Comment on Walmart Is Putting Digital Labels That Change Prices Instantly on Every Store Shelf in America
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days agoHere’s the thing: You live in Canada, where consumer protection laws mean something and the law isn’t largely based on which side of a case can burn money the longest on court fees and outlast the other side.
Here in the US, companies doubling the price of something just so they can mark it as on sale for 50% is illegal, but still happens all the time for big sales like Black Friday. Hell, Amazon does it to people with a Prime membership in order to recoup what they spend on the free shipping - double dipping with your subscription fee and increasing the price on things. Airline companies and hotels will increase the price of a flight or room on a specific day based on how often you search it up (if you allow cookies, that’s how they track it. You can look up the same page in a private window and get a totally different price for the same flight or hotel room).
Sony just announced a few weeks back that they were going to roll out “dynamic pricing” for PlayStation games.
technomage@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
No, Canadian companies pull the same bullshit too. Consumer protection laws are little more than “agreements” that many companies are directly pulling out of. In particular with grocery stores, if Galen Weston (the owner of the largest family of grocery chains in the country) wants it, it happens. Look into the bread price fixing situation from a few years back. Nothing actually came of it on a legal front, aside from metaphorically smacking the companies on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and being told they’re being bad.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
Fair enough. Have companies up there talked about “surge pricing” as well? I remember from this past summer companies like Wal Mart were talking about using electronic price tags to update prices in real time at different times of day and different seasons depending on demand. Given examples were things like increasing the price of water and ice on hot days or ready made meals around lunch and dinner time.