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 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.
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.
Price gouging is effectively legal in the US…
Not sure where you live but it happens everywhere and every time there is a good opportunity to make money.
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.
Managers like that suck. When I was a manager in retail whenever I made a choice that may have agreed with or disagreed with one of my Team’s opinions or choices I always stopped to explain my reasoning and sought to make sure they understood. Taught my whole team how to deal with shit without needing me present, though I also reminded them that the instant it became too much they were to call me up.
No one fucks with my crew. Though I also knew the best thing I could do for them was stand in front only when I needed to, not every time if they wanted to handle it.
I wish they’d all been more like you. Instead, all of the ones I had until my mid 20s were the kind of people who would tell us the policy was X and we absolutely could not do Y, and the second a customer bitched, suddenly Y was fine and they made us look like liars or idiots.
Then you pour it out at the checkout and walk out without paying.
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.
Shall we okay a game of “guess which shit hole states don’t have this”?
There are laws in many states
For now…
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.
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.
Refrigerated or frozen items can’t be restocked, there’s no real way to tell how long they’ve been out of refridgeration. Hit em in the pocket books.
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.
- 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.
If it’s hot outside we can raise the price of water…”
Holy fuck dude that’s some endgame capitalism right there.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
The true cyberpunk dystopia. They ultimately want to keep you as close to destitute without actually being bankrupt as possible, that way they extract as much as possible from you at all times for as long as they can.
Capitalism will always try to get as many people as possible, to pay as much as possible, for as little as possible.
I don’t go to walmart anymore. I think I am just going to go back and see how much I can steal.
Nah fuck that, first off fuck you for stealing and secondly, it is way worse for these shitheads to have stock sit around and go bad instead of marking it as a loss cuz stolen.
you’re right! time to smash cameras
“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.
If there’s something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news
Except we know they would rather throw that shit out than sell it cheaper… maybe they will donate it.
I was never a grocer, but I worked in the catering industry for almost 10 years (which, to be fair, is a very different industry that just happens to have some overlap). Standard procedure is to throw away practically everything that can’t be reused on another event. I talked to the higher-ups about this multiple times and they always gave me the same two answers: ‘We can’t be liable for someone getting sick from eating our old food’ and ‘We donate to Second Helpings once a year, so at least we try’
So you were told to get fucked?
Checks out lol
They would not let you take it home?
Officially, no. But when you’re the last truck to get back at 3am, nobody’s gonna stop me. Every once in a while they would look the other way, but it honestly depended on their mood more than anything else
i get the official position, IRS could deem it income with everything that comes with that
so arbitrary enforcement of policy, corpo world 101
“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream.”
Dude actually said that out loud. Wild. Teach me how to give that little of a fuck.
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.
Well AI set the price just for you! It is custom based on how much money and how impulsive you are.
Works great to fix rents and wages… why not your avocado!?
Except it’s illegal and has precident being illegal with rent
I can’t even go to Walmart no more without running into people I know. Back in the day I never did myself up before going to Walmart because I never saw anybody there that I have acquaintance with. Now everybody is shopping there and I feel like I have to get dressed up or I don’t fit in. Sometimes even put on lipstick and you know how the prices on that has gone up. I’m on a fixed income and the best shade that compliments my skin tone but doesn’t break me out costs almost $10 when it was $6.99 before COVID.
Is this copypasta or have we just witnessed the birth of a new one?
Gods, I hope it’s the latter!
Now everybody is shopping there and I feel like I have to get dressed up or I don’t fit in.
Said nobody ever in regards to Walmart.
Okay…
Wal-Mart shoppers! Chocolate chip cookies are on sale at $1 for the next 30 minutes.
Good luck!
I mean this was a regular thing at K-Mart my entire childhood, and people loved it.
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.
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 :(
IMO the tech itself is fine, but using it to gouge people based on weather and such is not.
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.
I find it hard to believe that the environmental impact of having a paper tag per shelf which gets replaced maybe once a week is worse than the impact of manufacturing, installing and powering one digital screen per shelf.
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…
I mean, even if they went back to 24 hours, I’m sure it would still be able to change at a certain time, like midnight or something.
But I get what you’re saying.
