• queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
    48·
    5 months ago

    They could really microtarget prices if they have the data. Know there’s going to be a party? Jack up the prices of those customer’s favorite drinks and snacks. Know a customer is having a bad day? Jack up the price of their comfort foods.

  • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    38·
    5 months ago

    I appreciate this honestly. If I go in and see something I normally buy at one price suddenly and randomly jumped up to a much higher temporary new price, I’m just going to walk out the fucking door with it.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    37·
    5 months ago

    At another site a lib replied to me with this…

    Our tech is now capable of destroying billions of lives financially in a matter of seconds. If Republicans take charge for the next four years they’ll probably put price surges into the constitution as an inalienable right for corporations, which clearly matter more to them than human beings.

    -–

    Edit

    Yes. This has ALWAYS been my most basic argument against GOP. Sure, there are some garbage Democrats, but ALL Republicans, even the most benign, support the idea that the right of a human to make a dollar supersedes the right of some other humans to exist. It’s baked into basic Republican ideology.

    At Bluesky you can see all the replies to your OP post. The functionality has its good and bad points. So far - nearly 100% good for me because my notifications have so little activity.

  • FloridaBoi [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    5 months ago

    While the labels give retailers the ability to increase prices suddenly, Gallino doubts companies like Walmart will take advantage of the technology in that way.

    “To be honest, I don’t think that’s the underlying main driver of this,” Gallino said. “These are companies that tend to have a long-term relationship with their customers and I think the risk of frustrating them could be too risky, so I would be surprised if they try to do that.”

    • Slavoj_Zuckerberg [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      25·
      5 months ago

      The world hasn’t worked that way in a long-ass while. Maybe they’re just old and out of touch?

      I remember several occasions where a store/restaurant mildly fucked up and refunded or at least gave me a gift card, but not since like 2014. Now the gloves are off. I had Walmart steal my groceries one time on an online pick up order when their system went down. It was a “fuck you not sorry. Also you’re being really unreasonable for being upset about this” situation where I had no money in my bank account and nothing to show for it. They do not care anymore.

  • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    5 months ago

    That’s very dubious, since where I live they have to honour the shelf price even if it’s wrong.

    What happens when they raise the price while I’m on the way to the register? How can I possibly counter this?

    I actually had something similar happen to me. I grabbed something, I was mischarged, I told the cashier who told the manager who checked, and the manager changed the price while I was standing at the checkout and claimed it was always that price. I usually check the UPC when something is on clearance so I know I’m buying the right thing. I didn’t buy the item.

    19 84

    Now I always walk with them to the aisle to see the price so they don’t pull that on me.

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      15·
      5 months ago

      Now I always walk with them to the aisle

      Another reason the dems want to ban Tiktok. Imagine a 60s surge gouging vid where the Tiktoker films prices, goes to the register, the cashier pleads ignorance gets the manager, the manager vomits up a bald faced lies, and the Tiktoker shows them the vid of the “old” prices and says “You just lied to me ten times!” Once the public is aware of this - future vids could then be 30s or even eventually 10s gotcha vids.

    • AndJusticeForAll [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      7·
      5 months ago

      I could only see this working if they straight-up close the store when the prices are adjusted or eventually maybe forcing shoppers to use carts/baskets with digital price tallies that you gotta’ like press a button on each price display as you grab items or something. I don’t know, a physical store with actual space and people is so much harder to rig like this than a digital storefront, I don’t know if you can mesh them in a way that doesn’t destroy any benefit for shopping in-person and I don’t see how if the prices are raised enough it doesn’t become beneficial for people to hire someone poorer for minimum wage to buy their groceries for them.

  • Absolute@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    22·
    5 months ago

    They put these in at various stores including a walmart I gotta go to for work and already many stores have switched back partially or fully to paper tags because the electronic ones are so unreliable and annoying

  • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    5 months ago

    this is a core tenet of liberal ideology, even though it short circuits them as consumers who know what it feels like to be cheated: if you believe in capitalism you believe in prices being at the caprice of the seller

  • FloridaBoi [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    15·
    5 months ago

    I don’t know if they still do this but I understood that at some point retailers were using Bluetooth and WiFi sniffers to track shoppers throughout stores so combined with variable pricing they can extract ever more from each customer

    • kota [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      5 months ago

      I don’t know the current status on this, but it worked by recording your phone’s mac address (or bluetooth address) when your phone scans for wifi networks. So it could track you without you even needing to join the network. AFAIK this particular tactic was countered by Android and IOS randomizing the mac address it sends out (your networking stack can simply lie about it).

    • NewLeaf@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      I’m wondering if they can be punctured with a little screwdriver or something you can conceal easily

      • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        How do they change the price on them? Can it be a cyberpunk era already where we hack them with a burner phone or something?

  • RedundantClam [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    5 months ago

    Off the bat, it’s probably more that they will save on the materials and labor of having to send out reams of tags to every store in a company every week, and having employees come in, usually on 3rd shift, to swap tags. Having spent a lot of time working in a grocery store however, I can guarantee that these will malfunction regularly and most employees won’t actually be trained in how to fix them.

    Down the road I tho, “surge” pricing seems inevitable. Also raising prices based on inventory on hand. “Oh that item is twice the price because it’s the last one left, sorry.”