- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.world
The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds.
“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there’s something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst.
Apps like Uber already use surge pricing, in which higher demand leads to higher prices in real time. Companies across industries have caused controversy with talk of implementing surge pricing, with fast-food restaurant Wendy’s making headlines most recently. Electronic shelf labels allow the same strategy to be applied at grocery stores, but are not the only reason why retailers may make the switch.
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If it’s hot outside we can raise the price of water…”
Holy fuck dude that’s some endgame capitalism right there.
Is it price gouging if there is a heat advisory is my question, and how enforceable is that. For water it’s just cruel, especially in places with little access to drinkable tap water.
Yes. That is actually the point. MUST maximize that profit!
Airlines do this now, as does Uber.
The tech is only just catching up for retail. This is end game capitalism hope you enjoyed the ride.
They really will just fuck us to death if we let them.
One dose of capitalism please.
It’s Walmart. They are one of the scummiest around. They nickel and dime everything and everyone.
Always has been. Do you know the story of Jacob and Esau and the cost of a lentil stew for a starving brother?
My answer to Walmart’s greed is… Some of us don’t buy bottled water, so feel free to raise it to $100 a bottle.
So what if you placed some water in your cart, walked around and then they raise the price before you check out? How does that work?
They’re going to end up with a bunch of people complaining to the manager about the price not matching the sign, which already happens, but it’ll be 10x worse.
Good. Annoy the managers until they get rid of this shit
The thing that sucks is that the managers aren’t going to be the ones with the power to do that. Then again, all of my managers were spineless as fuck when I worked in a grocery store (literally never had employees’ backs), so they’ll probably just do an override on the price anyway.
The pricing decisions will be made above the manager’s pay-grade.
There are laws in many states governing many items clearly articulating that the price cannot change during business hours/within a business day.
Hopefully the FTC revs up it’s engines like it’s been doing.
Hopefully the FTC revs up it’s engines like it’s been doing.
That depends on who is in charge of the country at any given time. Three-letter entities have a way of being hamstrung during conservative administrations.
The next time conservatives have control, though, it will likely be permanent. The FTC would certainly be dismantled.
There are laws in many states
For now…
Just wait until they track your phone in the stores and tie it to demographics like where you live and profession to build a financial profile to estimate how much you are able to pay. As you walk down aisles, the prices change to your price to gouge out every possible penny from you.
I can see this happening 100%. It’s already kind of a thing in home renovation and construction. Some businesses will charge you a higher hourly labor rate if your materials are expensive. Installing tile or whatever should be the same labor rate, but they assume customers buying expensive materials “must be rich” and won’t blink at paying more for labor, too. They don’t all do this, of course, but it’s something to watch out for (and one of many reasons you should always get multiple estimates from different contractors).
Expensive tile tends to be fragile, and its assumed the customer will expect more precise work, so not a great analogy
Tile was just an example. Applies to paint and everything else. I will use the contractor who doesn’t do this upcharging nonsense. If you want to pay more for no reason, you do you!
Sounds like a market to pay people to shop for you.
But don’t pay them too much.
This is just a great opportunity for a poor person to rent their phone out, you gotta look for the silver lining in the capitalism!
Time to design a phone faraday cage for grocery shopping.
This as exactly my thought. It’s not crazy to imagine this when I know for a fact systems exist in supermarkets to calculate optimal prices in different stores, based on the size of the store, the demographics of the area it’s in etc
If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream.
If people are starving after a natural disaster, we can raise the price of everything because they’re desperate and have no alternatives.
Are we to judge simple supply and demand now? If they haven’t been smart enough to save for a disaster, then perhaps they deserve what they get. If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Bah. Humbug. A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every natural disaster.
Potentially every 10 seconds. So you put the item in your cart at one price, and then discover it’s a different price at checkout.
I hope shoppers start dumping a bunch of these back on the store, and they are forced to restock them. Would serve them right. It’s the only thing that will impact it it: make it an expensive hassle for them.
Note that those 10 seconds are really just the theoretical capability of the digital price tags. The same way you could replace the paper version once per second. Otherwise yes, shitty.
some minimum-wage retail worker shouldn’t be punished for the decisions of corporate. they have zero control over this, and their complaints will just be ignored by corporate anyway.
I considered that, but the worker gets paid the same either way. Most of them really don’t care. Restocking is no worse than ringing up a bunch of people and bagging.
And I disagree that corporate won’t notice. They track everything in detail. The POS system will record refused items.
as a retail employee myself, i assure you that standing still and pushing buttons would be preferable to all of the added work that comes with restocking something.
and i said corporate would ignore their complaints, not that they wouldn’t notice them.
They won’t ignore the metrics. They obsess over them, so the larger point stands. My brother consults with Wal Mart and Kroger, I know what I’m talking about.
I have worked multiple minimum wage jobs. I have friends who worked in grocery stores. I’m not talking from no experience.
You’re really stretching to win an internet argument here, when we’re basically on the same side (I assume)…which is price gouging customers is bad.
corporate pays attention to one metric: profit line go up or go down. walmart is famous for not giving a damn about their employees.
You’re really stretching to win an internet argument here
lol, no. i’m here to have a nice discussion. i’m not having an argument, certainly not one i feel needs “winning”. if you’re going to get hostile over nothing, then i’m done here.
This is probably a prelude to groceries getting Uber like surge pricing, and likely targeted pricing schemes too.
Ooooo. Can’t wait till a hurricane is coming and they raise the price of water and canned food.
I wonder how much price gouging will be permitted. If they can raise the price of water when it’s hot then could they raise it “just enough” to not get in trouble with the state when a hurricane is coming
Price gouging is effectively legal in red states. Conservatives do not prosecute businesses for harming people for profit.
On one hand, this cuts down on paper/sticker waste and time spent making and printing new prices and such.
On the other, I don’t like that they could just change the price whenever they feel like. Though others have said multiple states have laws against changing prices during the business day.
Paper waste is really something that was overstated in the early 2000s. Yes paper is made from trees. But trees are renewable compared to the silicon and carbon consumed in these electronic tags. It’s way more environmentally friendly to use paper.
That would be my only concern. Like picking something up and have the price increase on my way to the register.
Though others have said multiple states have laws against changing prices during the business day.
Suddenly it makes a lot more sense why Walmart doesn’t want to be open 24 hours a day…
Just gonna squeeze every last drop out of you. Every. Last. Drop.
Ope
- Buy groceries when the price is low.
- Refund when the prices go up.
- Profit!
Receipts have a time stamp, so they’d have a record of the actual price you paid. If you paid in cash and didn’t get a receipt, and if they make an exception for your return, they’d base it on when you said you bought it. You might be able to get one or two exceptions depending on who’s working. With that said you’d better make a purchase of thousands of dollars and pay in cash to make sure to get at least a few dollars back for your efforts.
I can’t possibly shop there any less than I already do, but this is good to know.
Wal-Mart shoppers! Chocolate chip cookies are on sale at $1 for the next 30 minutes.
Good luck!
Whole Foods and Best Buy have done this for years. It allows centralized control of sale pricing without having to print and post new signage at every location.
IMO the tech itself is fine, but using it to gouge people based on weather and such is not.
Aldi has been doing it forever. But it doesn’t change based on surge pricing. What an evil idea…
Aldi has been doing it forever
That’s because most supermarkets in Europe have had these systems for about 15 years. As usual, the yanks are a decade behind and find a way to use it for greed :(
How is this not considered false advertising? You go to a shelf and see your favorite snack on sale, you grab it. Finish the rest of your selections and go to check out.
By the time you get there the price of your snack is no longer what was shown on the shelf.
If it isn’t false advertising, it’s bait and switch.
“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there’s something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst.
One half of that is good news for one party and bad news for the other and the other half is the opposite.
I think this person needs a psychological evaluation.
