Is the existence of a site that 'sells higher every time the page is refreshed' apparently user exploitation or a bug?



AT & T , the largest telephone company in the United States, offers a variety of services, including ' DIRECTV STREAM ,' which sells both live video streaming services and Internet connection services. This DIRECTV STREAM sales page has a mysterious specification that the price increases by $ 10 (about 1200 yen) each time it is updated, and it is gathering attention as to whether this is user exploitation or just a bug.

AT & T's website raising the price every time I refresh the page: assholedesign
https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/tx7umg/atts_website_raising_the_price_every_time_i/

AT & T's website raising the price every time I refresh the page | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30931348

It has been reported by users of the overseas bulletin board Reddit that the sales page of AT & T's DIRECTV STREAM has a mysterious specification that the selling price rises every time it is updated. Click on the image below to play the movie and you'll see how the price of each plan goes up every time you refresh the DIRECTV STREAM sales page. An AT & T account is required to access the sales page displayed in the movie .



Various plans are available for DIRECTV STREAM, and the monthly fee will change as the number of channels that can be played increases. The problem here is the monthly charge for the plans in the area surrounded by the red frame, and not all plans change.



When you reload the page ...



The plan fee in the red frame part has increased by 10 dollars (about 1200 yen).



Every time I refreshed the page, the plan price increased by $ 10, and the price did not stop no matter how many times I refreshed the page.



The mysterious price increase on the DIRECTV STREAM sales page was first reported on Reddit, with most users saying 'this is a scam,' 'let's switch to another service,' and 'a long time ago, airlines went to the web. 'I was doing the same thing on the site,' 'this is a general marketing strategy,' he said.

On the other hand, on Hacker News, 'This could be a bug rather than malicious intent or predatory pricing. This kind of pricing doesn't make sense from a conversion perspective. Don't get me wrong. American All telephone companies are occupying and stagnant, rent -seeking and anti-consumer junk, but I don't think this is intentional. ' Some have pointed out that the behavior of the price rising every time this page is updated may be a bug.

In fact, there are disagreements on the bulletin board as to whether this specification was intentionally included by AT & T or just a bug. 'The people who come back to the page are often the ones who have decided on the contract, and those people will not be sensitive to price checks, so it is very reasonable to say that the price will increase when the page is refreshed. Some have pointed out that it's a feature that AT & T has deliberately included to exploit users, such as 'It's worth it,' while 'many to add $ 10 to the price every time you refresh a page.' I need the code. I need a cookie etc to know what price was last displayed on the user's page. That is, this is intentionally programmed, not a bug. Someone implemented it. It's clear that it's a time-consuming feature. '

However, even if it is limited to the opinion of the engineer, 'There is a possibility of index error or misuse of reference. In this case, it is possible that the price of product B was decided as' product A + $ 10 '. Also, since some local taxes and fees will be $ 10, there is a function to add $ 10 to the price in the form of 'price + tax' when the client code loads the page, and these are some bugs and the page There is also an opinion supporting the bug theory that it may have become a bug that adds $ 10 every time it is updated, so even among users it is not possible to conclude whether this is a user exploitation specification or a bug in the end. am.

in Web Service, Posted by logu_ii