> If this is indeed the case -- good riddance to that practice! Why should I be sorry that it goes?
The effort you (and others) are willing to go to get the $50 doesn't seem to match up with the "fine, the practice should go". If it doesn't matter, why expend effort to do it?
Because they don't offer the remaining seats for $250, they offer them for $600.
Because while the $50 deal exists then everyone has the right to fight for it (I would even argue that it's rational!). I don’t see how that’s incompatible with wishing the $50 deal didn’t exist in the first place. Pricing that rewards whoever spends the most time searching is a bad system, and agents are a fair fix because they make that local price optima findable for everyone.