It’s crazy how many devices it takes to purchase plane tickets at the correct price. Today I bought some plane tickets.

I get a business discount that’s at least noticeable, and sometimes fairly large. My wife found tickets for us last night on Google Flights on her laptop and today I bought them on my laptop, since my account has the discount applied. I noticed that they were like $500 more expensive, even with my discount, but I bought them anyway, because there’s a 24 hour free cancellation period and I figured I could change the flight later.

Tonight we discussed it and it turns out that in less than a day, the price shot up quite a bit. So my wife started looking for other tickets, since our dates are a little flexible. It turns out that leaving a day earlier would save us $500, so I tried to change my existing flight. The United website happily let me do it, but the price was exactly the same as what we saw on Google Flights, so the discount was completely gone, even though it said it was giving me the business price.

So I pulled out my Android phone that wasn’t on the home WiFi and has never logged into my United account. I found the lower price on Google Flights, selected it, confirmed it on the United website and then logged in to my United account.

It said it was giving me the business discount there too, but this time the price was correct and I actually got the $500 off. I knew this was a thing, but to see it actually happening with my own eyes was something else.