While favoring the uber-rich, who are currently taking advantage of us at unprecedented levels.

But I remember more than ten years ago getting better prices by checking one hotel after another and finally going back to the first hotel's website. I'm sure that there are more sophisticated ploys that people use now.

We get notices all the time from Qantas (frequent flier member) and they had flights just a short time ago from LA to Sydney in the $800 - $1,000 range. If you live in a small city that has poor service, maybe check on flights from a larger city (might be worth it to travel via car). The prices are crazy from small cities that do not have any real airline competition or service

You might want to sign up for a credit card with a good frequent flier bonus. We travel all the time on our points and will be traveling to Hawaii this month on their buy one, get one for $99 deal (you get this deal once a year with an Alaska Airline credit card). By-the-way Hawaiian Airlines (which is now part of Alaska Airlines) flies to Australia from the west coast (pretty decent prices). Have fun with your trip - we have not been to Australia since the early 1990s. It is an incredibly long trip (21 hours in the air from our place).

Hopefully that price was for a round trip.

The airlines say they do not use the algorithmic pricing as a way to extract as much as possible from a consumer. But, we have noticed that the prices usually go up if you repeatedly check prices and dates. If you are retired, you have more options when it comes to choosing dates and flights (usually early morning flights are cheaper).

Please don't trust them anymore that you would trust them with your documents stored in OneDirve/Azure. They (and all the others) are rifling through your personal information as we speak.

We never buy anything through Expedia and do not sign in to check on tickets. So, they are not getting much from us.

If you use Windows 10 or 11 or Microsoft Office, then you are already giving Microsoft plenty of information. It is hard to get away from these big corporations with the consolidation in business ownership that continues unabated. We can only hope there is a reckoning when this AI frenzy collapses (which it is on its way to doing right now). We just have to get a government in place that will not bail these reckless investors out when it all comes down.

United's economy was $1590 round trip, business class was $8464 round trip. For one person. It's such a long flight, so I thought maybe I'd splurge and treat myself to a lay-down type seat. Uh..not for $7000 more! Flight would be from SFO to SYD.

I'm going to check Qantas as I know they are Australia-based and have a lot of flights.

I was just looking at the Qantas holiday deals (think it might be over) where a round trip was $865 from LAX to Sydney. You could split the trip to make it more tolerable by stopping over in Hawaii for a day or two (about half way). I know it is a terribly long trip. We flew to Sydney and then to Brisbane from Minneapolis years ago.

You might be able to apply for a Qantas credit card and then use the points and money to upgrade the seat (assuming you have time before traveling). Hawaiian Airlines might have some decent prices from the west coast to Australia too. You can get 60,000 points right now if you sign up for Alaska or Hawaiian's frequent flier program. I would guess that would cover one part of your trip if you want to use it that way (pay for the other half).

Have fun with your trip. Fraser Island is a great place to visit if you have time for a side trip (actually it is a bit more than a side trip - adventure).

You know, that sounds like a great idea to break the trip up a bit in Hawaii. I didn't even think of that. I've never been to Hawaii and always wanted to go.

I was thinking about the points thing earlier on, but I probably don't have enough time now. Going back and forth on the best time to go, how to make sure the dogs are taken care of, etc etc etc.

Using award miles these days does not require much more than paying for tickets. I remember the old days when they only allocated so many award seats on trips (long since gone). My wife used to get up at 1:00 a.m. to book tickets the first day they were available.

Even if you do not sign up for a credit card, it is worth it to sign up for the frequent flier program when you fly to Australia. It is such a long trip that you will accrue enough miles to get a free ticket for the lower 48 (you can always give it away to someone too). We have been playing the points game for a long time, and it is well worth the effort (it is the initial bonus that is the key). We switch credit cards regularly too and keep one card long term. So, our credit score remains excellent or exceptional.

We really do not feel too sorry for Chase or Bank of America or any of these other large banks. They set up the terms of these loyalty programs and are making boatloads of money off annual fees and 24% interest rates. I noticed in a business article that the value of United Airlines loyalty program exceeded the airline's value. So, that is why they push these programs at airports and during the flights.

It cares little about the goals of making it easy to plan a trip, improving your side hustle or choosing a good YouTube video.

Those are just the hooks to get the data, to then use to run live A/B user testing against, to ultimately feed the A.I.'s optimized to suck money from you.

A.I. is a racket.

and I verified the deal by searching a lot.

The key is to aways use VPN where not blocked AND keep those cookies clear after dealing with any company every time you use the net ss well as notlogginginuntilafteryou find what you want and where to buy it. Firefox has private tabs and there's an add-on that automatically creates new private tabs every time by default then deletes all cookies from that tab when you finish with it. Logging on allows them to remember your searches even if you delete the cookies.

I have successfully connected in multiple tabs simultaneously to the same company that punished users who made too many searches and I found that it made a dramatic difference because I could search without the trackers knowing.

On my phone where Firefox doesn't have that feature so every time I finish with a site, I exit Firefox to clear everything as it's easier than going through the munu to clear them. Sure, it's a pain but it's the price of privacy.

It's one of those "seems to good to be true", so I've no idea if the sites are legit or not. Sounds like you found one that was. The ones I've looked up ask for all your information to give you a quote, and I hesitate to do that.

Yes, with AI spreading into our lives like a cancer, it's going to be even more important to be vigilant about removing cookies, using VPN, etc.--but I'm just waiting for companies to get around that too. It feels like humanity has created a monster that will eventually consume us all. The internet was one of the best, but also the worst, things that happened to humanity, IMO.

Was looking for flights to London, UK.
I checked every day for a week, then dumped cookies and history.
Better seats and far better prices became available.
Not sure AI (Abundant Iniquity) had anything to do with it back then.

At least prices to South America are far better for Tuesday flights than any other day from SFO. But be VERY careful you choose the correct day: several flights leave just after midnight. I have twice mistakenly selected the wrong departure day (failing to see the date was wrong).

Is to book them with credit card miles and just pay the taxes owed. My favorite airlines to do this with are Virgin Atlantic and AirFrance and they do transfer bonuses typically 2x a year from the cards I use to their FF programs, which make my miles worth 20-40% more.

We used to get a credit card with an airline that was about to merge too (Hawaiian and Alaska, for instance). The points all transfer fine and it worked out just fine. It also saved a little bit of work to close the credit card.

I have gotten some INSANE deals on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class flights in the past two or three years, especially when Chase or AmEx runs those transfer bonuses. I'm going back this summer (I have family in England) and splurged a few more points on the outbound for JetBlue Mint, which is easily as good as most "first class" cabins. Coming back across the pond on VA.

The taxes on the JB flights were a LOT less than with VA, though, so it's a nice balance. The only bummer with JetBlue is that they won't hold flights while you transfer points to them like VA will, so I booked those through the Chase travel portal (something I don't usually do/recommend).

For the time being, I always fly back into the U.S. into NY's JFK airport because they're the only airport currently under a federal court order saying they have to have a warrant to search your devices.

pricing. If you check something and don't buy it right away but just keep coming back to the item several times over period of weeks/months the price will show as elevated along the way bit by bit. Not all the time for every item so there must be some sort of way that the sellers on Amazon perhaps are part of using the algorithm and others are not. Probably based on a cut of the money to Amazon or how much a seller has to pay for partaking in it.

But as you said if you clear everything or make Amazon think it's a "new" person looking at the item then the old original price appears. I did this by using a different computer and not logging in but just browsing the site and so Amazon didn't know it was me. Sometimes, as you found with the tickets, these various sites and their algorithms can make big increases. In my case I think when I looked at something every few days for a few weeks the algorithm took that to be increased interest on my part and so they kept nudging the price thinking I would eventually buy the item.

It's the company they contracted it out to that does that....or a company they created on the side. I think they call it "plausible deniability".