People have noticed that Capital One advertises different interest rates on auto loans depending on which browser you’re using. Plenty of people are speculating as to the reasons why. I’m with the group of people who think that this is a manifestation of A/B testing rather than discrimination based on the browser you choose to use. Even if it is based on your browser (rather than random numbers or something in your cookies), I’d still guess that it’s just an arbitrary way of segregating the market for testing different interest rates to see what kind of response they draw. Wonder if Capital One will wind up having to explain what’s behind it?
November 5, 2010 at 10:55 pm
If they are basing the rates off your browser, then they probably give the lowest rates to Chrome and then Safari then Firefox and last IE because that’s how the browsers are distributed. They want to limit the number of takers of the low rates during the experimentation period.