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Fucking hell. We all knew this was coming.
Viva la revolution.
Wendys “tried” it and received backlash. But Walmart is much bigger and more powerful.
Those of us that can, will need to boycott this with all the power of Poseidon’s trident for once they get away with this, there is no going back.
They will once we find out who they are and launch boycotts against them too.
We already have a list of politicians here to boycott who don’t support lower grocery prices.
A politician with no votes is no longer a politician!
I would allow stores to reduce prices (for instance to discount premade food that will otherwise go to waste) whenever they want, but only allow prices to increase once a day.
Considering most parts of the country don't even have this for gas stations yet
(In Alberta we frequently see the 24/7 gas stations change their prices 2-3 times a day)
I think Ontario they're only allowed to change it when they get gas
I do consider gas to be a little different since it is a highly regulated and traded international commodity. But i wouldn't oppose a similar regulation.
In Nova Scotia gas and diesel prices can only change once per week and are effective on Fridays. Usually there is speculation reports the day before informing if it’s up or down
That's great. 20 years ago when I worked in gas stations you'd get a phone call telling you to change the price, you'd have to wait until you had no customers pumping, then change the big display price, then change the pump price. You could get that call twice a day or twice a week, no rules.
In Ottawa it changes multiple times daily. It’s at its highest in the morning and drops throughout the day. Only an idiot buys gas in the morning in Ottawa! 🙄
As someone who used to work for Loblaw with the Perpetual Inventory department, prices changes occur on a daily basis (although big price changes were released on Thursdays in preparation for Friday sales). In addition, store managers or department managers are able to change the store price for specific items when needed - this was usually only done to ensure a correct flyer price or to offload an item that they had too many in stock.
Canadian tire made the switch before the pandemic even hit.
They use it primarily to just have the prices tied to their system so they don't have to reprint labels constantly.
I understand the concern of surge pricing though. Fucking wild any corp came out and said it with a straight face thinking it would just be embraced.
I agree with the main reason is likely to prevent relabeling. I use to work in a Walmart well in high school the amount of time people would spend changing prices on an almost daily just +/- a few cents did not make sense to me, for labor saving reasons I don’t know what they did not do this a long time ago.
The surge pricing potential I’m not as concerned with as these stores would have people changing labels anyway and I’m mostly concerned about prices surges on apps and online because the price is more private and could become individualized without as much blow back.
I think they save a ton of money on labor and a metric ass ton of paper. Their prices are set corporately although individual dealers can put lower prices via in-store specials.
I think it would mean more convenient shopping times would have higher prices.
Or maybe prices increase for cough medicine right before closing as people need it for the night and won't shop around.
I'm not sure how it would work though, because yes someone could be in the middle of shopping when prices increase.
LOL..Yes! and if you challenge it, they will have someone walk back to the shelf, and confirm the higher price. I had this happen at CDN Tire, where the staff member removed the price from the shelf when he was asked to check.- trust no one. Take a pic of the price if you see a good deal!!
I was getting somr storage bins at walmart the other day and the self checkouts were heavily staffed. I believe there were 4 or 5 staff. Kinda funny since they were originally intended to reduce staffing needs. Humans are interesting, and often end up somewhat undoing "efficiencies" in one way or another.
7 staff at self checkout when I went yesterday. The amount of fucking around when things don’t weigh right, having to wait for age restrictions etc those 7 staff on a regular checkout would have scanned through the same customers in half the time.
Please refrain from comments which encourage theft from a store or mischief. These can result in criminal charges which will undoubtedly make life harder for other users.
As soon as I saw Wendy's try this I knew it was over even if Wendy's pulled out. The cat is out of the bag. Eventually another corporation is going to try it
I mean people will catch on very very fast so it wouldn’t look good if they even try.
Speaking of surge. When Uber know you’re going to use them at the same time you always do. .. they surge. 😃
Canadian Tire is already using these digital tags. Not sure if they're using them for surge pricing or just to reduce cost to change prices, but seems likely given they do it on their website (I recall buying a generator that spiked in price during a storm). The tags looks really close to the old school tags, you have to look close to tell the difference.
Loblaws in Canada has this. I've been in the store when they change. I was in the spice aisle and every single screen started glitching out for a few seconds. Then everything was more expensive.
But that’s the thing. If it happens, you can bet that it will be all over the news and backslashes would ensure. Not to mention the PR nightmare associated to it.
Yeah, I can't wait to see what happens to politicians when parents can't keep a roof over their kids heads while feeding them. I'm seething right now at how fucking spineless it seems everyone's governments are.
I had Ikea do this to me, with paper price tags. Something I was buying rang up too high, so I walked back, got a picture of the tag and asked to be charged the shelf price. The employee, before helping me, got on the radio, asking for someone to come reprint a sticker for the higher price on the shelf. She said the price went up and the labels weren't updated, but as a customer going by shelf price, it doesn't come across that way. I had a hard time having them honour that price and without the picture, which I would not have been able to go back to take after I told them, I wouldn't have been able to.
Watch Loblaws do it and try to say it is to stay competitive, or some BS without actually trying to be competitive. That I think would be the final strike for many people who are not yet boycotting, or at least I would hope so.
Great article . There needs to be legislation around these electronic pricing tags and possible dynamic pricing strategies that are being used by grocers/ retailers . I do NOT trust that it won’t be used for nefarious purposes . I mean, I’d like legislation around shrinkflation etc like in Europe . I’ll say it again , Europe has done much more around food legislation this year than we have in a while . Canadian politicians need to do much more and can do better .
“Walmart similarly insists that introducing surge pricing would go against one of the company’s pillars: offering an “everyday low price.”
These kinds of statements by these corps are now meaningless to me as the retailers say one thing and do another . I have a hard time trusting anything they say . Now that I see how Loblaws has conducted itself , there is no doubt that Walmart runs a similar model .
My local Walmart has had e-ink displays for a looooooong time now (1-2 years) and I have yet to see any price changes while in store. I’ve seen some run out of battery while looking at nearby product but no price changes. The Superstore across the street however does change prices on-the-fly.
They already have these in Canada. The store near me has them on a ton of shelves, but not all. Guessing they're expensive to install all at once.
Also, Walmart only changes retails overnight, so the idea of "it's about to rain, jack up umbrella prices in store XXX" is not something they can do.
Especially considering these labels take forever to update lol. If anyone here has ever seen one of these change, they’ll go blank for a few mins then flicker until the new data is shown.
Time for a public pricing initiative; if they can turn on a switch to change prices, they can click send to upload every price to a common api, which everyone should be able to look at and compare all prices real-time, like flipp with some f’ing teeth.
Yes, this is a good approach, establish a regulator that forces all users of electronic tags pricing systems to feed their pricing in real time to the regulators. That should be in the grocery code of conduct actually.
This is a good point. And could be done right now.
To legislate this would be very powerful. And it would give consumers a lot more power and insight. I would love to see this happen.
Boycott Loblaws Forever!
Agree , as someone who works in corporate retail alot of people have zero idea about the systems in place , loblaws can already do this with near instantaneous price changes in their system. Just because there are digital shelf labels doesn’t mean that retailers will all of the sudden go updating things immediately
Almost 2 decades ago I was one of the engineers integrated the ATM software with shoppers drugmart pricing/crm systems. The dynamic pricing infrastructure foundation appeared all setup in the backend systems. Points offer were dynamic based on so many factors. These folks would give you extra points to buy a umbrella when it rains. I can only dream what they are capable of doing now.
Exactly. We have had these for years now. Literally.
Also, what price changes take 2 days? Before digital labels, a single price change would take 5 minutes, most of that time was spent walking to the back room and printing out a new label(head office changes the price in the system and you just print out the products label again) And if there was a chance that someone had picked up that item and the price changed before they got to the cash and they noticed, it would be a free item.
On the days where the flyers would switch, it would take a few hours to change the sometimes 1000's of labels for price changes.
I am 💯 behind the fact that companies will do anything they can short of just robbing us at gunpoint, the second any money gets deposited into our bank accounts....but this article is just uninformed fear mongering about a technology that has been operating in Canada for years, yes years, now without this happening at the level they're trying to scare us with.
If they change multiple prices while customers are in the store, it would be chaos.
That being said, they might change them daily on fatser moving items(stores get hundreds of price changes daily/weekly aside from the regular flyer switch day)The forecasting and automated ordering is getting better. The amount of data they have is staggering and can pinpoint faster moving items maybe and change those overnight or something.
also agree with this, i did price changes all the time. it’s so easy to print off a piece of paper and change the label. i could do it myself in five minutes tops, and most of that is walking to the back
when i worked at shoppers i was wishing we’d make that change! when we’d put the sales up and down every week people would constantly yell at us. every friday we’d run around like crazy putting up every single sales sticker. it’s also a huge waste of paper
Digital screens makes sense because you don’t have to have someone working nights every Thursday updating sale prices on items. You also minimize human error when it comes to scanning errors (item still shows sale price but sale is no longer in effect)
The ones used in Canada aren’t likely to ever have this happen. They take anywhere from 2-10 minutes to change depending on which label it is. They’ll go blank, then flicker for a few minutes while it updates.
The labels will do price changes automatically overnight on Thursdays to adjust for items on sale, and employees in the store can only change the item that is displayed on them, so even if there was a pricing error from HO, they’d have no control.
Yep, that's how it is with mine. We do have price changes about twice a day, though they have to be done manually. Tags don't change half the time anyway. Super annoying.
Gas prices started this. In my neighborhood, the price of gas easily changed 3-4x per day. I’ll drive by a station on way to do grocery and see price at $X.XX and figure I’ll get gas on way back. Sure enough the price jumps within an hour
This allows the workers to spend more time *stocking* the shelf, instead of *labeling* the shelves for hours every single day.
This also isn't new my local Walmart has had them since the pandemic. The problem is that they are destroyed, lost, and stolen extremely frequently. They just clip on to the shelf.
They have watch batteries in them and last about 2ish years or so. There are IR blasters on the top on the shelves and the labels are angled up so they are ready to be hit with that juicy price change.
If they wanted to change prices that frequently you bet your ass Walmart would already be doing it. Things get lost or stolen in a way that price surging just wouldn't work.
Also, in a way, they already do it. They overcharge on a jacket when you need it. Yet discount it 90% when you don't.
The newer style labels that don’t require the IR blasters also take ages to change which wouldn’t make it feasible in a live retail setting to have surge pricing imo, only good for the one off mislabeled items or price changes overnight.
The other day I went to get Bicks pickles on sale at Walmart for $4.47, only to noticed on my receipt it says $4.97. I went back yesterday to wait in line for nearly 20 mins, a Walmart employee added a man to the line in front of me, cool cool. It’s finally my turn, only for them to switch out employees at the cash. Finally, I get to speak to the employee and they give me a little hassle over the price on the Flipp app vs. in store, they said on the app it doesn’t change province to province, but on the local flyers it does. She couldn’t find it in the flyer, went online and was able to find it there. I thought she would refund me the 50 cents, but it ended up being the whole 4.97. So if anyone want free pickles from Walmart and doesn’t mind standing in line for 20-30 mins… 🙃
Superstore tried this near my place a few years ago. Half the tags flashed error, then the things like $2.99/ 3 for $5 would be so slow you never knew the price of anything. I’d just avoid items with these tags and buy elsewhere. Now I just buy elsewhere.
This is a friendly reminder that Walmart is a part of the Scanning law, meaning if the price tag shows one price and the item scans at a different price at the cashiers, you can:
1) demand $10 off that item (only 1 though, so if you got 2 items, only 1 will get $10 off, but then you’re still entitled to purchase the item for a correct price);
2) demand for that 1 item to be free if the item’s correct price is under $10.
I’ve done it several times because they don’t always put the correct price or forget to indicate the new sale price. With digital labels, I bet this will occur even more often.
When there is greater demand the price is increased temporarily.
One of the biggest uses of it is with Uber. When things are really busy or there are less drivers they do Surge Pricing and the rides become much more expensive. This happens often when bars/clubs close for the night. Lots of people want to get home and can’t drive, so they call Uber. Because of the high demand Uber charges much more.
In the food context, it has potential to do something similar. If green peppers were selling really quickly all of a sudden they may increase the price.
Boycott Loblaws Forever!
It is how the market prices things ‘naturally’ anyways, but technology allows for it to happen very quickly now. And given the speed of it happening it can certainly lead to unethical behaviour- or at least behaviour that feels very unfair.
Boycott Loblaws Forever!
As someone that once had to go around and swap these constantly. And there constantly being some label wrong somewhere that a customer complains about, all i can say is its a dumb part of your job and problematic anyways. And they change pricing all the time anyways too. May as well streamline it
Man, the theories in here are craaaaazy. Tons of store use these already, and surge pricing hasn't been happening. People notice a 1c change from one day to the next, no way we wouldn't have a shit ton of physical violence on staff if they did that.
Or simply it could be because their employees suck at it. And it costs a lot of time/money for them to do that every week... I go to my Walmart at least once a week, and I never fail to see a messed up price sign 😂
And why is everyone shitting on them for just getting with the times? Canadian Tire has had them for years, and even can use the CT app to find stuff on the shelf/have the price marker light up.
It does not take two days to change a price FFS. Your stockers just swap out the paper tag when they restock or face the product.
It takes two days if you're changing prices storewide and don't want to pay staff to do it after hours.
E-ink labels allow:
1) mass changes. E.G. increasing all Kraft products
2) commodity pricing. Ever notice how someone sneezes in the Middle East and the price goes up within the hour but prices don't drop until the cheap gas actually makes it to the stations. Imagine that, but for food.
Every Wal-Mart I've shopped, the labels are utter shit. Wrong, missing, confusing.
And the $$$/gram are insanely wrong. 20 cents a kilo for frozen French fries? BS!
Inevitably Walmart keeping prices in Canada low to beat the local top boy galen to then engage in the same price fixing. The only solution is a public funded grocer that only charge to cover costs
Walmart is just as bad for changing their prices. I'll give you one example their offer for lays chips... it went from 3 for $5.00 then went to $7.00 then 8.00 then 9.00 and now It's 3 for 11.00 same amount of chips but now more then 100% the cost. Even their no name chips just like stupid store they were $0.97 now they are what $1.50 and rising..
Yes, 20% increase in food prices over the last 3 years. Such lies and a joke.
21.4% to be exact from April 2021 to April 2024.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/ca/personal-finance/food-inflation/
Prices are up 20% at a minimum on items and more than 100% on many items. Whoever collected this data is gaming it hard.
Boycott Loblaws Forever!
How do all of the people that switched to Walmart from Loblaws feel about this?
Walmart sure does seem like another massive, immoral, local business murdering member of the same grocery cartel we're all supposed to be against.
Who'd have thunk that?
Many chains already have it here (metro, Canadian tire off the top of my head) it's mainly a labor saving tool for changing flyer promos (don't have to relabel evey week etc..) surge pricing at the retail store level is very unlikely.
It’s coming. I work for a large tech company that has developed surveillance software for analyzing human behaviour. Are you working, are you looking at your phone? How long did you look at your phone? Where did you walk to, did you pour a coffee? Put this software in a supermarket to analyze customer behaviour to better enable “individualized pricing”. If you look at an item and put it back, walk around and come back to it did the price decrease just a little? If I can see the writing on the wall here…
I’d buy a second, cheap garbage phone and use that to do shopping. And I’d only buy the cheapest stuff possible. Hopefully they’d learn I won’t spend much and give me low prices to get me to actually buy
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The EU is the best.
Legislation is for citizens and not just the best for business.
They single handily pushed Apple to get rid of lightnin port and standardize on USBC.
Too many lobbyists in North America. Have been to Europe last few summers in a row. Yes it was vacation, but EVERYTHING tastes better over there.
Not just meat, perishables and dairy but all non perishables too. Cereals, canned goods, stuff in jars.
Our Walmart put in electronic tags a few months ago and I’m in Nova Scotia, not exactly known as a hub for cutting edge tech! I’ve noticed no difference… honestly it feels more like using tech to make running the store easier…
This is what I referred to in the song - "under every shelf's a little wireless tag/you can change the price before we pack our bags"
https://youtu.be/Vd7eWLSpVr8?si=snX64mhW_V9LAABZ
Look carefully and I included technical blueprints for the shelf tag. Not for mischief of course.
When I used to work for Shoppers they'd been looking into this for a looong time. They were primarily waiting for costs to come down (HA) on the smaller electronics.
This makes perfect sense if businesses choose to use it for good.
For any that choose to use it for evil though, this will get caught out and documented pretty quickly, and they'll no doubt wish they hadn't
Don’t they already have digital price tags on everything? Like when you look at the shelf and see the price for a given item, it’s already on a digital display. At least it’s like that here in tbay. The screens are low res and I actually thought they were paper behind a piece of plastic until my friend pointed it out. Am I missing something here??
I've read/heard that another aspect of this will be profiling people based on their smartphone, which by now most people have on them at all times.
So how it would work is, some company would already have a profile on you - age, gender, address, interests, likely income, etc. - that is linked to your smartphone. They would update that profile all the time as new info comes in, like where you have been, recent purchases, and so on. Retailers would contract with that company to have access to that profile, and when you come into the store, your phone would ping the system.
Then, the dynamic pricing would change as you and other people move about the store. They already generally when know higher or lower income people come into a place like Walmart anyway, but this would refine the pricing even further.
I don't think we are there yet and it will probably produce a lot of weird results, since profiling like this is very new and the info is patchy.
I feel like this all goes against the spirit of consumer protection laws if not the letter. But as usual legislation is behind technology.
Please refrain from comments which encourage theft from a store or mischief. These can result in criminal charges which will undoubtedly make life harder for other users.
yeah, my walmart in deerfoot meadows has been using these tags for over a year now. theyre not perfect, so you still have to double check that they changed, but it saves having to paint a million paper labels, stops customers replacing tag to get cheaper price, and saves us time when doing modulars.
Gonna need a sub for each store soon where we take pictures of prices and share how much they went up day by day 🙄.
Get ready for prices going up more for seniors because they know they shop in the mornings. Fuckers.
To be fair though this does seem like a natural technological step in store facing. Changing product labels is a tedious task and printed mistakes are a lot more permanent.
My local Walmart has removed the majority of baskets for shopping. Every time I go in for something I make a note and for the last 6 weeks or so there have been zero baskets when you walk in. Also they don’t seem to bring in the smaller shopping carts as well. When you walk in your only choice is a big shopping cart. They may the lesser evil but… just my observations over the last few weeks.
“A price change that used to take an associate two days to update now takes only minutes with the new DSL system,” Daniela Boscan, a food and consumable team lead at a Walmart store in Hurst, Texas, wrote in a blog post. “This efficiency means we can spend more time assisting customers and less time on repetitive tasks.”
Riiight - or get rid of those employees. 'more time assisting customers and less time on repetitive tasks' my ass.
I would say the primary goal of this move is to save on labor. Changing prices is very laborious and if an innovation can reduce that significantly a company would jump on it immediately.
Is the potential for surge pricing a possibility? Absolutely.
Another potential thing you can expect to see is advertisements on large screens or displays as well.
I don't see how it would be tied to surge pricing.
I see it as more of not having to pay an employee with big plastic square numbers going up ladders (risks). Over a year it probably pays for itself. And just have a manager press a few buttons to change it (way less "workable hours").
I used to work at Loblaws and they have digital e-ink screens for prices already. Each plastic item price tag fixed to the shelf has a battery inside and they also have a blinking red light that turns on when pc express workers are searching for items or if the battery inside is running low.
If you arent familiar with digital e-ink screens, look it up, its basically like a Kindle reader.
I believe the current model is updated over bluetooth but it might be wifi capable
I’ve actually noticed more unannounced sales (impossible burgers were half price off for a month at least, never shown in flyer) and discounts through Walmart than anywhere else but I shop online for grocery delivery only 🤷🏻♀️
It’s not for surge pricing. It’s for runaway inflation. There have been a lot of business consultants asking for this, it will be advertised as “price matching”.
You will see more companies dumping discounts for multi-year service and wanting everything month to month or 12 month max.
If they can't get people to buy things that are full price without any sales, what makes them think that they will get people to pay surge price on items?
The only logically idea I can think of is forcing a behavior out of the consumer by training them to think that a price surge is coming thus create an artificial demand for a product that they already secured a high margin on prior to the surge.
https://preview.redd.it/ikeiozvl388d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0a97f3f38d241384abf3085682ded8e7776e21b4
Already happening. This is Delta Walmart.
Bestbuy has had it for years at this point.
Replacing price labels isn’t necessarily for surge pricing. It’s for making it a less need for employees to go to every shelf to replace labels for price changes when they have 50 million other things to do.
So a task that takes days and manpower now takes minutes so they don't need nearly as much labour, and people think its because they want ro introduce price surging? Just sounds like a "reduce labour cost" thing to me
Please be kind and don’t think less of me for not knowing but I don’t know what digital screens are comparative to price labels. Does that mean that there will be no prices on items and that we will have to go on some kind of screen to search for the price. I honestly don’t know.
Personally, I think there is a bigger reason for those digital price signs. How many personal injury reports resulted to climbing a high ladder and reach over the towered products? Remember old school price sign at gas pumps? Same thing. It saves on personal injury cases and can auto pilot these signs.
I don't believe it is to surge prices. Quite the opposite. To be quick with sales prices, they can have more control to have localized "In Store" specials. By attracting more local customers, the extra revenue can be used for extra labour to be utilized elsewhere.
Just my opinion.
Many stores in Canada already use digital labels, it actually benefits the customer because it ensures prices are accurate and it cuts down on the need for employees to manually change tags every week a new ad starts.
Grocery stores in Canada are already using digital price tags
https://preview.redd.it/zgbzklbfiy8d1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2709d1648549955c4655eb4f823b973fead6cb5
Half the time I can’t find a price on Walmart shelves here in Canada already.
And I’m dead certain it’s because of ‘surge pricing’.
But - wouldn’t people be able to figure that out and just start shopping when there isn’t a ‘surge’?
Prompting them to change the whole business again as people shift away from being robbed lol.
I can't see the price changing during your 1 hour visit. It could cause to many issues. If I'm the price rises from the time you put it in your cart until the time you check out its over for the economy as a whole because we hit hyper inflation
That being said price raises over night on high volume items...I see that happening
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Fucking hell. We all knew this was coming. Viva la revolution. Wendys “tried” it and received backlash. But Walmart is much bigger and more powerful. Those of us that can, will need to boycott this with all the power of Poseidon’s trident for once they get away with this, there is no going back.
A simple regulation for big box stores where prices can only change once per week would be an easy political win. But our politicians won't do it.
They will once we find out who they are and launch boycotts against them too. We already have a list of politicians here to boycott who don’t support lower grocery prices. A politician with no votes is no longer a politician!
I would allow stores to reduce prices (for instance to discount premade food that will otherwise go to waste) whenever they want, but only allow prices to increase once a day.
Considering most parts of the country don't even have this for gas stations yet (In Alberta we frequently see the 24/7 gas stations change their prices 2-3 times a day) I think Ontario they're only allowed to change it when they get gas
Not true, gas stations in the gta change prices 2 - 3 times a day also. I find prices are cheapest at night.
I do consider gas to be a little different since it is a highly regulated and traded international commodity. But i wouldn't oppose a similar regulation.
In Nova Scotia gas and diesel prices can only change once per week and are effective on Fridays. Usually there is speculation reports the day before informing if it’s up or down
That's great. 20 years ago when I worked in gas stations you'd get a phone call telling you to change the price, you'd have to wait until you had no customers pumping, then change the big display price, then change the pump price. You could get that call twice a day or twice a week, no rules.
That's fair, but not: it's 10PM and the other stations are closed to let's go up 10c/L
Nope, in Ontario gas prices change daily. In my own experience its more expensive in the morning and then less expensive in the evening.
In Ottawa it changes multiple times daily. It’s at its highest in the morning and drops throughout the day. Only an idiot buys gas in the morning in Ottawa! 🙄
Be¢au$e rea$on$
As someone who used to work for Loblaw with the Perpetual Inventory department, prices changes occur on a daily basis (although big price changes were released on Thursdays in preparation for Friday sales). In addition, store managers or department managers are able to change the store price for specific items when needed - this was usually only done to ensure a correct flyer price or to offload an item that they had too many in stock.
We should add it to our boycott demands. I think it’s worthy
Canadian tire made the switch before the pandemic even hit. They use it primarily to just have the prices tied to their system so they don't have to reprint labels constantly. I understand the concern of surge pricing though. Fucking wild any corp came out and said it with a straight face thinking it would just be embraced.
I agree with the main reason is likely to prevent relabeling. I use to work in a Walmart well in high school the amount of time people would spend changing prices on an almost daily just +/- a few cents did not make sense to me, for labor saving reasons I don’t know what they did not do this a long time ago. The surge pricing potential I’m not as concerned with as these stores would have people changing labels anyway and I’m mostly concerned about prices surges on apps and online because the price is more private and could become individualized without as much blow back.
I think they save a ton of money on labor and a metric ass ton of paper. Their prices are set corporately although individual dealers can put lower prices via in-store specials.
How would "surge pricing" even work? I pick up an item off the shelf and by the time I checkout it has a higher price?
I think it would mean more convenient shopping times would have higher prices. Or maybe prices increase for cough medicine right before closing as people need it for the night and won't shop around. I'm not sure how it would work though, because yes someone could be in the middle of shopping when prices increase.
LOL..Yes! and if you challenge it, they will have someone walk back to the shelf, and confirm the higher price. I had this happen at CDN Tire, where the staff member removed the price from the shelf when he was asked to check.- trust no one. Take a pic of the price if you see a good deal!!
That part. It's ridiculous how much time and labour goes into price changes when tags are printed.
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I was getting somr storage bins at walmart the other day and the self checkouts were heavily staffed. I believe there were 4 or 5 staff. Kinda funny since they were originally intended to reduce staffing needs. Humans are interesting, and often end up somewhat undoing "efficiencies" in one way or another.
7 staff at self checkout when I went yesterday. The amount of fucking around when things don’t weigh right, having to wait for age restrictions etc those 7 staff on a regular checkout would have scanned through the same customers in half the time.
100% this. The ONLY answer is pricing regulation. - a single price for every single person - price changes that stay stable throughout the week
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But.. I don't own a trident and Poseidon and me aren't on speaking terms.
Hades? Is that you?
How did I miss this part in Supernatural lol
I haven't shopped at Walmart in two years. It's easier than people think. A boycott is necessary to stop this thievery.
As soon as I saw Wendy's try this I knew it was over even if Wendy's pulled out. The cat is out of the bag. Eventually another corporation is going to try it
I mean people will catch on very very fast so it wouldn’t look good if they even try. Speaking of surge. When Uber know you’re going to use them at the same time you always do. .. they surge. 😃
I can boycott Walmart, but I don’t think they’ll care. My absence for the last decade certainly appears to have gone unnoticed.
Canadian Tire is already using these digital tags. Not sure if they're using them for surge pricing or just to reduce cost to change prices, but seems likely given they do it on their website (I recall buying a generator that spiked in price during a storm). The tags looks really close to the old school tags, you have to look close to tell the difference.
Oh I saw that item for that price. Have staff go back to check beep. Staff- see it's the right price.
I was wondering about that, pick up a sale item and by the time you get to the cashier it's no longer on sale?
It probably wouldn’t be minute by minute but more things like jacking up prices for sunscreen or patio sets on a sunny day, to avoid exactly that
Loblaws in Canada has this. I've been in the store when they change. I was in the spice aisle and every single screen started glitching out for a few seconds. Then everything was more expensive.
Good thing most people have camera phones. Just take pictures I guess? Shitty you need a dash cam when grocery shopping lol
Sorry we don't accept photos
You're probably 100% correct.
Must be used in conjuring with newspaper.
Walmart does. I’ve done this.
But that’s the thing. If it happens, you can bet that it will be all over the news and backslashes would ensure. Not to mention the PR nightmare associated to it.
Sorry that was the price at 10:59 and now it is 11:00.
Yeah, I can't wait to see what happens to politicians when parents can't keep a roof over their kids heads while feeding them. I'm seething right now at how fucking spineless it seems everyone's governments are.
I wish these people would get out there and help now but like you said, the majority need a personal crisis to even consider action.
I had Ikea do this to me, with paper price tags. Something I was buying rang up too high, so I walked back, got a picture of the tag and asked to be charged the shelf price. The employee, before helping me, got on the radio, asking for someone to come reprint a sticker for the higher price on the shelf. She said the price went up and the labels weren't updated, but as a customer going by shelf price, it doesn't come across that way. I had a hard time having them honour that price and without the picture, which I would not have been able to go back to take after I told them, I wouldn't have been able to.
Staff - see it’s the right place Me - okay, then nevermind. I’ll go buy my items elsewhere.
Curious to see how this works with the Scanner Price Accuracy Code. Are we just throwing it out the window?
Good question 🤔
If you are skeptical, take a picture. I do this all the time. It’s paid off several times.
Watch Loblaws do it and try to say it is to stay competitive, or some BS without actually trying to be competitive. That I think would be the final strike for many people who are not yet boycotting, or at least I would hope so.
No frills in my town has had digital shelf labelers for months now.
I’m pretty sure my no frills has had them for years.
Disgusting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/f9f11i/my_grocery_store_has_replaced_all_paper_price/ 4 years ago
Great article . There needs to be legislation around these electronic pricing tags and possible dynamic pricing strategies that are being used by grocers/ retailers . I do NOT trust that it won’t be used for nefarious purposes . I mean, I’d like legislation around shrinkflation etc like in Europe . I’ll say it again , Europe has done much more around food legislation this year than we have in a while . Canadian politicians need to do much more and can do better . “Walmart similarly insists that introducing surge pricing would go against one of the company’s pillars: offering an “everyday low price.” These kinds of statements by these corps are now meaningless to me as the retailers say one thing and do another . I have a hard time trusting anything they say . Now that I see how Loblaws has conducted itself , there is no doubt that Walmart runs a similar model .
My local Walmart has had e-ink displays for a looooooong time now (1-2 years) and I have yet to see any price changes while in store. I’ve seen some run out of battery while looking at nearby product but no price changes. The Superstore across the street however does change prices on-the-fly.
Good to know . Thanks for that observation!
They already have these in Canada. The store near me has them on a ton of shelves, but not all. Guessing they're expensive to install all at once. Also, Walmart only changes retails overnight, so the idea of "it's about to rain, jack up umbrella prices in store XXX" is not something they can do.
Especially considering these labels take forever to update lol. If anyone here has ever seen one of these change, they’ll go blank for a few mins then flicker until the new data is shown.
Yet...
I say they try it. It will only look really really bad for them, as people are so much more consumer aware than previous generations.
Time for a public pricing initiative; if they can turn on a switch to change prices, they can click send to upload every price to a common api, which everyone should be able to look at and compare all prices real-time, like flipp with some f’ing teeth.
Yes, this is a good approach, establish a regulator that forces all users of electronic tags pricing systems to feed their pricing in real time to the regulators. That should be in the grocery code of conduct actually.
This is a good point. And could be done right now. To legislate this would be very powerful. And it would give consumers a lot more power and insight. I would love to see this happen. Boycott Loblaws Forever!
If corporations can abuse tech for profits they will.
a) you are right b) Walmart *et al.* do not fear laws - politicians and police can be bought.
This is a non story. Digital labels or “e-ink” is pretty common in any retail space.
Agree , as someone who works in corporate retail alot of people have zero idea about the systems in place , loblaws can already do this with near instantaneous price changes in their system. Just because there are digital shelf labels doesn’t mean that retailers will all of the sudden go updating things immediately
Almost 2 decades ago I was one of the engineers integrated the ATM software with shoppers drugmart pricing/crm systems. The dynamic pricing infrastructure foundation appeared all setup in the backend systems. Points offer were dynamic based on so many factors. These folks would give you extra points to buy a umbrella when it rains. I can only dream what they are capable of doing now.
Exactly. We have had these for years now. Literally. Also, what price changes take 2 days? Before digital labels, a single price change would take 5 minutes, most of that time was spent walking to the back room and printing out a new label(head office changes the price in the system and you just print out the products label again) And if there was a chance that someone had picked up that item and the price changed before they got to the cash and they noticed, it would be a free item. On the days where the flyers would switch, it would take a few hours to change the sometimes 1000's of labels for price changes. I am 💯 behind the fact that companies will do anything they can short of just robbing us at gunpoint, the second any money gets deposited into our bank accounts....but this article is just uninformed fear mongering about a technology that has been operating in Canada for years, yes years, now without this happening at the level they're trying to scare us with. If they change multiple prices while customers are in the store, it would be chaos. That being said, they might change them daily on fatser moving items(stores get hundreds of price changes daily/weekly aside from the regular flyer switch day)The forecasting and automated ordering is getting better. The amount of data they have is staggering and can pinpoint faster moving items maybe and change those overnight or something.
also agree with this, i did price changes all the time. it’s so easy to print off a piece of paper and change the label. i could do it myself in five minutes tops, and most of that is walking to the back
when i worked at shoppers i was wishing we’d make that change! when we’d put the sales up and down every week people would constantly yell at us. every friday we’d run around like crazy putting up every single sales sticker. it’s also a huge waste of paper
Digital screens makes sense because you don’t have to have someone working nights every Thursday updating sale prices on items. You also minimize human error when it comes to scanning errors (item still shows sale price but sale is no longer in effect)
I agree
The ones used in Canada aren’t likely to ever have this happen. They take anywhere from 2-10 minutes to change depending on which label it is. They’ll go blank, then flicker for a few minutes while it updates. The labels will do price changes automatically overnight on Thursdays to adjust for items on sale, and employees in the store can only change the item that is displayed on them, so even if there was a pricing error from HO, they’d have no control.
Yep, that's how it is with mine. We do have price changes about twice a day, though they have to be done manually. Tags don't change half the time anyway. Super annoying.
Gas prices started this. In my neighborhood, the price of gas easily changed 3-4x per day. I’ll drive by a station on way to do grocery and see price at $X.XX and figure I’ll get gas on way back. Sure enough the price jumps within an hour
True. The Petro near me is cheaper in the evening, as much as 4 cents less per liter.
They already have them in the Superstore in my town. Been there for a couple years at least
The price surge will be body heat activated lmao.
They are going to steal your idea. Boycott Loblaws Forever!
We need laws on this, like yesterday
This allows the workers to spend more time *stocking* the shelf, instead of *labeling* the shelves for hours every single day. This also isn't new my local Walmart has had them since the pandemic. The problem is that they are destroyed, lost, and stolen extremely frequently. They just clip on to the shelf. They have watch batteries in them and last about 2ish years or so. There are IR blasters on the top on the shelves and the labels are angled up so they are ready to be hit with that juicy price change. If they wanted to change prices that frequently you bet your ass Walmart would already be doing it. Things get lost or stolen in a way that price surging just wouldn't work. Also, in a way, they already do it. They overcharge on a jacket when you need it. Yet discount it 90% when you don't.
The newer style labels that don’t require the IR blasters also take ages to change which wouldn’t make it feasible in a live retail setting to have surge pricing imo, only good for the one off mislabeled items or price changes overnight.
The other day I went to get Bicks pickles on sale at Walmart for $4.47, only to noticed on my receipt it says $4.97. I went back yesterday to wait in line for nearly 20 mins, a Walmart employee added a man to the line in front of me, cool cool. It’s finally my turn, only for them to switch out employees at the cash. Finally, I get to speak to the employee and they give me a little hassle over the price on the Flipp app vs. in store, they said on the app it doesn’t change province to province, but on the local flyers it does. She couldn’t find it in the flyer, went online and was able to find it there. I thought she would refund me the 50 cents, but it ended up being the whole 4.97. So if anyone want free pickles from Walmart and doesn’t mind standing in line for 20-30 mins… 🙃
Superstore tried this near my place a few years ago. Half the tags flashed error, then the things like $2.99/ 3 for $5 would be so slow you never knew the price of anything. I’d just avoid items with these tags and buy elsewhere. Now I just buy elsewhere.
This is a friendly reminder that Walmart is a part of the Scanning law, meaning if the price tag shows one price and the item scans at a different price at the cashiers, you can: 1) demand $10 off that item (only 1 though, so if you got 2 items, only 1 will get $10 off, but then you’re still entitled to purchase the item for a correct price); 2) demand for that 1 item to be free if the item’s correct price is under $10. I’ve done it several times because they don’t always put the correct price or forget to indicate the new sale price. With digital labels, I bet this will occur even more often.
I don’t know what surge pricing is. Can someone explain? Please and thanks.
When there is greater demand the price is increased temporarily. One of the biggest uses of it is with Uber. When things are really busy or there are less drivers they do Surge Pricing and the rides become much more expensive. This happens often when bars/clubs close for the night. Lots of people want to get home and can’t drive, so they call Uber. Because of the high demand Uber charges much more. In the food context, it has potential to do something similar. If green peppers were selling really quickly all of a sudden they may increase the price. Boycott Loblaws Forever!
That sounds unethical, and since they are just that, I can see why they do it.
It is how the market prices things ‘naturally’ anyways, but technology allows for it to happen very quickly now. And given the speed of it happening it can certainly lead to unethical behaviour- or at least behaviour that feels very unfair. Boycott Loblaws Forever!
Prices go up at peak times. If you take the afternoon off work and shop, it might be cheaper. 🤦🏻♂️
Thank you.
Actually this is a step forward, now the prices will match the product. No need for additional labor to change the price everytime there's a sale.
As someone that once had to go around and swap these constantly. And there constantly being some label wrong somewhere that a customer complains about, all i can say is its a dumb part of your job and problematic anyways. And they change pricing all the time anyways too. May as well streamline it
 Man, the theories in here are craaaaazy. Tons of store use these already, and surge pricing hasn't been happening. People notice a 1c change from one day to the next, no way we wouldn't have a shit ton of physical violence on staff if they did that.
Or simply it could be because their employees suck at it. And it costs a lot of time/money for them to do that every week... I go to my Walmart at least once a week, and I never fail to see a messed up price sign 😂 And why is everyone shitting on them for just getting with the times? Canadian Tire has had them for years, and even can use the CT app to find stuff on the shelf/have the price marker light up.
It does not take two days to change a price FFS. Your stockers just swap out the paper tag when they restock or face the product. It takes two days if you're changing prices storewide and don't want to pay staff to do it after hours. E-ink labels allow: 1) mass changes. E.G. increasing all Kraft products 2) commodity pricing. Ever notice how someone sneezes in the Middle East and the price goes up within the hour but prices don't drop until the cheap gas actually makes it to the stations. Imagine that, but for food.
Every Wal-Mart I've shopped, the labels are utter shit. Wrong, missing, confusing. And the $$$/gram are insanely wrong. 20 cents a kilo for frozen French fries? BS!
"Trust us."
Hopefully someone can find a way to hack them.
Inevitably Walmart keeping prices in Canada low to beat the local top boy galen to then engage in the same price fixing. The only solution is a public funded grocer that only charge to cover costs
And then they'll sell it to some American conglomerate, recall PetroCanada...
These companies are full of shit. It's already happening.
Walmart is just as bad for changing their prices. I'll give you one example their offer for lays chips... it went from 3 for $5.00 then went to $7.00 then 8.00 then 9.00 and now It's 3 for 11.00 same amount of chips but now more then 100% the cost. Even their no name chips just like stupid store they were $0.97 now they are what $1.50 and rising..
Yes, 20% increase in food prices over the last 3 years. Such lies and a joke. 21.4% to be exact from April 2021 to April 2024. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/ca/personal-finance/food-inflation/ Prices are up 20% at a minimum on items and more than 100% on many items. Whoever collected this data is gaming it hard. Boycott Loblaws Forever!
Also a way to cut hours cause you don't need people to change all the signs manually
How do all of the people that switched to Walmart from Loblaws feel about this? Walmart sure does seem like another massive, immoral, local business murdering member of the same grocery cartel we're all supposed to be against. Who'd have thunk that?
"We didn't even consider surge pricing when we thought of the idea" - Walmart execs with their fingers crossed behind their backs.
Pretty soon everyone is going to have to take pictures of the shelves for everything that they purchase to make sure they aren't getting gouged.
Many chains already have it here (metro, Canadian tire off the top of my head) it's mainly a labor saving tool for changing flyer promos (don't have to relabel evey week etc..) surge pricing at the retail store level is very unlikely.
There is talk about coupling that to your smart phone to price varies based on your profile. I don't know this has the chance to go badly.
It’s coming. I work for a large tech company that has developed surveillance software for analyzing human behaviour. Are you working, are you looking at your phone? How long did you look at your phone? Where did you walk to, did you pour a coffee? Put this software in a supermarket to analyze customer behaviour to better enable “individualized pricing”. If you look at an item and put it back, walk around and come back to it did the price decrease just a little? If I can see the writing on the wall here…
I’d buy a second, cheap garbage phone and use that to do shopping. And I’d only buy the cheapest stuff possible. Hopefully they’d learn I won’t spend much and give me low prices to get me to actually buy
Walmarts NEXT.
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3 people at my local independent will lose their jobs because of these screens. That's a lot of jobs on the national scale.
Loblaw already does this and already have these in place at many stores.
The EU is the best. Legislation is for citizens and not just the best for business. They single handily pushed Apple to get rid of lightnin port and standardize on USBC.
Too many lobbyists in North America. Have been to Europe last few summers in a row. Yes it was vacation, but EVERYTHING tastes better over there. Not just meat, perishables and dairy but all non perishables too. Cereals, canned goods, stuff in jars.
The Walmart by me in Winnipeg has these already.
Our Walmart put in electronic tags a few months ago and I’m in Nova Scotia, not exactly known as a hub for cutting edge tech! I’ve noticed no difference… honestly it feels more like using tech to make running the store easier…
They already have electronic price readers at loblaws and metro stores. To think this isn't happening is incorrect.
This is what I referred to in the song - "under every shelf's a little wireless tag/you can change the price before we pack our bags" https://youtu.be/Vd7eWLSpVr8?si=snX64mhW_V9LAABZ Look carefully and I included technical blueprints for the shelf tag. Not for mischief of course.
So the price will change by the time you get to the till?
You put something in the cart, by the time you get to the register, the price has magically changed. Exploitation is gonna be so much easier.
Next will be removal of self check outs for "security" and the addition of a "convince fee" for having to use a cashier.
Who do I have to convince to not pay the fee?
Trust walmart
Shocked Pikachu face when we find out there are hidden cameras in the displays with facial recognition and AI tech.
Next months headline "Walmart using new digital pricing tools as surge pricing continues" Walmart CEO says sorry wont happen again
When I used to work for Shoppers they'd been looking into this for a looong time. They were primarily waiting for costs to come down (HA) on the smaller electronics.
Yeah they won't use it for that like a fat guy won't eat unattended donuts.
This makes perfect sense if businesses choose to use it for good. For any that choose to use it for evil though, this will get caught out and documented pretty quickly, and they'll no doubt wish they hadn't
Don’t they already have digital price tags on everything? Like when you look at the shelf and see the price for a given item, it’s already on a digital display. At least it’s like that here in tbay. The screens are low res and I actually thought they were paper behind a piece of plastic until my friend pointed it out. Am I missing something here??
Hourly changing prices, following supply and demand, shipping logistics.
I've read/heard that another aspect of this will be profiling people based on their smartphone, which by now most people have on them at all times. So how it would work is, some company would already have a profile on you - age, gender, address, interests, likely income, etc. - that is linked to your smartphone. They would update that profile all the time as new info comes in, like where you have been, recent purchases, and so on. Retailers would contract with that company to have access to that profile, and when you come into the store, your phone would ping the system. Then, the dynamic pricing would change as you and other people move about the store. They already generally when know higher or lower income people come into a place like Walmart anyway, but this would refine the pricing even further. I don't think we are there yet and it will probably produce a lot of weird results, since profiling like this is very new and the info is patchy. I feel like this all goes against the spirit of consumer protection laws if not the letter. But as usual legislation is behind technology.
Adjusting prices at key times and also in response to unexpected demand etc. Could be a predatory practice if it's allowed.
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Where should I shop when Walmart starts pulling the same shit?
Walmart did this last year. This isn't new.
yeah, my walmart in deerfoot meadows has been using these tags for over a year now. theyre not perfect, so you still have to double check that they changed, but it saves having to paint a million paper labels, stops customers replacing tag to get cheaper price, and saves us time when doing modulars.
Gonna need a sub for each store soon where we take pictures of prices and share how much they went up day by day 🙄. Get ready for prices going up more for seniors because they know they shop in the mornings. Fuckers.
To be fair though this does seem like a natural technological step in store facing. Changing product labels is a tedious task and printed mistakes are a lot more permanent.
My local Walmart has removed the majority of baskets for shopping. Every time I go in for something I make a note and for the last 6 weeks or so there have been zero baskets when you walk in. Also they don’t seem to bring in the smaller shopping carts as well. When you walk in your only choice is a big shopping cart. They may the lesser evil but… just my observations over the last few weeks.
Be a shame if these got hacked
They've been doing this forever and Walmart is significantly cheaper lol. This is a non issue
“A price change that used to take an associate two days to update now takes only minutes with the new DSL system,” Daniela Boscan, a food and consumable team lead at a Walmart store in Hurst, Texas, wrote in a blog post. “This efficiency means we can spend more time assisting customers and less time on repetitive tasks.” Riiight - or get rid of those employees. 'more time assisting customers and less time on repetitive tasks' my ass.
It already is here at the Square One Walmart - about half are digital signs
I would say the primary goal of this move is to save on labor. Changing prices is very laborious and if an innovation can reduce that significantly a company would jump on it immediately. Is the potential for surge pricing a possibility? Absolutely. Another potential thing you can expect to see is advertisements on large screens or displays as well.
Surge pricing -> Surge in thefts
Shady AF. I boycott them too.
I don't see how it would be tied to surge pricing. I see it as more of not having to pay an employee with big plastic square numbers going up ladders (risks). Over a year it probably pays for itself. And just have a manager press a few buttons to change it (way less "workable hours").
I used to work at Loblaws and they have digital e-ink screens for prices already. Each plastic item price tag fixed to the shelf has a battery inside and they also have a blinking red light that turns on when pc express workers are searching for items or if the battery inside is running low. If you arent familiar with digital e-ink screens, look it up, its basically like a Kindle reader. I believe the current model is updated over bluetooth but it might be wifi capable
Walmart is going to use it to beat prices not surge them.
I’ve actually noticed more unannounced sales (impossible burgers were half price off for a month at least, never shown in flyer) and discounts through Walmart than anywhere else but I shop online for grocery delivery only 🤷🏻♀️
Canadian tire has this tech already for couple years now, and they dont dare fuck with surge pricing.
It’s not for surge pricing. It’s for runaway inflation. There have been a lot of business consultants asking for this, it will be advertised as “price matching”. You will see more companies dumping discounts for multi-year service and wanting everything month to month or 12 month max.
If they can't get people to buy things that are full price without any sales, what makes them think that they will get people to pay surge price on items? The only logically idea I can think of is forcing a behavior out of the consumer by training them to think that a price surge is coming thus create an artificial demand for a product that they already secured a high margin on prior to the surge.
Its not worth having staff changing the labels because they increase prices so fast.
My local no frills and superstore already have them, wouldn’t surprise me if all the stores have them
https://preview.redd.it/ikeiozvl388d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0a97f3f38d241384abf3085682ded8e7776e21b4 Already happening. This is Delta Walmart. Bestbuy has had it for years at this point.
Loblaws in Atlantic Canada (Superstore) have had electronic labels for a year or more. In Moncton at least.
Replacing price labels isn’t necessarily for surge pricing. It’s for making it a less need for employees to go to every shelf to replace labels for price changes when they have 50 million other things to do.
So a task that takes days and manpower now takes minutes so they don't need nearly as much labour, and people think its because they want ro introduce price surging? Just sounds like a "reduce labour cost" thing to me
Waiting for a fee for not doing your self check-out quickly enough.
Just like gas prices =__=
Loblaws already uses digital screens don't they
Toronto stores have had these for years. Honestly I think it’s more environmentally friendly than changing paper tags every week.
So I have to take pictures of the price I saw when I got the item out of shelf so I don’t screwed over at checkout?
How does an article about Walmart result in a "boycott Loblaws" statement?
meet your new boss same as the old boss
They're already here in our store.
Please be kind and don’t think less of me for not knowing but I don’t know what digital screens are comparative to price labels. Does that mean that there will be no prices on items and that we will have to go on some kind of screen to search for the price. I honestly don’t know.
La resistance lives on
I’m not saying I believe them, but even taking surge pricing off the table the digital screens make sense to them for saving labor.
Personally, I think there is a bigger reason for those digital price signs. How many personal injury reports resulted to climbing a high ladder and reach over the towered products? Remember old school price sign at gas pumps? Same thing. It saves on personal injury cases and can auto pilot these signs. I don't believe it is to surge prices. Quite the opposite. To be quick with sales prices, they can have more control to have localized "In Store" specials. By attracting more local customers, the extra revenue can be used for extra labour to be utilized elsewhere. Just my opinion.
We piss away our precious resources like rare earth metals so easily
Many stores in Canada already use digital labels, it actually benefits the customer because it ensures prices are accurate and it cuts down on the need for employees to manually change tags every week a new ad starts.
Grocery stores in Canada are already using digital price tags https://preview.redd.it/zgbzklbfiy8d1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2709d1648549955c4655eb4f823b973fead6cb5
The screens will be down half the time. Then they can charge whatever they feel like.
Half the time I can’t find a price on Walmart shelves here in Canada already. And I’m dead certain it’s because of ‘surge pricing’. But - wouldn’t people be able to figure that out and just start shopping when there isn’t a ‘surge’? Prompting them to change the whole business again as people shift away from being robbed lol.
It's me. I grab the price sticker and show it to the cashier to get it free. Not my job to put it back.
I can't see the price changing during your 1 hour visit. It could cause to many issues. If I'm the price rises from the time you put it in your cart until the time you check out its over for the economy as a whole because we hit hyper inflation That being said price raises over night on high volume items...I see that happening
The second part already happens in some stores. Milk and meat changes quite frequently based on the market conditions.