That helps. So in a nutshell, using pURLs for the purpose of personalizing the user experience, can be very inconsistent based on the different types of users who may visit a tokenized page (existing known cookie, existing anonymous cookie, no cookie, etc.).
I'm definitely interested in seeing what sort of progress has been made to making the pURL experience more consistent (and usable) - based on Christina Fuentealba's comment in this thread: Undesired behavior when using Personalized URLs PURLs