Posted by Mike Smith :: May 27, 2008 @ 9:05 amAt first glance, offering different prices to people for the same product or service sounds like discrimination. In the business world, it goes by the name Optimized Pricing and happens all the time.
From borrowing money and purchasing insurance to booking a trip, Optimized Pricing is a growing trend. This practice basically consists of offering the price that a company believes a consumer is willing to pay. That’s why an airline ticket is likely to cost much more near Christmas; enough people are simply willing to pay higher prices to travel at that time of year.
While optimized pricing has been around in the travel industry for a long time, much of its growth is in the financial services industry. Perhaps that is being driven by the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Regardless of the reason, mortgages and home equity lines of credit are now commonly being priced in this way.
One way to combat Optimized Pricing is to comparison shop for items that are often priced this way. Rather than simply going with the first company you find or renewing existing services, check with other companies first. Finding a better deal doesn’t mean that you can’t use the first company. You can also use the other offers as leverage to negotiate lower costs from all providers. I played this back-and-forth game when shopping for a mortgage with great success.
Like so many aspects of personal finance, awareness of an issue like Optimized Pricing reduces much of its danger. Until every company uses this method, being aware of what a product or service should cost and shopping until you find that price can help you avoid overpaying due to Optimized Pricing.
3 Comments
Mike, functionally isn't optimized pricing really the way things have always been done to an extent in the financial services industry? The pricing structure comes from a combination of the value of the underlying asset or lack thereof, a risk based assessment of the borrower to determine repayment probability, and looking at what the market will bear. Different companies are going to evaluate different individuals differently based upon any individual company's tolerance for risk, thus resulting in different pricing for the borrower.
@J: To a large extent, what you've said is correct. Optimized pricing goes further than a traditional risk based assessment though. Instead of offering the lowest price the company is able to provide, given the risk of the customer, under optimized pricing they would offer the highest price they believe the customer is willing to pay. Without comparing options, the customer may assume that the offer is based strictly on risk, and likely the rate they would get elsewhere. Obviously this would end up costing the customer more.
Isn't that more a mistake of the customer than the lender though? Also, are people really not shopping their mortgages these days? After all the economy has been through with the mortgage meltdown? I'm not talking about the need to have payday loan, but about the personal loans, the helocs, the first and second lien loans- are people really just taking these at face value that the lender is giving them the best price they are going to get? Maybe it's just something that's totally different about me, but I don't even buy gas without looking at what the gas station next door charges per gallon- why would I do anything different with hundreds of thousands of dollars?
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