Submitted 2 months ago by Beep@lemmus.org to technology@lemmy.world
Is anybody acting like this is new? Shops relabel stuff with price changes regularly, this just makes it quicker and easier - staff don’t have to run around for a hour with a price gun and a bunch of shelf labels any more.
Improving how we display prices isn’t the issue, that’s a good move, it’s how prices are decided that are the problem.
This IS potentially new as some of the plans involve using facial tracking from security cameras to identify customers and analyze them for their net worth so they can set prices to specific customers, rather than setting prices to specific situations. Also, anything that makes price gouging easier and easier to cover up is bad.
How would that work? I go to a shop and I know the price of what they are selling. It is not so easy to rapidly change prices without people noticing. There may be variations on vegetables, fish and meat according to availability but everything else has a clear price. Some products do have some seasonality or good and bad years but when I go to the shop I’ll mostly be accounting for those. It would be quite strange to go to the shop one day and buy something for 5€, the following time for 6€ and another time for 4€. You see, if I know this system is in place I will just not buy it whenever it is at an higher price. Moreover, changing prices while shopping is probably illegal. I am not sure about this, but I believe in Europe large shops are obligated to clearly state the price for every product. By changing the price several times per hour I do not think that would comply with such regulations. While personalised pricing itself may be legal, and I’m not sure it is, changing the stated prices while people are shopping probably isn’t. Besides, when I check out how will they charge me? This is 6€, no it was 5€ yesterday, you see the price changed to 6 while you were walking in front of it but it now is at 4€.
Well but r/n you can’t adjust the price of butter 3x a day.
(maybe you can but it’s stuff u don’t see. With this tech, I’d be worried they’ll change the price multiple times a day to minimize my wallet)
I agree that the technology isn’t the problem here. It’s the corporate mentality of trying to squeeze customers for all they are worth on a personal basis that is the big issue. That and surge pricing should be made illegal. Having to pay more for a thing just because a flock of other people decide to get it at the same time you do is absurd.
If this happens, I will absolutely try to figure out how to game it
Bring items to self checkout. Scans as fast as possible. Walks out with a 20% dynamic discount.
Great, I have a very bad feeling about this, given the possible crisis of 2026.
Please make it stop
It’s obviously shitty and exploitive anywhere, but this makes food desserts even more of an issue.
Scummy ass companies making life worse for everyone to line their pockets.
They wouldn’t even be in financial trouble, they would just be less rich.
I typically like my food desserts, compared to my just desserts. What is your issue with food desserts? Key lime pies not for you? Tres leches cakes send you into a spiral? Do peach cobblers drive you wild? Is a bowl of ice cream with sprinkles worse than jezebel outside your window?
My local store can not even get a reliable source of staple foods (the distributor often shorts them milk, meat or whatever), there is no way this: A) Works B) Is adopted by any non large store C) Is accepted as anything but a hated cash grab
I’ve already seen them in several stores near me, including Walmart.
They already do this in Korea. I don’t know if they are actually changing prices moment-to-moment, but they are using e-ink price tags that are impossible to distinguish from their printed, paper brethren. I saw one glitch out one day, and that was the only way I could tell. I mean, I guess I might be able to tell if I hunched down and inspected one closely, but it seriously looked identical to the same old printed ones at a glance.
I’ve gotta wonder… How expensive are these little networked e-ink displays? Probably not super expensive, but they’ve gotta be more than a paper price tag. Definitely more of a hassle to replace when someone breaks them by running into them, accidentally snapping them off, etc…
But more expensive than the wage of the person to go around replacing them for weekly sales? Walking back and forth to make a new tag to fill in an empty spot when something runs out?
Paper tags arent as easily damaged.
I don’t believe they are networked. No article mentions this. I have those in France and see employees “update” the tags with a handheld device, which suggests that there is no network at all. Maybe an underpowered bluetooth or NFC, but definitely not a network.
$8 (assuming Dollarydoos). At least according to the article (it’s hidden in the caption of a photo). And it cites Reddit…
already here. just ask the inflation (not an american)
It definitely wasn’t QE.
thats the joke. that inflation is dymanic we already have it.
Abandoned grocery carts full of food might also be coming to my local supermarket.
Fuckin called it - megacorporations are not to be trusted with digital freedom.
Or they could charge a customer more if they know the customer always buys the same product.
How so they propose changing an e-ink shelf label pretty customer??
Probably more timed towards certain times and demographics, but yeah it just takes a couple seconds to update and there are plenty of customers running “loyalty points apps”
Do cost accounting and play fair. Will we be doing this short-change shit forever?
Care to live abroad?
Already here in Canada.
Man would really suck if internet cuts out to get updates when its at the lowest prices…
My grocery store has had these for a while. Dynamic price reductions are coming too. Instead of a set % off, it’ll calculate the most optimal percentage to take off based on popularity of the product, how long until expiry, etc. Just a heads up.
Thank you for telling the useful side of what this could be like. I’m on a sales team who considers options like dynamic pricing, and it is nice to know what good vs bad to look out for.
fucking lol
Yeah, shame on you. Even if this is used to make things cheaper it still fits the definition of ‘discriminatory’. As a company you’re not going around doing handouts, you’re doing the very opposite because your whole existence relies on maximizing what you take over what you give and the more desperate someone is the more you take. Which is why rich people and business owners in general pay less for a pack of cornflakes than some poor mom raising kids on her own.
`Current-generation digital tags are cloud-connected and equipped with Bluetooth or NFC (short-range wireless technology used for contactless payments) to communicate with phones. A phone loaded with a shopping app can pass information to the tag about the user’s identity.
The tag then briefly displays a personalised price when the shopper taps the phone.
Mr Oyefeso said retailers could also pair ESL with facial recognition, so that “prices change depending on who is in the aisle or looking at the shelf”. `
Great hey, I think people will continue at woolies. The level of love for monopolies is crazy. But hey house prices are going up.
But wouldn’t you be able to see the price change as other people walk by? That doesn’t sound like something people would passively just be okay with.
i believe they only show you the reciept/price at the register. its social engineering, they dont want to be inconvienced to put it back if you dont want it, and you dont want to put it back after shopping so you end up buying it anway.
Those e-ink tags have been around in the UK for some time.
The displays are not the problem
Them updating on a whim is
Hook it up with BT id you can’t turn off in your phone - bada bing
What’s the common way for updating these? I have some similar devices that use Wi-Fi but local stores seem to use some sort of nearby transmitter pointex towards the shelves, maybe infrared/optical
It will probably be wifi and mqtt. You don’t need a whole OS to get mqtt, just a TCP/IP stack.
probably they set certain times of day where there will be surge pricing, like around 12-1pm where more people come in for lunch, and around 4-5pmish where people off work.
They seem to use infrared and or NFC for data exchange. I tried to read the NFC data with a phone app, however the data seems to be either encrypted, or it was some sort of image blob file that is shown on the display. You can read something, but it’s not as trivial as reading other NFC tags.
Finally! Cheap things when I don’t need them
BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info 2 months ago
In Poland it’s already there in stores owned by the German Schwarz-Gruppe - Lidl and Kaufland. One might want to start shopping local to get exposed to 100% free range organic greed instead of lab-optimized greed at big stores.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s a shame because Lidl is the only affordable grocery store to begin with around here.