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I completely understand the retailer's desire for electronic shelf tags, and it doesn't have to be nefarious of the store taking advantage of customers.

Way back in my youth when I worked retail, keeping shelf tags up-to-date was multiple-peoples full time jobs. This is was for a whole bunch of reasons.

The obvious:

• prices go up
• prices go down

The not so obvious:

• new products come in that don't have an existing tag so one needs to be created
• products are out-of-stock and will not be replenished, so someone has to go to that shelf and pull that tag off
• promotions have some stock moved from its normal shelf location to an end cap or otherwise special display in a store so more tags needed for the same amount of product
• shelf space being utilized differently such as more product being oriented vertically where before it was horizontal so more tags needed for the same product
• patrons steal shelf tags (who knows why), but it means a new tag must be printed and deployed to the shelf

What's more, if a shelf tag isn't updated and the price rings up higher at the register, many retailers will honor the shelf tag listed price so there is a financial loss to the store from poorly maintained shelf tags. I am not surprised at all that it is cheaper for the retailer to buy and implement an entire electronic shelf tag solution over paper tags and labor.

I've been doing dynamic pricing in Walmart for years. I go in ready to pay for stuff but end up walking out with meat in my pants. The prices become free while I'm in the store

Anything new in a Walmart is destroyed or disorganized within a day of its installation. It’s already impossible to find anything on the right shelf, and the jaded underpaid employees won’t do shit to fix it. Walmart is basically a junkyard with a roof.

It makes good business sense to do this, especially in a huge store like Walmart, with thousands of SKUs. It will be faster and more accurate, and you might even get to fire a few people. That's always fun.

The problem is that Walmart does everything in bad faith, so you just know they are going to use it for surge pricing. Get ready to see things like beer prices going up on the weekends.

Come on people, use your fucking brain. Consumers are INCREDIBLY sensitive to retailers trying to change prices on the fly. My evidence: Every time this story is submitted, people come out of the WOODWORK yelling "If they try this, we're up in arms!" Yes, no shit, they are firmly away.

So let's walk through how it works: You're shopping, you put items in your cart, you go to check out, and it is... :gasp: like 20% more than it should be! They changed the prices on the shelf while you were shopping!

As soon as anyone even mildly suspects a price difference, they are likely to 1) take pictures of prices when they take them off the shelf and compare to the prices they paid on checkout and 2) talk about it online, causing hundreds or thousands to say "I KNEW IT!!!" and do the same.

So even IF one store was to try this once, it would cause a SHIT TON of people takes measures that would easily catch it. And talk about the negative review cascade that would happen....

Stores may try to play games, sure. But they're not gonna poke the bear like that. Even if they do, it will NOT go unnoticed. People WILL catch it easily.

So I am absolutely NOT worried about this happening, and all the energy people are wasting worrying about it could be better spent trying to convince people to stand up and take our oligarchs down and take back our country.

Or, sure, you can waste your fucking time masturbating to the idea of you standing up against the Corporate Masters and their Nefarious Price Changing.

So, sure. These tags get implemented where you shop, keep an eye out for them doing something stupid. But they almost certainly won't.

It's just like the people who - every thread fast food comes up - talk about how the Big Mac used to be bigger! Nope. 1:10 patties for decades. "But I have my own little pet conspiracy theory!" Okay, you do you, bub.

Dynamic pricing is only part of it. When you are anticipating higher persistent inflation this makes it easier to tick prices up daily. Enjoy your Trump cost of living adjustments! Lol.

It would be a shame if anyone went around the shelves with a car window breaker surreptitiously tapping on all of the price tags.

More e-waste...

Dynamic pricing is not legal in Canada, but what our Real Canadian Super Store does on some items is set the price super high, then every day you go in it is a different "sale" price. On a specific soymilk the price ranges from 3.50 to 9.00.

This kind of stuff is inevitable with capitalism, in their continuing effort to make human workers obsolete and save money it makes perfect sense to replace static paper displays with digital ones. I would assume the only reason they didn't do it any soon is the up front costs.

Dynamic pricing is of course a real concern, but its not like you can't do dynamic pricing with paper labels, it just takes more effort (and so the prices will probably reflect that as they change). It's neat how we call it "dynamic pricing" now. but like when it happens in other places its called Hyperinflation, are there still some people foolish enough to think "dynamic" means it could go down also?

Stopped shopping at Walmart 10 years ago and it's one of the best decisions I've ever made.

I wonder how tough the display screens are. Like if I accidentally took a can and leaned into the display, would it crack and cost them a bunch of money to fix?

We've already got them here. Pretty sure they're already fucking with the prices.

They should ban this practice and ban it online as well. This is just price fixing with extra steps.

I'm also shocked it's $7 for a bottle of Pantene.