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?