The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds.

“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there’s something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst.

Apps like Uber already use surge pricing, in which higher demand leads to higher prices in real time. Companies across industries have caused controversy with talk of implementing surge pricing, with fast-food restaurant Wendy’s making headlines most recently. Electronic shelf labels allow the same strategy to be applied at grocery stores, but are not the only reason why retailers may make the switch.

  • ryan213@lemmy.ca
    89·
    5 months ago

    So what if you placed some water in your cart, walked around and then they raise the price before you check out? How does that work?

    • frickineh@lemmy.world
      80·
      5 months ago

      They’re going to end up with a bunch of people complaining to the manager about the price not matching the sign, which already happens, but it’ll be 10x worse.

        • frickineh@lemmy.world
          30·
          5 months ago

          The thing that sucks is that the managers aren’t going to be the ones with the power to do that. Then again, all of my managers were spineless as fuck when I worked in a grocery store (literally never had employees’ backs), so they’ll probably just do an override on the price anyway.

          • LeadersAtWork@lemmy.worldB
            4·
            5 months ago

            Managers like that suck. When I was a manager in retail whenever I made a choice that may have agreed with or disagreed with one of my Team’s opinions or choices I always stopped to explain my reasoning and sought to make sure they understood. Taught my whole team how to deal with shit without needing me present, though I also reminded them that the instant it became too much they were to call me up.

            No one fucks with my crew. Though I also knew the best thing I could do for them was stand in front only when I needed to, not every time if they wanted to handle it.

            • frickineh@lemmy.world
              2·
              5 months ago

              I wish they’d all been more like you. Instead, all of the ones I had until my mid 20s were the kind of people who would tell us the policy was X and we absolutely could not do Y, and the second a customer bitched, suddenly Y was fine and they made us look like liars or idiots.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
      681·
      5 months ago

      There are laws in many states governing many items clearly articulating that the price cannot change during business hours/within a business day.

      Hopefully the FTC revs up it’s engines like it’s been doing.

      • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
        11·
        5 months ago

        Hopefully the FTC revs up it’s engines like it’s been doing.

        That depends on who is in charge of the country at any given time. Three-letter entities have a way of being hamstrung during conservative administrations.

        The next time conservatives have control, though, it will likely be permanent. The FTC would certainly be dismantled.