Walmart to replace paper price tags with digital screens - Video News Report

[Jacson6]

?t=1

Walmart denies surge pricing, but we all know they can make a change later on that they won't announce. Wendy has done the same thing, but we will see if Wendy's hamburgers will keep their word.

[Probatim]

1. I think Kohl's has similar digital screens in some of their stores.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. Every Kohl's I've Been To

Occasionally I'll see a paper sign saying 30% of tagged price or something. But, every Kohl's I've been to is as you describe.

[intrepidity]

2. Since the prices the register rings up are what's in their database

I fail to see how this is an issue for concern? It makes more sense to list prices this way if the technology is inexpensive enough to make it feasible. If corporate wants to raise a price, they do it in the database, where it matters.

Maybe I'm not fully understanding the problem?

[Jacson6]

5. A can of peaches is $3 before lunch. Then it is $4 after lunch. n/t

[intrepidity]

8. But that can happen now, can't it?

I mean, with paper tags.

[erronis]

11. Much harder to send a clerk running through the aisles than to program a price hike.

[Angleae]

9. Actually it changes just before lunch, right when you get hungry.

[intrepidity]

19. But is that really a thing?

I mean, are they *forced* to honor the printed price, or is that just a courtesy?

I seem to recall experiences where I dispute a price and they just say "Oh, the tag is wrong. Do you still want it?"

[Mosby]

26. They are required to honor the price on the tag

At Whole Foods they will give you the item for free is you discover a "scanning error".

[jimfields33]

31. Only Publix will give you an item for free if tag says different than it rang up.

They are very good in that. Winn Dixie says, “oops. Sorry.”

[dweller]

3. Expect the prices to rise storewide

Gotta pay for those digital screens somehow



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[Johnny2X2X]

4. They save money

Can be changed eletronically without having someone retag stuff.

[underpants]

7. Exactly. I'd guess these are as accessible as the paper tags

Phone readers should work with both I’d think.

[erronis]

12. It's part of the "surveillance pricing" - the stores can know what your're interested in

and change the price on the item when you are nearby.

[intrepidity]

20. So, like, the minute you touch the item, the price jumps?

That'd be pretty sinister!

[dweller]

21. And if the price changes

between the time you put item in your cart and get to register ?
You pay the higher price , right ?
😐



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[dweller]

39. Actually I'm adept at pricing at Wally World

I take a phone pic of a price that I’ve been burned on before. Otherwise if I say ‘shelf price said ‘ they would say ‘ I can’t change prices’
When I showed a pic, suddenly they were able to change the price.

Just sux if I have to take pics of everything



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[erronis]

24. Long article by Cory Doctorow on this (and other types of surveillance)

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/

To rig prices, an industry has to solve three problems: the problem of coming to an agreement to fix prices (economists call this "the collective action problem&quot ; the problem of coming up with a price; and the problem of actually changing prices from moment to moment. This is the ripoff triangle, and like a triangle, it has many stable configurations.

The more concentrated an industry is, the easier it is to decide to rig prices. But if the industry has the benefit of digitalization, it can swap the flexibility and speed of computers for the low collective action costs from concentration. For example, grocers that switch to e-ink shelf tags can make instantaneous price-changes, meaning that every price change is less consequential – if sales fall off after a price-hike, the company can lower them again at the press of a button. That means they can collude less explicitly but still raise prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

My name for this digital flexibility is "twiddling." Businesses with digital back-ends can alter their "business logic" from second to second, and present different prices, payouts, rankings and other key parts of the deal to every supplier or customer they interact with:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Not only does twiddling make it easier to rip off suppliers, workers and customers, it also makes these crimes harder to detect. Twiddling made Dieselgate possible, and it also underpinned "Greyball," Uber's secret strategy of refusing to send cars to pick up transportation regulators who would then be able to see firsthand how many laws the company was violating:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html

Twiddling is so easy that it has brought price-fixing to smaller companies and less concentrated sectors, though the biggest companies still commit crimes on a scale that put these bit-players to shame. In The Prospect, David Dayen investigates the "personalized pricing" ripoff that has turned every transaction into a potential crime-scene:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-04-one-person-one-price/

"Personalized pricing" is the idea that everything you buy should be priced based on analysis of commercial surveillance data that predicts the maximum amount you are willing to pay.

I haven't read recently about stores that follow customers around in the aisles tracking them via Bluetooth or other technologies. I think it is possible and likely.

[intrepidity]

42. Thank you for that link

A long read, which I appreciate, and one of the most important things I've read recently. I'm going to post an OP about it. It really needs to be read and digested by everyone.

[jimfields33]

32. That's funny. I highly doubt that's how it works. Where's all the workers who'd have to watch every person

in order to change the price?

[jimfields33]

40. Thank God. That'd be ridiculous

[usaf-vet]

22. They make more money AND it makes Biden's "inflation" numbers look bad. Again billionaires bending the election to....

...favor Trump.

A recent article I read indicated that the average MAGA consumer sees the price they pay at the cash register as the only indicator
of how the economy is doing.

[usaf-vet]

30. Absolutey-Fing-Correct.

[questionseverything]

33. I think that's because the grocery is where most people's disposable income goes

[Zeitghost]

28. They are a cost savings

Much less labor involved in posting every price change.

[FreeForm73]

6. The big savings will be in Go-Backs

those items that customers don't want when they see the price. There are usually CARTS of them at any Wal-Mart I have been into
All prices can be changed instantly from a master data base
However, the floor scrubber and carts will still knock the tag off of the bottom shelf

[ProfessorGAC]

15. I've Seen That

I can't remember the last time there was a price tag on the shelf for the 45# bag of dog food I buy. Of course, the big, heavy bags are on the bottom shelf.

[Wednesdays]

10. Gads, remember when store clerks used price stampers

I remember when it was a law (it probably isn't now) that each item in a grocery store had to be price-stamped. The clerk would cut off the top of a case of canned vegetables and stamp like mad...each and every can in the case.

Later versions of the stamper used little paper tags.

[Mosby]

29. They are called price guns and are still used a lot.

The labels and guns usually come as one row or two rows. My favorites are the Garveys.

[Wednesdays]

35. What I'm talking about predated the "price gun"

It was something like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/363697874667

[intrepidity]

43. I don't even have to click that link and I can hear the sound it makes

And not only because of the countless times I've.been shopping while a store clerk was stocking shelves and stamping prices while doing so, but also because, in a past life doing office work, those things were used to time-stamp various documents. Man, that takes me back....

[hunter]

46. I lasted a little over a month doing that as a temp job.

When they offered it to me as a permanent job (with benefits too!) I ran screaming out the door.

Well, not really.

After that I got work as a furniture mover. Every day a different house, a different drama.

[marble falls]

27. This is all about surge pricing.

[NanaCat]

34. They'll stop

When they realize how expensive it is to keep them working, not only in the cost of battery replacement, but the cost in employees having to pull them when they break down.

When I was visiting my sister in Austin, one of the grocery stores had electronic price tags. They went back to paper because it was so prohibitively expensive to maintain those electronic tags.

[hunter]

47. Our supermarket had them for about a year.

Then almost overnight they were gone.

[tinrobot]

44. Less paper, less manpower needed to print/change that paper.

Surge pricing aside, it also seems like it's a more efficient solution.

[TheBlackAdder]

45. My ShopRite stores do that, it saves having to print and replace price stickers.

[Trekologer]

48. The people replacing the shelf tags tend to be the higher paid ones

Plus if you’re doing it overnight Saturday into Sunday morning (which I’ve done) they’re getting an overnight differential on top of time-and-a-half Sunday pay.