Why do checkout flows keep hiding the coupon box until after I pay

Bought plane tickets last Friday and the site only showed the promo code field on the review screen, but I entered it the whole time waiting and it only worked after a page refresh, is there a trick to not getting burned by this?

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1 Comment

vera_roberts16d agoTop Commenter

Is it possible the site was actually running an A/B test on you where they were seeing how many people would just pay full price without hunting for a code? Cause that's a real thing they do, they hide the box on purpose for a subset of users to see if you'll cave. The refresh working was probably them finally giving up and showing you the normal page, not some glitch. Airlines are the worst for this cause they already got your money locked in for the fare, they just want the extra bump from your confusion. Next time, try clearing your cookies or opening an incognito window before you hit checkout, that sometimes resets whatever tracking they use to hide it.