this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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Technically in one sense, maybe. Technically in a practical sense, no. Because the price on the shelf is the agreed price to pay, and if it changes after you put it into your cart, that's gonna break laws.
People are making hay over something that will not happen.
but let's say it does. People will absolutely lose their SHIT. And while companies are stupid, they are not THAT stupid. And even let's say they ARE that stupid: This is the type of the legislatures would love to pass laws about becauase it's easy to do and extremely popular. Like cops running stings. It's easy and shows they're doing something.
So I am absolutely zero worried about this and all this hype is stupid.
Will they changes prices nightly? Sure. Will they change prices multiple times during the day or for individual shoppers? Nope.
And if they were going to pull this shit, they'd already be pulling it online where they can already do that. And yet, not a single fuckin peep about that from any of these people hyping up this thing.
If the price of an item was changed after I pull it off the shelf, I'm telling the cashier to take the item out of my order; and the company can deal with the logistics of restocking the item. For future shopping trips I'm using my smartphone to snap a picture of every price tag as I'm putting an item in my cart. Failure to honor the price on the tag when I pulled it off the shelf is met with me walking the fuck out of the store with nothing. Now you can cancel the entire order and restock a whole cart of groceries. Let's see how many man hours of labor you save then.
so they are kinda already pulling it online. amazon does it. but like, they let me know when the price of something in my basket changes immediately. big notification.
very different from putting it in your cart and finding out at the checkout. now if you need to make a substitution... godsdammit we gotta go wait in line again? if they do that, they gotta put something on the carts to ding you when something changes or i'll lead the riots myself.
This is why they won't. Or if they do, it will not be for long. People will be up in arms. That's why I'm not worried about it happening.
You're at Walmart doing grocery shopping, and you fill your cart with all kinds of foods. Are you going to realize the tomatoes are ringing up at $2.51/lbs when the label was $2.40 in?
I don't think it would be illegal, the price tag is not a contract and it's often mislabeled today. The question is, can you get people to accept that the price will go up or down before you checkout, and will they just pay when it goes up or create a new stock return inventory?
If the chicken you've been walking around the store with went up and you decided you didn't want it anymore, that's straight to the trash. What products will they target with this?
I think it's more likely to go down during the day to compete with other stores than to go up on you, but who knows what these greedy fucks are going to do.
i remember numbers, so yes?
last time i paid gas was a week ago, 5.359 at sams club if you doubt (i just pulled that out of my ass but it's correct, i checked my phone).
That's cool. I don't think you're an average consumer.
nah. i worked with numbers for 25 years. i'm well below average. can't even do arithmetic anymore unless it's all variables.
You're telling me in this day of grocery prices impacting us that nobody would notice this happening? All it takes is for a very few people noticing it for people to riot.
I would be MORE surprised if there are NOT cases of people claiming this is happening when it's not.
Also, if there are rumours that it is happening, there will be people who take pics of prices on the shelves and compare that to the checkout price. If they find it happening, they WILL post and people WILL be up in arms about it.
Another person replying mentioned gas. People drive miles out of the way to save a nickel per gallon - average tank is like 10-20 gallons, give or take, meaning they will spend a couple of dollars to "save" 50¢-$1.00 or so. People are not rational about these things, and if they try it, someone will catch it, and when they catch it, all hell will break loose.
You have too much faith in your idea of what can and can't happen.