Websites Are Secretly Charging You More (Here's Proof)

There is an internet legend that if you are in different locations, when you browse different websites, you will get different pricing. I want to try that out today. A Stanford study found that the exact same hotel room, if you booked it when you were in San Francisco was $829. But if you booked it when you were in Kansas city, it was $329. So I wanted to test this myself. So I'm using this tool called multi login, a very cool tool, but you can set up internet browsers and you can set your location to be anywhere in the world. So I'm setting up a browser from Lincoln, Nebraska, where I'm actually at Nigeria and San Francisco. Those are going to be the three that I test and we're going to go to Airbnb hotels.com car rentals and see if we get the same pricing. And this is not just a VPN. You might be familiar with those that just routes your traffic through something. This creates an actual browser profile with a different IP address. So the browser thinks the websites you go to think you're actually from that location. Super cool too. You can even set up an Android device in multi-login. It's super cool software that I found here. So first we are checking hotels. So I went to booking.com and I'm just going to try to book a hotel room in San Francisco, 28th, 29th. I think I'm gonna do the same dates and, and I did sort by distance from downtown. So the West in here, $247 this is when I'm looking in Lincoln, Nebraska. Now, if I go from San Francisco, also $247 hotel Stratford, $126 and hotel Stratford, $126. So booking.com, let me check Nigeria now. So Nigeria it's 335,149 and whatever currency they use in Nigeria. I apologize. I should know what it is, the Nigerian Naira, but it is 335,149 NGN, which translates to $243. So it is pretty much the same. This is booking.com. These hotel prices, whether you're looking from Lincoln, Nebraska, San Francisco, or Nigeria, they do not charge you differently based on where you are booking from. So myth busted for booking.com at least. All right, so next we're going to check flights. So it's been reported that Delta airlines in particular will give you different prices based on where you are at when you're booking the flights. So I'm going to just do Miami to San Francisco, two popular airports and we're going to do March 28th to 29th. Again, I could do a more thorough, I could check a whole bunch of different flights, but we're just going to do this. So main cabin 482 for round trip, Miami to San Francisco, first class 2111. So let's go ahead and we'll check San Francisco. Exact same prices, same flight, same exact prices. 482 2111 for first class. What about if I'm booking out of Nigeria? Exactly the same, same flight 482 2111. So this is busted. Delta does not give you different prices when you're booking flights from different places. So O for two or two for two, but hotels and airlines, both same prices no matter where I'm booking from. All right. Test number three, we are doing enterprise car rental. Again, we're going to do San Francisco international airport the same days. We're still March 28th to 29th. So one day and from Lincoln, Nebraska, where I am at $96 per day for a compact SUV. So we checked San Fran $96 per day. So identical. In fact, these look like the same pages. I can't even tell which is which. What about if I'm booking from Nigeria? Identical, exact same prices when booking from Nigeria as well. So busted over three enterprise car rental charges the same, whether booking from Lincoln, San Francisco or Nigeria. All right. Next is Amazon. I want to see if Amazon, it was reported that Amazon charges different for different products based on where you're buying from. So I'm going to check just an Apple 2024 MacBook pro because I love the MacBook pro with the M4 in Lincoln here. It is $1799 on sale from $1999. Go to San Francisco and exact same $1799 on sale from $1999. Now this one's a little different when you get to Nigeria, because it does not actually ship to Nigeria. Most products on Amazon will not actually ship to Nigeria. If it did, I bet it would be the same price, but you can't buy this on Amazon and ship to Nigeria. Sorry. All right. Couple last checks. I wanted to check Airbnb. This was another one that was in the report. So I'm doing it in Austin, Texas, March 28th to 29th. Thought I'd try a different location. So we have this room in Austin for $92 per night. Let's go over to San Francisco. Okay. Same exact room, $92 a night. Now, one thing, it does sort a little differently based on where you're searching from. I don't know why, but the same property. So this home in Austin, 835 for a night and in San Francisco, 835 for a night. Let's check Nigeria. Okay. Exactly the same. It's got this one for $92 a night, this one for 835 a night. Again, the sorting is a little different. Don't know why their algorithm does that, but once again, busted Airbnb, same price, no matter where you are booking from. So last one I want to check that Stanford report was YouTube premium. So YouTube premium here in the States is $8 per month with when you're in Lincoln and it is $8 a month when you are in San Francisco, but with images, no idea why in Lincoln there are no images and in San Francisco there are images might just be like an AB test or something like that. But when you're in Nigeria, you also get no images and it's 1700 NGN per month, which when you translate that over to dollars is a dollar 23. So this is the first one. This is the first one we're going to say. This is true. YouTube premium is cheaper if you are buying it from Nigeria than if you are buying it in the States. So you could, in theory, buy it from a proc, you know, from something like multi-login where you're buying from Nigeria, you get it for a dollar 23 instead of the seven 99 might be interesting to check some other subscriptions as well. See if it's different. Maybe I'll check one more subscription. So Spotify premium, it's try three months for free. Then 1299 after that, San Francisco, try three months for a free than 1299. What about Nigeria? Nigeria also. So same pricing on Spotify. So YouTube premium cheaper if you're booking from Nigeria, Spotify, exact same price. So we're going to call that a 50, 50, 50. So it actually, I looked it up. So when I did look up one more, just cause I was curious, but Netflix $8 for their basic plan in Lincoln $8 per month for their basic plan. San Francisco, Nigeria, it's 2500 NGN, which is a dollar 81. Now this is a little misleading because they actually have different content in different countries. So this one, it might be okay that they charge differently. So, but I'm curious, let me know, what do all these costs in your country, wherever you're posting from? I got people watching from all over the world. How much are these things? Is there anywhere where it's more than in the U S and of course this was made possible by multi-login. Super cool. I'm just using the free version right now. So you can go download this. And again, you can create browser profiles. You can put your location to be anywhere can do Android devices as well. This is going to be a great tool for me for testing things, for looking up different things in different countries. You could use this as a VPN kind of, you know, if you need to get onto an exchange or something that you can't from the U S maybe you spin up one of these browser instances. So I'll leave a link down below to multi-login. Please let me know what the prices for these different services are in your country. I do a promo code James free 100 for a free trial of multi-login and some of their advanced features as well. So go ahead and sign up really fun little test. Appreciate you guys watching me on all my endeavors. God bless you guys and have a great rest of your day.