this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Like I said, maybe it'll happen but we have digital price stickers in almost every store because they're just easier. Same convenience allows surge pricing but surge pricing isn't the only reason to do it.
They're probably doing it and you don't notice.
It would be actual news here so you'd need someone to notice. Me, any other consumer, their workers...
I get the conspiratorial idea but I very much doubt they've managed to keep it secret from everyone. I'd be happy (so to speak) to be proven wrong.
If there are no laws explicitly preventing the practice then all companies who can do it are doing it.
It'd be kinda surprising since no store has been known to do it so far, so nobody has noticed or talked. And some people watch the prices and their fluctuation like hawks. Not to mention the employees.
I get the pessimistic view but I just don't believe that myself. But like I said, (un)happy to be proven wrong though.
Just curious where you live? You may be in a more honest place.
Not OP, but same in Germany. Digital tags everywhere, no surge pricing.
Finland. If they're doing surge pricing at stores here I've been living under a rock. Couldn't find anyone claiming they are doing that either. Event tickets and hospitality stuff seems to be where they're using but not stores, even though stores have those fancy price displays.
Here in the US, as you probably know, everything that involves money is a scam to a greater or lesser degree.
The actual circumstances where surge pricing would be worth doing are pretty uncommon. Like, what news item would make a manager think "Oh, I should double the price of jeans for the next four hours" or "No one will care if the price of eggs is 50% higher between 7am and 11am". Price changes longer than that, or less frequent than weekly are just price changes, and digital tags just make it happen faster, more reliably, and with less labor.
They track all purchases, and that means data they can feed into an algorithm to track typical hourly/weekly/monthly demand. If they know eggs are more in demand by X% between 7am and 11am then it certainly makes sense to charge Y% more during that time.
Makes sense from a profit standpoint, you mean? Because it certainly doesn't make sense from a standpoint of prudence, morality, ethics, community, or common sense.
Welcome to 2026. It's been this way for a while now.
Do you think that's how surge pricing works on apps like Uber? There's a human watching the market and constantly making adjustments?
Or do you think it's computerized (or nowadays, probably AI)? Which do you think is more likely?
Doesn't matter. You still need some condition to trigger price changes. No grocery is going to change the price of bread based on the wheat futures market, because no consumer cares about wheat futures. Maybe they'd change based on their own inventory, but they can't do that too quickly, or the price will change between the time customer picks up the product and the clerk rings it up.
There's a whole population of people who shop in advance - visit web sites, check the store fliers, whatever - to get the best price. If a shelf price doesn't match their researched price, they're never going to that store again.
Aside from gas stations, grocery stores seem to have the most volatile pricing. They're already making weekly changes on dozens of items, probably based on purchasing algorithms. Maybe that counts as retail "surge" pricing, but it's not the dynamics that people fear when talking about digital price tags.
Just because it's not happening constantly everywhere, doesn't mean that it isn't being tested some places, and isn't coming soon.
It also doesn't mean that it is.
What reality do you live in, because I want to go to there
Germany.
Even if that's not the goal of the current management, it's only a matter of time before they get replaced by someone else and there's far far more assholes in this world than good people, so it's all but guaranteed that at some point someone will use the tech for surge pricing and adaptive pricing