Abandoned grocery carts full of food might also be coming to my local supermarket.
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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I've already sent feedback to Walmart about my refusal to buy anything with a digital price tag. The thing is, I believe them when they say that prices are only updated between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. The problem is that that policy could change literally any time.
Walmart has every inch of their store covered in cameras. They have facial recognition systems so they know who I am the moment I walk in the store. They know I buy graham crackers. They know I've put up with price increases in the past. What is preventing them from adding $0.10 to those graham crackers' price tag the moment I walk down the crackers aisle? Literally nothing. They could, and that's reason enough for me to boycott
Personally I have been boycotting Walmart for over 15 years because they refuse to hire most of their employees full time so as to dodge having to provide mandated health insurance and they have a long history of completely screwing the lives of people who use their automated check out system.
Couldn't pay me to shop at their horrible stores. FUCK Walmart and FUCK the Walton family who've become billionaires off the back of poor people in America.
Yeah, my problem is that I'm too poor to shop elsewhere. So far my local Kroger is only a little more expensive, but at least I know that everyone is paying $8.49 for that six pack of graham crackers
Unfortunately that is by design. Walmart actively works to close down local stores and corners the market on wholesalers to control the price so they are the lowest price in any area. Only ones that can usually stand up to them or places like Aldi.
The fact that the other guy who buys the same crackers, but they know they have to give a $0.10 discount so that he'll buy a beer with it, is also walking down the same aisle. That is likely what would prevent them.
remember if you see someone shoplifting food no the fuck you didnt
If they want to do dynamic pricing, maybe we'll just have to start dynamic shopping.
Don't you do that already? Do you just go to one store and buy meat, fish vegetables, alcoholics, cleaning supplies and so on in the same place?
It's weird, the higher the prices get, the worse my memory and aptitude with self service checkouts gets.
Do cost accounting and play fair. Will we be doing this short-change shit forever?
~~Dynamic pricing~~ Price gouging. FTFY.
these gonna get hacked...
Hacking a pricetag would do fk all, just leads to more people scanning it and getting a shock at the higher actual price.
Someone could hack it to make all the prices $1000, no one would know the prices and then ultimately probably not buy anything.
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It is morally correct to shoplift from stores that do this.
It might not be legal, but it's already morally acceptable to shoplift from Coles and Woolworths
I just don't because it would be a massive pain if I were to be caught
I'm going to start dynamic payments. "Oh, between 6-9pm I pay 10% less."
It’s going to be hilarious when these get hacked
Reminder that by law, if the price is listed wrong:
Sometimes the price of an item in store or online at the checkout may not match the displayed or advertised price in store or online. If this happens, even by mistake, the business must either:
- sell the product for the lowest price - either the checkout price, or displayed or advertised price, or
- stop selling the item until the incorrect price is corrected.
What law? In what country?
Australia, the country the article is talking about. That was a quote from the ACCC website.
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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.
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. The entire store was switched over to them.
I will institute my own "dynamic pricing" scheme if this ever happens
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In other news, shoplifting is inexplicably on the rise in shops featuring dynamic pricing.....
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Portland banned it for housing. Time to ban it for everything else!
Then I won't be going to that supermarket.
Free epaper displays!
Start pushing your state gov to ban this.
and then there will be a really popular AI driven phone app that you will use to scan items and find out if you're being ripped off or not
I already have a browser plugin that tells me the price history of everything at Coles. There's one for Woolies too.
Those are some huge price swings for some chocolate in just a couple months time span. Is it common for products to fluctuate so much in price in your area?
Yes. It's like this for close to half the product range at both Coles and Woolworths.
"50% off" I consider to be the normal price. Every price is either doubled or not. There are no "specials".
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Should be against the law to change the price after the shop opens at something like a grocery store. Nobody should be able to shop anywhere where the price you pick it up at can change by the time you get to the checkout.
Edit: Maybe there could be some exception for mid day price changes if you emptied the entire store of customers first, but enforcing something like that seems difficult.
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If my local store switches to digital price tags to do this I'm just going to gather as many as I can and flush them down the toilet.
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