Comment on Walmart's use of digital price tags signal the future of retail shopping, but consumers are worried

• YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That’s exactly what this is. All stores will eventually do this and prices will fluctuate throughout the day.

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  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    isn’t it pretty much what amazon’s been doing since the beginning? the difference being there’s no “app” like camel yet to track prices over time at a single store

    but yea, still another reason not to go to walmart. how do they mitigate the problem of something being $X when you put it in your cart, and the price being X+whatever by the time you get through the 2 mile long line at one of the 2 open registers?

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  • Tabzlock@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Paper ticket stores already do this, its just a more work for the workers than e-ink.

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• floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  And personalized pricing, based on your profile and what they think they can get you to pay.

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  • t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I can’t wait for them to get sued into the ground because their AI is changing prices based on skin color.

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  • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Well, that’s what coupons are for.

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• spizzat2@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So, if I grab an item off the shelf and browse around the store for a while, is the price going to be the price currently displayed or the price when I grabbed it?

  If it’s the current price, what’s the point of a price tag? If I can’t actually know the price until checkout, then showing me the price is kind of a useless bit of data. I also suspect that the “speak to a manager” types would make that a major headache for stores.

  If it’s the price when I grabbed it, how are they keeping track of that? I see two ways of handling that: one requires that you use their app to shop, and the other requires cameras and “machine vision” that are still unreliable, at best. The former seems more likely, but I doubt either is going to sit well with customers.

  I haven’t seen that aspect addressed in any articles about the “feature”.

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  • Tabzlock@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Take a photo of it, I work with paper but we change our tags frequently. We often have prices changed when a customer reaches checkout. I’ve also had times where a customer came back to check a shelf tag after I just updated it. I honored the previous price those times as I was still holding the tickets but its not a guarantee even in paper stores.

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    • Fuzzy_Red_Panda@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      We often have prices changed when a customer reaches checkout.

      I know this isn’t your fault or anything but damn, that seems lightly customer hostile at best, and deeply unethical at worst. It sounds like it should be illegal.

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      • amju_wolf@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That sounds very illegal, yeah. You can’t advertise a price and then charge something different. It doesn’t matter that the person didn’t notice it. At that point you might not have price tags at all (which is also illegal, just FYI).

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      • Tabzlock@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I can’t speak internationally or legally but from what I know from friends in similar jobs daily prices changes aren’t uncommon. The reason and when it happens often is normally the start of the day when there is a new batch of tickets. They don’t go up instantly and multiple 100s of tickets normally take a couple hours to get placed depending on how many/busy staff are.

        Main thing is e-ink’s don’t really make this significantly better or worse. I personally think they are neat for the end worker. The problem is that this is allowed or not enforced well.

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    • hitmyspot@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Its not that it can’t happen now. Its that it will happen all the time with digital tags.

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  • Nollij@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Even at stores that have this feature, I rarely see people use it. It’s clearly not an experience that people flock to.

    OTOH, on the rare occasion I’ve visited a Walmart in the past 10 years, I have a 100% rate of checkout taking an absurdly long time. Everyone there just seems to accept it like they have no choice.

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• tangentism@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It will become an Olympic event where you have to get from the shelf to the till before the price changes!

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• TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I edited in another thought. I agree with that fear, that’s obviously the concern. I didn’t feel the need to repeat it.

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