We're looking into a variety of options for an upcoming trip in either February or April.

Today we picked a location for February and were about to book it - we browsed online for a while checking (slightly) different dates and even other nearby airports before we eventually found a fare we liked - but we held off from booking to make absolute sure we wanted to go on those dates.

The flight was $315/person round trip.

We logged on a few hours later, now fully prepared to book it, and the same flight is now listed at $561/person (along with every other flight that had previously been $315 earlier).

Based on our airport, the date, and whatnot, there is no way that the flight we were looking at has been booked by ANYONE else in that time span, or that there has been any reason why the prices would go up so much other than some kind of algorithm they are using to try to scam people into paying more if they didn't book when they saw the original price the first time.

So I guess, getting to the point, my question is what are some tricks to beat this scam and get the original advertised price? Or more importantly, if we decide to scrap this trip due to this price gouging, then how can we browse around for prices for other possible destinations without triggering whatever it is that automatically raises them?

I figure if there's anyone out there who has figured this out yet, they are probably on this site. lol

The site that did this was actually delta.com... :/