Being a nerd has its moments
You ever have a problem, and you wish there was a solution?
I have this all the time, and thankfully I know how to program so I can usually find a way to automate it. One of my mottos is never to do anything I can have a computer to do for me. This strategy works well until the time to automate far exceeds the problem. Even then sometimes it just gives you some peace of mind and potential long term time savings. After all, time is the most valuable asset we all have.
Anyway, we had a problem and I had a solution.
Problem
We booked another cruise, and the way the cruise line we go with works is they have constant sales, but most of the time they are not really sales. They will list prices as a 50% discount, but the price is actually higher than when there is a 30% discount.
These prices change daily, and sometimes a couple times in a day and can vary dramatically. Like the difference between a $150 drink package and $350 per person.
In the past, I set up a very simple system to notify me of price changes. This worked great but had a few issues. Last year we went on a group cruise and a family cruise. Each cruise we usually book 5-10 excursion/utilities.
Solution
In the past, I used Change Detection (self hosted instance) to monitor the public URL for each package and let me know when the price changed. This worked great, but it had a little bit of noise as it didn't know our current price and if it is was actually higher or lower.
For example, the drink package (non-alcoholic as I don't really drink and my son isn't of age) ranged from $15-30/day. It will likely change about 15 times before we cruise.
We just booked our cruise and booked the drink package for $25.99 which is on the higher side.
So I went ahead and created a bot in Python that would regularly check prices and notify if the price is discounted. My wife just has to send me the url for the order page and the price we paid. It goes out every hour and checks the prices and lets her know if there are any changes.
Let's say we paid $29.99 instead, and the current price drops to $25.99.
Refreshment Package
Current Price: USD 25.99
Target Price: USD 29.99
🚨 ALERT! Price has dropped below target! 🚨
[INFO] Price alert email sent successfully
Then my wife will receive an email with the change and a link to the order page so we can rebook it.
Email:
Price drop alert for Refreshment Package!
Current Price: USD 25.99
Target Price: USD 29.99
Savings: USD 4.00
If we book a cruise 6 months ahead, we will likely do 2-10 rebooks. As an added bonus of this process is we usually get an additional 2% discount due to how our credit card cash back works.
In the past, I looked for a solution already made, but the two I tried didn't even work. So just went ahead and made my own. Something I end up doing far more often than I'd like.
I estimate we end up saving $200-500 or more per cruise re-booking these packages when the price changes. This also allows us to book them right away and not worry if we paid the best price. If we had to do this manually, it would be tens of hours of work baby sitting this and likely still missing the best prices.
Simple solution for a real problem that has real tangible benefits. I'm a firm believer everyone should learn to code, even if you never use it for anything in your life, it will teach you to solve problems.
Is there something you can automate that you are wasting time on?
That's pretty awesome. I wish I had the skills to do something like that. I was never good at coding to begin with, but even thinking to do something like that and then putting it into practice feels about as dauting to me as climbing a mountain. I hope you have a good time on your cruise.
The older I get, the more I want to revert to pencil and engineering pad. I haven't done much programming since I left my FORTRAN behind to raise my wonderful children. Happy for those of you who can program in the modern languages, though. !BBH
@themarkymark! @fiberfrau likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @fiberfrau. (6/20)
Maybe you should sell access to that automation as a service to other cruisers?
I probably wouldn't openly advertise it to avoid the wrath of the cruise line, but I would sure let people know they can have it done for xx usd per xx time.
I'm sure as an app folks would happily use it.
I thought about it but they would likely push to shut it down and I don’t really need the headache for a few peanuts.
Yeah, it would probably have to track all the cruise lines to get up to numbers where the money is worth the time.
I'm surprised it's not offered as a perk to frequent cruisers.
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I do something like this, except I use keyboard maestro to capture changes to the price. The only problem is I have to actually visit the page for KM to capture it, or, well, I have an applescript that occasionally opens the page, checks, and closes it, but that also has the problem of only working when my computer is on. Your solution sounds much smoother!
But anyway, yeah, automation for the win. I'm totally with you there.
I hear Keyboard Maestro is nice. I got a license in some Mac bundle but I don’t use Mac much outside of my laptop. Used to when I was making Apple Store games.
Check out Change Detection it is great and self hostable and can do full browser emulation.
I have a spreadsheet where I track my shares performance and a bunch of other information. My husband previously did something for me where it pulled the latest share price when I opened up my spreadsheet and it would automatically update the data. Then the source data changed its format and the auto update stopped working. Now I have to manually key in the latest price. Fortunately my portfolio isn't very wide, still doable, just a bit petty.
Maybe I should get him to look at it again to save me work.
So you're a cruiser as well!! Learnt something new about you by today!!
Check out https://stonkjournal.com/ it’s free. Tradersync is better but very pricey.
I hate cruises with a passion. But my wife and son love them. I do not like being restricted to the ocean.
That being said if you are going to cruise, you can go wrong with this one
What I wish I had was an automated alert for changes to content embargoes I have. Along with release date changes to a product's release date.
I might get an email, or an internal platform system message, or the contract itself gets updated, or the developer updates a notice on an internal page, or an alert on a messaging app, or they make a public release statement on any number of websites.
They could also just not communicate anything at all. Deciding 48 hours after they were supposed to release the game it’s now being delayed by 2 months. Along with not wanting content creators to release any content.
So, this ends up being time spent exceeding the problem. The number of places needing to be checked is always changing with each company I’m dealing with. Even assuming there is an embargo in the first place. Secondly how they decide to announce any delays to a game being released. Finally, if I even have any content that would be affected by any changes.
The best I can hope for is some news feeds and a game developer sending out a proper notification to an internal system.