcravens wrote:
| Anytime I've had to interact with any AT&T website, it's not
| uncommon for a clicked link to result in a dozen or so redirects
| in the browser. I suspect their tech is just layers upon layers
| of legacy goo.
| reaperducer wrote:
| A couple of years ago, I watched the traffic when I logged in
| to AT&T. IIRC, there were almost 60 redirects involved in
| paying my bill.
|
| At some point "technical debt" becomes "incompetence."
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Often, it screams "overly powerful product management that
| ignores engineering concerns".
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| I worked on AT&T web stuff many years ago. "Layers upon layers
| of legacy goo" was accurate, probably still is.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Last I was on AT&T (~6 months ago) it was a total crapshoot if
| I could log into my account without some layer erroring out.
|
| I had about a 50% success rate of just frickin' logging in.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It also happens when trying to verify your account through
| the various streaming apps. I'd say it's also 50/50 if you
| can successfully authenticate your account to get access to
| the streaming app.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| Now imagine how bad their internal sites are. I worked for a
| subsidiary and we used their internal site for network circuit
| ticketing...it was an absolutely maddening experience.
| rlewkov wrote:
| The QA manager should be proud.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Wow even the cheapest price is super expensive! Is that how much
| TV costs in the US?
| bachmeier wrote:
| It's awesome in the US if you only have one internet provider.
| Not only is the internet badly overpriced[1], they bundle cable
| and internet together, so that you basically pay for cable
| whether or not you want it. We wanted to drop cable to save
| money, but they said "Oh that means we remove the bundle
| discount. Your bill only goes down $3 a month."
|
| [1] This is not an opinion. AT&T just put in fiber and I got 6x
| faster download, 20x faster upload at a fraction of what I was
| paying before. My existing provider countered (after I
| cancelled) with a much faster internet plan plus cable at 40%
| of their previous price.
| dylan604 wrote:
| In these monopoly provider situations, can you not get a "dry
| line" data only package? A lot of people are unfamiliar with
| that option as the ISP doesn't like to advertise it as they
| want you to subscribe to their bundles.
|
| However, I have found that by using my cable subscription to
| gain access to the various streaming apps, it is cheaper than
| buying all of the apps a la carte.
| bachmeier wrote:
| That's what I meant by dropping cable, but they'd only cut
| my bill by $3.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Yes, but it's often not much cheaper or sometimes even more
| expensive than the bundle.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > even more expensive than the bundle
|
| That's the shocking thing. I've heard of cases where
| dropping cable would increase the bill. I suspect that's
| because it's easier to defend leveraging your monopoly
| power if you can show customers are "buying" other
| services like cable.
| _jal wrote:
| Welcome to the country that loves to shout about the virtues of
| the free market almost as much as it loves captured markets.
|
| Just wait until you see US medical bills.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| My mobile phone bill with unlimited data is PS17.99 a month.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| My mobile bill with unlimited (7.5g before being throttled)
| data is $25/mo.
|
| I could have gone with $15/mo if I didn't use so much data.
|
| You can spend more but you're basically just paying for the
| privilege of having a provider that more readily offers
| flagship phones subsidized via contract.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Oh right I thought for some reason people often paid like
| $70 for phone contracts in the US.
| laptop-man wrote:
| iirc we are paying 280ish a month for 3 phones. I think 2
| are fully paid off.
|
| with "unlimited data" that is capped at 15g.
| unfortunately it's the only provider that works where we
| live in Michigan
| cebert wrote:
| I live in Michigan too. Have you tried Visible, Verizon's
| discount carrier? It works great for me in Greater
| Detroit region, the thumb, and up north. I pay $25/mo for
| unlimited everything.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| I used to use a tier 2 carrier. Then we had the freeze /
| grid anomaly in Texas and it resulted in a lot of cell
| phone traffic. My wife who was on a direct plan with ATT
| was able to use her phone most of the time with little
| issue. Meanwhile I was on a tier 2 carrier and had
| nothing the entire time. Work's great until it doesn't.
|
| I have a friend on the police/emergency responder ATT
| network (FirstNet) and he said he's NEVER had it slow
| down since those EIMIs get priority routing. I'm sure
| someone in telco network operations could explain this
| even better than I can.
| vel0city wrote:
| > since those EIMIs get priority routing
|
| Its even more extreme than that, they have their own
| _frequencies_.
| yardie wrote:
| It's just a really funky scheme in the US.
|
| On the top tier plan it's $70.
|
| * 2 lines is $60/line ($120)
|
| * 3 lines is $50/line ($150)
|
| And you have to regularly shop around. Do you want more
| data or voice? Do you want international roaming?
| International calling? Spotify? Netflix? Hulu?
|
| I, for example have a T-Mobile Magenta Plus. It also
| includes, Netflix, Apple TV+, Paramount+ (the Star Trek
| Channel), and Spotify. Those services are $40 separately.
| recursive wrote:
| I'm paying exactly $70 at the moment.
| [deleted]
| vel0city wrote:
| My phone bill with more data than I use in a month is
| cheaper than yours. I'm in the US.
| [deleted]
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Not only that, but in many areas the same company who owns the
| TV network also has a monopoly on the local Internet prices.
| It's a right mess. Part of the reason I'm excited for starlink
| to be a thing is that it, along with mobile networks, basically
| _forces_ that monopoly on internet service to finally be broken
| up in rural areas.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > along with mobile networks
|
| Mobile carriers are no better. They're basically wireless
| cable companies.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| I'm inclined to believe that many mobile networks compare
| favorably to Hugues Net. We made this mistake once. _Never
| again._
|
| https://support.hughesnet.com/en/faq/internet/unlimited-
| data...
| cebert wrote:
| I've had a great experience with Visible, Verizon's
| discount carrier. I only pay $25/mo for unlimited data,
| phone, and text. You join a party and each member of a
| party gets their own bill.
| the_snooze wrote:
| It's even more expensive. There are all sorts of service fees
| and equipment rental fees on top of these prices. It's a
| scumbag way of increasing the costs while still advertising
| artificially "low" prices.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You don't get many 'cable cutters' in the UK because it's
| just PS120 total a year, and like many people I pay it even
| though I almost never watch TV, but you can see why do you in
| the US.
| vel0city wrote:
| FWIW, in metro areas there's free over-the-air TV, there's
| no license fees for that. In my metro area there's easily
| 80 or so OTA channels I can pick up for free. So one could
| argue TV in the US is actually PS120 _less_ than in the UK,
| from that perspective. Here you can own and watch TV
| without paying anything other than the upfront cost of the
| TV and a wire (the most basic form of antenna).
|
| This would be more like paying for Sky TV subscription.
| Stevvo wrote:
| How much is your time worth? US TV has 16 minutes of
| advertisements per hour, while UK has 7, not counting the
| BBC channels, which do not have any.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| Their strategy seems to be: "user is probably comparing prices,
| hike so they sign up before it raises even more".
|
| That's one reason I have zero regrets on torrenting TV shows.
| someotherperson wrote:
| Avianca -- a Colombian airline -- does this too. It's really
| irritating. They also jack up the prices if you're viewing it in
| COP vs USD, to the point where the price can vary by >50%.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Every airline does price discrimination.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Lots of places do price discrimination, but there's an honest
| way and a dishonest way to do it.
|
| Honest way: "Here's a base price for the product; here are
| some extras (even if Veblen) that you can also get by giving
| us more money". Lots of video games do this (buy the presale
| premium edition, get some merch); streaming sites also do
| this (see Netflix's pricing tiers).
|
| Dishonest way: "Here's your price." (Unsaid: it's different
| than Chad's price, but there is no way to know what factors
| make that distinction).
| deathanatos wrote:
| There's price discrimination, and there's airlines.
|
| Airlines will tell you "An economy seat on this flight costs
| $100. There is 1 ticket left at this price." ; you'll think
| "Great!" and proceed to click into it, with the intent to buy
| at that price. You'll get to the part where you need to
| choose your (specific, not simply class of) seat on the
| plane, and the diagram will show no seats available: your
| only option will be to "upgrade" to a costlier seat. So, _in
| reality_ , there weren't any seats at that price, and the
| whole "There is _n_ seats at this price " thing was simple
| bait & switch meant to just wear you down into purchasing the
| more expensive seat.
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm sure some of this is just scumminess, but there's also
| the possibility of concurrent access, and someone else
| booked while you were thinking. There's also the more
| likely issue where airlines often outsource inventory
| management[1] and they have to pay a fee per search for
| realtime inventory (and those searches are slow), so they
| cache a lot of things and only get realtime inventory when
| you're very close to booking; then they often do a very
| poor job of cache invalidation (because it's hard)
|
| There's a lot of ways you _could_ organize the data so it
| 's less terrible, but all of those involve a lot more IT
| involvement than airlines want to invest it.
|
| [1] often to Sabre or Galilelo or similar
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _but there 's also the possibility of concurrent
| access, and someone else booked while you were thinking_
|
| You can restart the flow from scratch, and you'll still
| get " _n_ seats available at this price ", which rules
| out that it was booked while I was looking.
|
| > _so they cache a lot of things and only get realtime
| inventory when you 're very close to booking; then they
| often do a very poor job of cache invalidation (because
| it's hard)_
|
| Yet the end result is the same: the consumer gets a bait
| and switch.
|
| You're not wrong here, but what you point to is the
| problem: companies using "blame computers" as a way to
| abdicate responsibility for the problem.
|
| > _There 's a lot of ways you could organize the data so
| it's less terrible, but all of those involve a lot more
| IT involvement than airlines want to invest it._
|
| Precisely. One can look at it too as there is no penalty
| these days for screwing consumers over, so there's no
| economic impetus to do anything about it when it happens.
| axg11 wrote:
| This is most likely a bug rather than malicious intent or
| predatory pricing. This type of pricing makes zero sense from a
| conversions point of view. Don't get me wrong, every telco in
| North America is an oligopolistic, stagnant, rent-seeking, anti-
| consumer pile of crap, but I doubt this is intentional.
| [deleted]
| dtech wrote:
| It makes a lot of sense. People returning to your pricing page
| are more likely to have decided to buy from you, so they're
| likely less price sensitive. I've seen it myself.
|
| Not in $10 increments every refresh though, that's most likely
| badly coded.
| silisili wrote:
| I see this argument but wonder how true it is. If I'm
| shopping around, I'm already being fickle, comparing prices,
| features, etc. $10 would probably often be a breaking point.
| And me finding out you did this definitely would.
|
| If anything, it seems one should slightly -lower- prices when
| suspecting a customer is shopping around.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is most likely a bug rather than malicious intent or
| predatory pricing_
|
| Color me skeptical.
|
| I built web sites for a mid-sized B2B and B2C company, and had
| to build all kinds of games into the pricing.
|
| Refreshed the page more than three times? That's a price
| change.
|
| Returned to the same page 24 hours later? 36 hours later? 72
| hours later? Price change. Price change. Price change.
|
| Using a tablet? Price change.
|
| Connecting from an IP address believed to be in a particular
| geographic region? Price change, and inventory change.
|
| An unintended side effect of all of this was that it gave the
| illusion that pricing was dynamic based on supply and demand.
| It wasn't. There was no link between inventory and pricing. It
| was all games based on the user.
| mywittyname wrote:
| How can users play this game to their favor?
| jawilson2 wrote:
| VPN and browser spoofing?
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Would be interesting to scrape large swaths of the web
| and calculate the average differences in price based on
| user agent string (it's well established that Apple users
| occasionally see higher prices, but I don't know about
| Windows vs Linux for example), other fingerprinting, ISP
| / IP geo, and so forth. Does this exist?
|
| Taking it a step further: a browser extension that tries
| several scenarios (like Honey, but just for re-
| fingerprinting and stuff... can an extension make a
| request that suppresses/manipulates cookies only
| temporarily?) as you're shopping.
| staindk wrote:
| Save the most money by visiting these types of sites 0
| times
| francisofascii wrote:
| Agree. It can be BOTH a bug and predatory pricing. Maybe the
| price wasn't supposed to go up on every page view.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Yeah, it would not surprise me to find out that this is an
| innocent bug, but it would also not surprise me to find out
| it's a bug in some other bullshit behavior that's just going
| off the rails in this case.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| Don't you feel bad about enabling and perpetuating this sort
| of anti consumer behavior?
| reaperducer wrote:
| I hope so, if we were selling diapers or food or other
| essentials.
|
| But these were luxury items. The cheapest item in the
| inventory was $5,000ish. With add-ons, they could go up to
| $30K.
| [deleted]
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The more you keep coming back the more interested you are. I've
| long suspected this, and even experienced it before on Amazon,
| I'm almost certain.
| [deleted]
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| >makes zero sense
|
| That could be the AT&T motto. See most everything they have
| done in the past 15 years.
| starwind wrote:
| yeah nearly every time they refresh you see a red box
| exclamation point and "Heads up.." in the top right
| phkahler wrote:
| >> This is most likely a bug rather than malicious intent or
| predatory pricing.
|
| Hahahaha. It takes more code to add $10 to a price. It takes a
| cookie or something to remember how much they quoted you last
| time. This explicitly programmed behavior can NOT be a bug,
| it's a feature that someone took time to implement. The
| "feature" might be buggy in the sense that's its too obvious
| and perhaps was only supposed to increase the price once or
| something, but the overall implementation is almost certainly
| not a bug.
| tempoponet wrote:
| It could be as simple as pulling locally cached price data,
| saying this one is $10 more than the one below it, and then
| caching that. It would raise the price of itself if they used
| the wrong array index - something every programmer has done.
| thayne wrote:
| But why would you cache price data like that?
| IanCal wrote:
| Makes sense to cache an API call for prices, then if you
| don't realise you're mutating the cached object you could
| do this on every page load.
|
| Not in the web space but I've seen similar with using
| pythons lrucache as using that on a function modifies the
| programs behaviour (if you mutate the returned value,
| you're in trouble).
| thayne wrote:
| For it to persist across refreshes you would need to do
| more than just mutate the object, you would need to
| actually write it back to a persisted location like
| localstorage or a cookie.
| staticassertion wrote:
| I'm sure there are a billion frameworks that persist
| state automatically for you exactly like that.
| danShumway wrote:
| > But why would you
|
| No idea if GP is correct, but that would not even be
| close to the weirdest thing I've seen in production code
| in companies. Very plausible to me that an engineer for a
| large company could write code like that. Short answer,
| corporate codebases are messy and weird, and because they
| are already messy and weird they are therefore breeding
| ground for even more baffling decisions based on time
| constraints and partial understandings of already weird
| systems.
|
| Especially in legacy systems, questionable, weird design
| choices keep producing other questionable, weird design
| choices until explaining why AJAX requests are getting
| parsed through hidden input fields or why all of the
| localstorage fields are Base64 encoded suddenly requires
| a multi-part, 5-10 minute story about the history of the
| codebase -- and that's if you're lucky enough to have
| anyone around who knows the story in the first place.
|
| Related to the above, if you're in charge of an
| engineering team at a company please build more time into
| your team's schedule for refactoring and code cleanup.
|
| ----
|
| To jump off of OP's (at the top of the thread) point, it
| could also be a bug with malicious pricing. A programmer
| might have tried to build a dynamic pricing system based
| on geographic area or whatever and just accidentally read
| the base price from the same cache they're writing to.
|
| And if your followup question is "but why would you read
| the base price from localstorage instead of from the
| server, or why would you even have that logic clientside
| in the first place?" -- then see the first point above.
|
| But none of the explanations here would be surprising to
| me at all. It's not really a debate about whether AT&T
| alters prices based on stuff like area and customer data,
| I'd be surprised if someone tried to claim they don't.
| But like OP said, this doesn't make much sense from a
| conversions point of view; and it's way more likely to be
| a bug than it is to be an executive mistakenly believing
| that raising the price by $10 on every refresh makes
| people more likely to buy Internet.
|
| That executive already has better methods to increase
| prices: adding hidden fees and service charges, and
| raising prices behind the backs of long-term customers
| who aren't checking their bills regularly enough or who
| are unlikely to go to the trouble and inconvenience of
| switching or fighting the bill.
|
| My suspicion is bug.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> No idea if GP is correct, but that would not even be
| close to the weirdest thing I've seen in production code
| in companies. Very plausible to me that an engineer for a
| large company could write code like that. Short answer,
| corporate codebases are messy and weird, and because they
| are already messy and weird they are therefore breeding
| ground for even more baffling decisions based on time
| constraints and partial understandings of already weird
| systems.
|
| This is the first time reading HN has made me scared to
| live on this planet!
| peteradio wrote:
| If you write functions where you understand the caller to
| act in a very specific way ... and then ... years later a
| different caller comes along ...
| danShumway wrote:
| I'm not sure if it should make you scared or not, but it
| is good for people to internalize that many if not most
| systems in our world are (sometimes literally) held
| together by duck tape and often function purely because
| either:
|
| A) like 2 or 3 people total care about them way more than
| they're obligated to and keep them from falling over,
|
| B) it turns out that in many instances people just don't
| exploit or crash stuff, and broken systems can take a
| while to fail.
|
| ----
|
| That could be a longer conversation and it's not
| necessarily all pessimistic; the reality of how software
| (and systems in general) get built is one of the reasons
| I don't have a lot of patience for people who say there
| aren't any ways they can contribute to or improve
| anything and that the world is too connected or
| competitive now for people to make a difference. There's
| a ton of stuff to do and improve in most systems
| regardless of your talent level and there is no shortage
| of small but really impactful things that people can do
| around infrastructure, even if it's as simple as
| documenting how systems work.
|
| But I'm dead serious about this: internalize that real
| world systems are messy and that everyone involved in
| them is doing car maintenance on a still-moving vehicle.
| Internalize that systems decay over time and that as
| things become messy, they get messier at a faster rate.
| Internalize that this is not an exception, but _the
| rule_. All systems and codebases that are seeing regular
| development by nature decay and become unmaintainable
| unless you expend extra energy to keep reinforcing them,
| pruning them, and refactoring them. And it 's not as
| simple as hiring good programmers, messy systems actually
| have _momentum_ towards messiness, and regardless of who
| you hire they 'll spend the majority of their time just
| keeping the system from falling over.
|
| That is an incredibly important principle about the world
| for people to understand -- both because it helps make
| sense of a lot of the world and because internalizing it
| will make you a better manager if you're ever in that
| position.
|
| It also helps with evaluating security, because it's one
| thing to say that extra data storage and processing might
| increase security risk by multiplying attack vectors, and
| it's entirely another thing to actually have a sense for
| how much extra risk of bugs/mishandling/exploits each
| extra layer of software and corporate handling adds to
| data. At the same time, it also helps with understanding
| threat models and managing expectations, because you
| realize that very few things in the world are actually
| secure, but that for some reason (absent coordinated
| effort or a lot of attention) they very often don't get
| exploited or destroyed, and that there are ways to
| mitigate that kind of inescapable ambient risk.
| bdavisx wrote:
| Because some programmers really have no idea what they
| are doing and just throw SO cut-and-paste against the
| wall until something sticks.
| pwinnski wrote:
| > This explicitly programmed behavior can NOT be a bug
|
| Um, I know you said you work in software, and the rules say
| not to doubt you. So I'll press Y and move on.
|
| There are so many levels of bugs that almost nothing would
| surprise me, and this falls very easily within the range of
| bugs I've witnessed personally. Let's try this:
|
| Hahahaha. It takes a single off-by-one errors to accidentally
| increment prices. It would take a lot of effort to deliberate
| design a feature that deliberately adds to quoted prices on
| every refresh, for the purpose of... um... well, that part is
| unclear. This bug can NOT be explicitly programmed behavior,
| it's too obvious incorrect behavior to be something someone
| took time to implement.
|
| Yeah, that was easy. Except mine makes sense.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I think OP was saying that the price being relative to each
| user/session is not a bug, but a feature. The bug part is
| probably that it keeps raising the price on every refresh,
| rather than just once.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| They may have never coded a pricing system.
|
| I haven't, but I've coded trading systems. Typo a dividend
| or convert and your dumb little bot starts incrementing its
| offer every millisecond. (The fun is when another bot gets
| thrown into a complementary loop and the exchange yells at
| you.)
|
| Have a system that _e.g._ codes a local tax or maintenance
| allowance run on lookup, or have these data in two systems
| that try to sync but do it wrong, and you get something
| like this. (This is not a legitimate pricing strategy.
| Nobody gets FOMO buying an AT &T plan.)
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| phkahler wrote:
| >> You obviously don't code.
|
| over 40 years if you count my kid years and closing in on
| 30 on the clock. IMHO anyone that thinks "the price
| magically increments 10 dollars every page refresh" is
| somehow a typical bug (that made production yet!) should
| probably quit the field.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| I retract my assertion then. However, there were several
| possible scenarios proffered in the comments whereby this
| is an easy bug to create. Mainly an increment setup where
| it increments itself instead of increments off of a base.
| pwinnski wrote:
| So I've been coding a few more years than you have, but
| not many. As a backend dev, this bug makes no sense at
| all. Having spent a few years with companies using things
| like Angular and React, I've seen bugs of this type / in
| this category more than once.
|
| Count yourself fortunate that you've missed such things,
| but this is the norm more often than not.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Count yourself fortunate that you've missed such
| things...
|
| Will do.
|
| ... but this is the norm more often than not.
|
| I can't tell you how frightening I find that ;-) I did
| appreciate your comment:
|
| >> As a backend dev, this bug makes no sense at all.
|
| That affirms my idea that such things should never happen
| - _at least in some contexts_. But it leave me wondering
| what on earth kind of tools are people using for this to
| be unsurprising?
| jl6 wrote:
| > such things should never happen
|
| The space where things should never happen is fertile
| ground for bugs, because by definition programmers pay
| less attention / do less testing when they think failure
| is impossible :)
| axg11 wrote:
| Do you work in software development? I have, on multiple
| occasions, introduced bugs that are orders of magnitude
| wackier than this.
| worker_person wrote:
| It's really fun writing bug that affects motors.
|
| Okay slowly turning the 800 pound steel beam 1 degree per
| minute, and now it's trying to toss it across the room...
| Boss we need a new $1,000 dollar motor!, and maybe a new
| wall.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Do you work in software development?
|
| Yes I do.
|
| >> I have, on multiple occasions, introduced bugs that are
| orders of magnitude wackier than this.
|
| Those would make a nice blog post. I've done some stupid
| things and seen some unexpected results, but I've never
| encountered the likes of this "accidentally" incrementing
| price thing. ;-)
| powerslacker wrote:
| Accidentally the price thing is really easy to do.
| dahfizz wrote:
| It could be an index error or a misuse of references,
| where product B is supposes to be product A + 10.
|
| It could be that some local taxes or fees comes out to
| $10, and the client code does `price += taxes` on page
| load.
|
| There could be code to round up to a $10 increment, and
| then subtract 2 cents so the prices are all $X9.98, but
| the rounding logic is incorrect. Since this is JS, they
| will be using floating point prices. That is a minefield
| in itself.
|
| I'm not saying it's definitely a bug. But it trivially
| could be.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Why do you need to keep state here? I can see calculating
| the prices dynamicly, but why save and the reuse the
| result?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Caching.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| They could be using some node.js framework they don't
| understand that is silently persisting data.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Especially if they are using isomorphic JS. Globals /
| singletons are very dangerous when the JS runs on both
| the server and client.
| IanCal wrote:
| * Pull data from API for pricing, later add caching
|
| * Modify value to give local amount, not realising it's
| modifying a cached value
|
| * Never test refreshing doesn't change the price
| sosuke wrote:
| Verification would be this same test but seeing if the
| price persists into the "cart" or further down the
| checkout / shopping process.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Agreed, though I wonder what the original intent was. My guess
| is there was still a variable pricing scheme, but probably only
| varying by $10, with the display code not expecting its value
| to get saved locally.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> but I doubt this is intentional.
|
| And I doubt that these quoted prices have any relation to the
| actual bill that they will eventually send.
| sixothree wrote:
| I have a habit of asking what the exact price of my bill will
| be after taxes and fees. It is _rarely_ what the sales person
| quotes. I have cancelled service because of the difference in
| quoted price vs bill price.
|
| But at least once in the last 5 years it was exact to the
| penny. So there's that.
| janmarsal wrote:
| Very common bug actually. I've noticed it on most of the
| airline and traveling agency websites. Must be those sloppy
| programmers. I know I'm always extra careless when I have to
| program something where real money is moving.
| gruez wrote:
| It's hilarious how most people in that thread are jumping on the
| hate train and taking the post at face value, despite not a
| single person confirming they can reproduce it. Surely there's
| _somebody_ with an at &t account that's reading this thread that
| could take 60 seconds to check themselves?
| temp8964 wrote:
| The thing is, with AT&T's design, even if you can't reproduce
| it, doesn't mean it is not real.
| gruez wrote:
| 1. it's not necessarily that nobody successfully reproduced
| it, it's that nobody even tried and everybody's gobbling it
| up at face value.
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot seems
| relevant here
| shakezula wrote:
| Exactly this. There are people in that Reddit thread
| claiming that using a Mac will make companies charge you
| more too, with absolutely zero proof of any of these
| claims.
|
| People will go to endless lengths to justify their spending
| habits.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Yes. The person produced the video should share his AT&T
| account or even his desktop account and open for remote, so
| that everyone can login to try it out.
| gruez wrote:
| Again, you're missing the point. The problem isn't with
| the OP, it's that _everybody else_ didn 't bother to
| reproduce it, and is uncritically believing it despite
| the lack of replication.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Have you tried to reproduce it?
| gruez wrote:
| I did. I went to the url in the post but got a login
| page. I'm not an at&t customer so that's basically the
| end of my attempts. That said, based on the
| upvote/comment count, and how big of a market share at&t
| has, there must be at least hundreds of users that can
| reproduce it.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Not really. AT&T pricing is localized. Maybe someone has
| to be in the same zip code to reproduce the result.
| zeruch wrote:
| Weirdly, this may be an unintentional bug, but it certainly READS
| as on-brand for AT&T.
| NetBeck wrote:
| The packages increasing by $10 have an extra $10 DVR charge. The
| only static price to the left doesn't mention a DVR fee.
| jp57 wrote:
| Appropriate that this is posted in /r/AssholeDesign, as AT&T is a
| company that seems to have embraced AssholeDesign as a mission
| and organizational philosophy.
| [deleted]
| docdeek wrote:
| I seem to recall that there was a proposal in Europe where such
| pricing practices were to be - if not outlawed - then made more
| transparent by having websites explain that they were offering
| different prices for the same service/product, and why the price
| might differ (currency, referring site etc).
| mushyhammer wrote:
| Easy. Add an asterisk and nobody will follow it. Problem fixed.
| That's actually how we got legal copy longer than the content.
| gruez wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be an asterisk/fine print. All you
| need is enough companies doing it for CYA reasons that it
| becomes meaningless. see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65
| whoopdedo wrote:
| My question is if these prices are algorithmically generated, and
| borderline pseudo-random, will they actually honor the quoted
| price? What if I tried to sign up but injected some javascript
| that created my own imaginary price. Would I be able to convince
| the system to accept this number, and what proof would AT&T have
| that their frontend didn't actually show it to me at some point?
|
| Cynically, I suspect that the fabricated number will be
| disregarded when it comes time to signing a contract, and you
| will always be presented with one of the same small number of
| rate buckets. That may be higher or lower than what you saw on
| the website. If you complain a service rep will be able to drop
| you into a lower bucket, but they predict that most people will
| either not care or not notice the price. Not until you get your
| first bill.
| twistedpair wrote:
| Used to be checkouts for things like hotel wifi passed the
| price as an unvalidated URL param. All you had to do was change
| `&price=9.99` to `&price=0.01` and you got cheap wifi.
| Lamad123 wrote:
| Wait a little longer and then refresh!! The price might go down!!
| I once was trying to use Lyft because I missed a bus.. I searched
| again for the ride and the price went up like crazy, tried again
| and it stayed high.. Then I decided to just wait for the bus.
| After some 15 minutes I searched Lyft again and the price was
| back to normal if not lower!!
| karmakaze wrote:
| ...or delete your cookies and make sure you're not using
| Safari.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| There's no way this persists through the whole payflow, likely a
| bug on the client/view layer.
|
| Pricing is subject to multivariate testing all the time on
| e-commerce sites, this is likely supposed to show _x_ for Segment
| A and _x+10_ for Segment B. I 'd be shocked if OP could _check
| out_ with the inflated price. Otherwise I 'm opening up web
| inspector and getting myself a $0.00 AT&T monthly plan...
| antgiant wrote:
| Additional fun on AT&T's website. The phone number to call and
| complete the order changes on every session. So you can often get
| a new phone number by refreshing as well.
| dmtroyer wrote:
| as an AT&T customer, I can confirm that their websites are some
| of the jankiest I have ever seen. The number of redirects and
| different loading gifs you get when logging in to your account is
| comical. I need to capture this sometime.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| There was discussion in Europe that you also will see
| different/higher prices if you access pages by an iPhone.
| agilob wrote:
| This is very common with vehicle and house insurance. Getting a
| quote from iPhone results in a higher quote than using Firefox
| mushyhammer wrote:
| I don't know how it compares to Windows and Android, but in
| South East Asia I get "mobile prices" on my iPhone and they're
| actually lower than on the desktop.
| capableweb wrote:
| South America/Europe here. Booking.com does the same, cheaper
| prices on mobile than via desktop/laptop.
| sofixa wrote:
| That's what they advertise, but multiple times when
| checking the price is absolutely the same on desktop (from
| a different account). They've already been caught in false
| advertising so i don't see why they continue to do it
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| It's funny, this is exactly what weev went to jail for doing to
| AT&T. Apparently it's okay if you increment a number in every
| HTTP response, but not if you do it in the request!
| woah wrote:
| Intent is very important in the law
| specialp wrote:
| They raised the price of their products $10 recently (I
| cancelled). So they might have done something like price = price
| + 10 but this had the unintended effect of incrementing the price
| every time rather than just once
| hereforphone wrote:
| I just ordered AT&T Internet a week ago. Because the building I'm
| living now has a deal with them and I get a cheap package. They
| demanded my SSN for a credit check, and they spent almost every
| call trying to upsell me. It felt very trashy and unprofessional.
| They also hijack DNS and point all unresolved domains to their
| own search page. Very scummy. I wouldn't use them again if I had
| a choice.
| chrisBob wrote:
| If they are calculating the price in JS then maybe it is worth me
| spending a few minutes with the console open on their website to
| try and bring down my monthly bill. Yes, I would like to switch
| to the new $10 plan!
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Can the number of refreshes be set to a negative number,
| perhaps?
| mywittyname wrote:
| This might be computer fraud & abuse.
| juanani wrote:
| dylan604 wrote:
| If someone is doing these kinds of calculations client side,
| then they are pretty much begging someone to take advantage
| of them like this. After all, it is code running on my
| computer that you've given me control of by doing critical
| decisions client side. I've just decided to make that
| critical decision myself using the same code that has been
| provided to me.
|
| Don't ever do critical calculations like this client side.
| It's just dumber than dumb.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Taking advantage of poor design decisions for financial
| gain is still a crime.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| What's the specific crime being committed?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Using client side javascript to do critical monetary
| decisions?
| dylan604 wrote:
| So is exceeding the speed limit. However, catching
| speeders is much easier to do than proving someone
| intentionally manipulated the data client side and that
| it wasn't a bug somewhere else in the shittily designed
| system.
| albrewer wrote:
| If I submit a form stating I'd like to pay $10 a month for
| service and AT&T accepts that, how is that fraud?
| staticassertion wrote:
| The same way that if a company puts pages you can access at
| `www.example.com/1` and you then access
| `www.example.com/2`, which you should not access, you're
| violating the CFAA.
|
| I haven't read the CFAA in a while but it is extremely
| broad. It boiled down to "if you access a system in a way
| you should not, illegal".
|
| Or how accessing the same page a billion times per second,
| a page you have every right to access a few times, is
| illegal.
|
| Or if you dial into a nuclear arms facility with your
| phone.
| henriquez wrote:
| If the Javascript code is running on your own computer then
| you by definition have authorized access.
|
| By the same token, AT&Ts malicious pricing malware running in
| your browser could be construed of "unauthorized access" of
| your own computer, thus AT&T would be violating CFAA.
| dahfizz wrote:
| You could argue that you have access to their JS. But as
| soon as you modify that JS to do something they don't want
| to their backend servers, that's most likely unlawful.
| bialpio wrote:
| Let's run with this thought experiment even further: what
| if I use a very obscure browser that happens to interpret
| their JS in a very specific (and beneficial to me) way?
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| When I was in college my friend figured out a major fast
| food chain had a flaw in its API with the way it
| validated coupon codes.
|
| The server validated that the coupon code was legitimate,
| but the actual discount value of the coupon code was
| validated client side in JS for some reason.
|
| So he could turn any 10% off coupon into a 100% off
| coupon by modifying the API requests during the checkout
| flow. I'm sure this was illegal but he ate a lot of free
| fast food before they ever fixed it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Once you send that over the wire to their system, you've
| committed a crime. Whether that's simple theft of services
| or something worse is up to the prosecution. Considering
| you altered a company's website to have it send malformed
| data for the express purposes of getting an unauthorized
| discount, computer/wire fraud might be on the table.
|
| But don't sit there and pretend that you can say, "well,
| they let me do it because some of the code ran client
| side." No, that's not how it works. Changing the price of a
| $100 service to $10 on a website, is like taking a bar code
| from a $10 product and slapping it on $100 product. The
| biggest difference is, since it involves computers, there
| are even more crimes committed.
| postalrat wrote:
| It would probably be a crime if you manipulated their
| computers to accept the $10 price. But if you submit you
| want a plan for $10 and their servers just accept it then
| what crime could I have committed?
| mywittyname wrote:
| You've still committed a crime even if the other party
| doesn't actively prevent you from doing so. You can walk
| into a store, and walk out the front door with a
| television and probably nobody will stop you.
| Additionally, you can walk into a bank and demand that
| they give you money, and _they will give it to you._
|
| In none of these cases are the companies condoning or
| supporting your actions. You can try the argument that
| the bank teller gave you the money and that it's bank
| policy to do so. But it probably won't work.
|
| It's strange to see people bending over backwards to deny
| that this is a crime. Surely if someone manipulated your
| bank's computers to wire transfer your entire balance to
| another account, you wouldn't be asking, "what crime
| could [they] have committed?" You'd feel like somebody
| stole from you.
| postalrat wrote:
| I think the reason people are denying this is a crime is
| because it's happening on their machine, not a remote
| server. And the remote server is presumable accepting the
| request.
|
| Using your store analogy it would be like bringing a
| television to the cashier and telling them you will pay
| $10 and they accept.
| henriquez wrote:
| That's just... like, your opinion, man.
| mbreese wrote:
| Obviously IANAL, but it is an interesting thought
| exercise. Would changing price (and having it accepted)
| be a financial crime (wire fraud, etc), or a negotiation?
| It isn't like you are going into the ATT database and
| changing your bill. Would it be more like saying, I'm
| willing to pay X for plan Z? And if they accept, is this
| the result of digital haggling? Because, this is possible
| when you are physically talking to a rep (in person or on
| the phone).
|
| I doubt a "reasonable" person would think of it like the
| latter case, but for people who think about software
| agents, it's interesting to think about.
|
| _Disclaimer: don't try this at home..._
| dahfizz wrote:
| I think the critical difference is that their backend API
| is not meant for public use. The situation is akin to
| forging an internal email to your customer service rep,
| tricking them into changing your bill.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > since it involves computers, there are even more crimes
| committed.
|
| This is why educating the public about jury nullification
| is so important.
| imglorp wrote:
| Everyone on this thread debating legality of "it's running on
| my computer already" needs to remember the infinite stupidity
| field flux density emitted from certain offices. It doesn't
| matter if it's legal if your legal defense bankrupts you.
|
| Eg the F12 debacle:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/31/22861188/missouri-
| govern...
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Hopefully a jury nullifies whatever nonsense Congress wanted
| to push in that law.
| swalsh wrote:
| I call it negotiating
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| What if a company sends me an order form on physical paper:
| [ ] Plan X $30 [ ] Plan Y $50 [ ] Plan Z $70
|
| And I pencil in "Plan W $10" at the top with a checkmark and
| mail it back. Is that illegal?
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| Is doing so illegal? No. Can you demand the company accept
| Plan W? Also no.
|
| You are basically just giving a counter offer, the company
| can choose to accept or reject that offer. There have been
| cases (cba to google them right now, just going off my
| memory) where customers have done what you have suggested,
| the company have blindly accepted the "counter offer" and
| have had to honour the amended contract they agreed to.
|
| EDIT: The problems happen when trying to enforce such
| amended contracts, trying to prove the company agreed to
| such changes. For me when I'm negotiating my annual
| broadband contract I record the phone call (granted I'm in
| the UK, recording calls as an indivial is legal) just to
| make sure I have a record of what was agreed. But my
| current provider has always followed up with a updated
| contract after the phone call with the new terms, so it
| would be easy for me to prove that my provider agreed to
| those terms. My current provider agreed to a price which is
| PS1 per month cheaper than the cheapest like fore like
| competitor I could find at the time and also agreed to
| waive any cancelation charges if I choice to cancel before
| the end of the 12 month contract.
|
| However a) been pretty happy with their service todate so
| unless the shit hits the fan I have no plans to leaving
| them unless b) my local area finally gets FTTP but if that
| does happen I will prob use my current provider as my FTTP
| provider. So they really don't have any risk of myu
| cancelling during the current contract.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Can you demand the company accept Plan W? Also no._
|
| Maybe I'm misremembering but I vaguely recall a story of
| a man who altered a contract, signed it, and mailed it
| back to a telecom company. They signed it without
| reviewing and when it went to court it was upheld because
| both parties signed the altered contract.
|
| But I understand that's different than "demanding" they
| accept it so it doesn't negate your point.
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| What I meant by "demand the company accept Plan W", was
| that you can not force the company to accept your "Plan
| W" counter offer, but if they do accept "Plan W" you
| should be able to enforce "Plan W" as long as you can
| prove that they accepted "Plan W".
|
| In the example I gave in my edit with my own ISP
| recently, the inital offer they gave me when my contract
| was coming up to expire was to keep my existing price and
| level of service, however over the previous year prices
| for new customers had dropped below what I was paying and
| a competitor was even lower than my own ISP's new
| customer pricing (For the same level of service - the
| pricing diffence wasn't much but it was still there).
|
| So when my contract was due for renewal I called them up
| (easier to negotiate with a human than a computer)
| pointed out that a) I was happy with the service they had
| provided but I was not happy that the price they
| initially offered to renew was higher than if I was a new
| customer. b) Because they hadn't offered the price that
| they gave new customers it incentived me to compare
| prices elsewhere which lead me their competitor and I was
| inclided to switch, but suggested that if they sweetened
| the deal I would stay.
|
| The rep offered a lower price and I said I would agree
| aslong as they wavied any cancellation charges during the
| contract. I did say to the rep that I had no plans to
| cancel unless my street finally gets fibred. It took a
| bit of wording in the contract, tech speaking the early
| termination charge is still there however the discount I
| have cancels out that charge so it would end up being a
| zero owed balance which I was happy with (Chances are
| that my street won't get fibred during the remainer of my
| contract and even if it did I would prob use my existing
| provider as my fibre provider as they do offer it where
| its available, so it was a safe bet for the provider and
| just gave me a bit of reassurance).
|
| My ISP had every right to tell me to go pound sand, my
| choices would have then been to take the best deal my ISP
| offered and stay or switch ISPs (which here in the UK has
| been fine-tuned to a point there is very little downtime,
| basically for most people its a case of swapping out the
| ISP issued router, for me it would be configuring my own
| modem to the new ISP's auth come switch over). Customer
| retaintion reps usually have a bit of leeway to keep non
| probmatic customers happy, and tbh I would have been
| happy if they had just price matched the price they offer
| new customers, but hey if you don't ask, you don't get
| :-)
| [deleted]
| hyperdimension wrote:
| Honestly, given the way the CFAA has been (ab)used in the
| past, it might just come down to whether they "use a
| computer" to scan the page and see what's checked...
| giarc wrote:
| There's a story of a guy in Russia who received a contract
| from a credit card company. He altered it to provide
| himself a 0% interest rate and then some stipulation that
| if he keeps a zero balance the company actually owes him
| money. The company reps signed the agreement without
| reading. Eventually they canceled his card and he sued for
| breach of this contract. It went back and forth in the
| courts and they eventually settled.
|
| https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/updated-russian-man-turns-
| ta...
| ars wrote:
| Yes, it's legal. But they have a choice to accept your
| contract (the paper) or not.
|
| It's not like if you write it, they automatically need to
| honor it.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| If that worked, I'd be more curious about what would happen if
| you signed up for a monthly plan with a cost of
| Number.MAX_VALUE.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Why not go crazy? Negative values.
| Cerium wrote:
| Their other services might be hell, but I'm now three years in on
| AT&T fiber internet. It has been a great experience. They charge
| a round dollar amount with all fees included and have only
| changed the price once ($10 more) after the first year deal.
| Loughla wrote:
| As a contrasting experience - AT&T owns the rights to supply
| internet via overhead lines where I live (it's rural here),
| with a contractual agreement to provide high speed access.
| Because they're a multi-billion dollar corporation and we're a
| township of around 500 people (and our town council are fucking
| morons) it's a forever agreement, and high speed is defined as
| dial-up.
|
| Meanwhile, the local co-op ISP just finished running
| underground fiber to the township. Full gig connection for $250
| set-up fee (with a 1000yd drop to your house if necessary) and
| $80/month forever.
| dylan604 wrote:
| In a township that small and moronic council members, have
| you ever been tempted to run for council position yourself?
| I'd have concerns that I'd become a moron in that sense as
| usually there are such deep rooted moronic decisions that
| non-morons can't do anything. So now the non-moron comes
| across as moronic as well. But that's just my own personal
| fear.
| Loughla wrote:
| The problem in small towns is that the idiots in charge,
| generally, haven't ever left the small towns. Therefore,
| they are blissfully unaware of their ignorance. They don't
| even know what they don't know.
|
| They apply lessons their fathers and mothers learned in the
| 50's and 60's about how business is done with a handshake
| and a friendly disposition to today's world.
|
| And if you don't have the right last name or the
| willingness to defer to their ignorant authority, you can't
| get anything done.
|
| It's frustrating to see the same people from the same
| families making the same stupid mistakes for literally
| generations. It's more frustrating to be excluded from that
| process that you know you can help fix just because you
| _dared to leave the community for any period of time
| regardless of whether it was for fun or for advanced
| university studies_ or _your last name is tainted because
| your grandpa was a complete shithead, regardless of how you
| turned out_.
|
| A bit of a rant. But. I have been tempted to run, and I
| have been elected to the council. And I couldn't get
| anything done, because I was purposefully excluded as an
| outsider with too much education, regardless of what I
| tried. It was frustrating.
| mijoharas wrote:
| > and have only changed the price once ($10 more)
|
| Good thing that you only refreshed your browser once while
| using it.
| wara23arish wrote:
| I use it too. Theres only one place in the house where I can
| plug in the required modem which makes it annoying. Also not
| possible to replace it with ur own equipment interestingly
| enough. Not sure why
| js2 wrote:
| Google threatened to bring fiber to my home years ago. Well,
| they still haven't, but doing so apparently motivated AT&T to
| do so. I've now had reliable 1 Gbps service for $70/month since
| Jan 2017, no price increases. They even started giving me free
| access to HBO awhile back. I keep thinking they've just somehow
| forgotten about my account. I assume I'll lose free HBO once
| the Warner sell-off is complete.
|
| Aside, but I was recently helping my mother-in-law get
| Internet. She's in a place serviced by Sonic, but only over
| AT&T copper. Their pricing was not great. I ended up
| discovering Xfininty (Comcast) pre-paid. $45/month for
| 10'ish/50'ish Mbps service which is plenty for her, no data
| cap, no dealing with Comcast customer retention when she wants
| to cancel. This is not a well advertised service and I came
| across it only by accident.
|
| https://www.xfinityprepaid.com/
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Comcast/comments/rsp555/question_co...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I think "Google threatened to bring Fiber but never did and
| everyone else lowered their prices" is best case for
| everyone. People get reasonably priced high speed Internet,
| and nobody has to suffer being a Google product.
| ra7 wrote:
| Agreed. AT&T fiber has been rock solid for close to 4 years
| that I've been using. They've even let me keep the discount
| price after the promotional period (I just asked).
|
| My only complaint is their subpar gateway. WiFi signals keep
| dropping when there's any kind of interference and the
| automatic channel finding is awful. But a one-time investment
| in a router and you're good.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is pretty much my exact experience as well. I'm just too
| damn lazy to find a different WiFi to switch it out. It does
| seem to have gotten worse in the last 6months or so. I love
| the gigabit outbound for being able to connect to my OwnCloud
| server while away from home at high enough speeds I don't use
| Dropbox/iCloud/etc.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I bet despite the TVPA act of 2019, you are still paying rental
| fees on your gateway.
|
| Even Comcast decided not to find a way around that.
| vel0city wrote:
| I've had AT&T fiber for a while. Equipment rental isn't a
| line item on my bill.
| glowingly wrote:
| My local monopoly simply increased prices across the board
| for everyone. Who else could we turn to for new service?
| Starlink is at capacity here and DSL has a nice "up to 3Mbps"
| disclaimer.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| I hate to agree with this, but ATT fiber has been good for me
| as well. I'm going to change soon to a different, local
| provider, but for other reasons than "ATT fiber sucks."
|
| Way back in the day, when DSL was The New Thing, I had a good
| experience with it as well. Damn you, ATT! I try to hate, but
| you keep meeting my expectations!
|
| That said, a friend is getting royally jacked up by ATT
| incompetence and complete disinterest in slightly rural
| service.
| exikyut wrote:
| I guess this is gonna wind up at the bottom so oh well, but I'm
| pretty sure the URL (reading it out of the video) is
|
| https://www.att.com/acctmgmt/dtvlander
|
| So all it takes is someone with AT&T to go pop open the devtools.
| (It apparently requires a login, and I'm kinda in Australia so
| that won't work)
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