Comment on Shitty stores that penalise you for not having their store card
Babalugats@feddit.uk 2 weeks agoI guess it boils down to marketing etc. So. Maybe the government shouldn’t outright ban it, but it should definitely have stricter rules. The ‘discount’ price shouldn’t be allowed to be advertised as though it is the main price - with the original price being smaller and easier to go unnoticed. But also the reason why the cards exist should be more transparent. Data collecting. The people that do not have the cards are being charged more. But the people that do have them are being monitored more easily.
NateNate60@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Now, I’m not one of those “muh free market” morons, but I also think that not every potentially-abusable business practice immediately deserves government regulation against it. By and large it seems that most customers really don’t care that much about this (myself included). The ability for customers to choose where they shop has regulatory power which I think a lot of people fail to recognise. If a behaviour is really repulsive, then customers will just not shop there, which provides a strong negative incentive against the behaviour in question, without any state intervention or enforcement resources required.
An example of this working in practice is the practice of restaurants attempting to introduce tipping in Australia (where it is not customary to tip). Whenever a restaurant frequented by locals tries to force them to tip or makes it awkward to not tip, there is an immediate and strong negative reaction to it from the customers which usually causes the restaurant to give up on the idea.