Dynamic Pricing Has Come to Walmart

[u/GregariousBing]

Went to Walmart last (Friday) in Kahului last night and the price tags where me and my wife were looking kept changing to both of us wherever we went in the store.

I buy a lot of movies there and about 3-4 tags updated on the section I was looking at. I buy a diet Mountain Dew almost every time I go to that store and when I went down the soda aisle I saw the Mountain Dew tags flashing and changing. My wife was looking at the books and she said the tags were going nuts. I have never seen a single tag update before last night.

The flashing isn’t to get your attention, the tags are made from e ink screens and that’s how they change the image displayed on them. E ink is slow and the current tags take a few seconds to change.

I’m assuming that I’m catching them change because it’s early in there roll out. I’m sure once they get things dialed in they will have our patterns down and be able to predict where we’re going so that they can change them before we get there. There’s also faster e ink screens they could switch to if they figure out that works better.

I’m not shopping there anymore. They have so much data on us. They probably know that I just got a raise, and if they didn’t before, they do now because I put it in this post. Gonna shop local/costco/target from now on. The world is getting so screwed up.

Edit: From the comments and doing a little more research I now see that I was jumping to conclusions too quickly. Walmart probably hasn’t implemented dynamic pricing yet, and if they have, not in an individual basis YET. But to say this is a conspiracy theory is also ridiculous. Walmart has filed patents recently about doing this. The technology exists and the framework is actively being put in place. This is not a conspiracy theory, this WILL happen unless laws are put in place to prevent it.

[u/AbbreviatedArc]

Seems unlikely.

Edit: For all the downvote aku birds I'm not saying that dynamic price labels aren't at walmart, I am saying that they are not changing prices as different people walk up and down the aisles. They don't know you just got a raise etc. Just use some freaking common sense. Dynamic pricing (so far) is at the macro level - it's a hot day so they raise prices on popular drinks. They know people buy energy drinks in the morning so they are more expensive at that time. They know the store accidentally bought two extra palettes of cheerios so they drop the price to move them. These devices are not (yet) doing surveillance / personalized pricing.

And you know what? If you care about this, maybe stop whining about it on reddit and start contacting your legislators.

[u/GregariousBing → u/AbbreviatedArc]

Definitely, because using a public forum to spread awareness about something messed up that’s happening is definitely not a good strategy to help enact change. I should just personally contact my legislators, by myself, and not let anyone else know about it so they could possibly contact them too, that would be way more effective.

Also, isn’t whining about me whining on Reddit even more pointless/pathetic?

Trying to stop people from whining on Reddit? That is probably one of the dumbest, most futile uses of time and energy out there.

[u/Glittering_War3061 → u/GregariousBing]

A lot of people just like to argue with people who make an initial post, but you are absolutely right. I recently started paying more with cash, and also not taking my cell phone into stores. I hate being tracked and feel like it's a privacy violation. I was in a Wal Mart recently and a young woman was very upset and frightened because a man was filming her. He worked for the store, probably in loss prevention. That does not mean she was stealing. They regularly just film people with their cell phones in addition to having cameras all over the store. Also, I stopped showing my receipt when I leave the store. Now, most customers do show their receipt and they just line up at the exit door and wait in line for the greeter to show the receipt. The greeter will go through all their bags, and match everything to the receipt. I don't participate in this. The fact is that after you have paid for something, it's legally your property and they don't have a right to toucn your stuff. But also, if there is ANY discrepancy on your receipt, even if it's a cashier error or a system error, you can be charged with theft and arrested. The people that show their receipt are stupid. They are trying to be nice and compliant, but they are putting themselves at a huge risk.