Abandoned grocery carts full of food might also be coming to my local supermarket.
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Do cost accounting and play fair. Will we be doing this short-change shit forever?
Is anybody acting like this is new? Shops relabel stuff with price changes regularly, this just makes it quicker and easier - staff don't have to run around for a hour with a price gun and a bunch of shelf labels any more.
Improving how we display prices isn't the issue, that's a good move, it's how prices are decided that are the problem.
This IS potentially new as some of the plans involve using facial tracking from security cameras to identify customers and analyze them for their net worth so they can set prices to specific customers, rather than setting prices to specific situations. Also, anything that makes price gouging easier and easier to cover up is bad.
Well but r/n you can't adjust the price of butter 3x a day.
(maybe you can but it's stuff u don't see. With this tech, I'd be worried they'll change the price multiple times a day to minimize my wallet)
I agree that the technology isn't the problem here. It's the corporate mentality of trying to squeeze customers for all they are worth on a personal basis that is the big issue. That and surge pricing should be made illegal. Having to pay more for a thing just because a flock of other people decide to get it at the same time you do is absurd.
I've already sent feedback to Walmart about my refusal to buy anything with a digital price tag. The thing is, I believe them when they say that prices are only updated between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. The problem is that that policy could change literally any time.
Walmart has every inch of their store covered in cameras. They have facial recognition systems so they know who I am the moment I walk in the store. They know I buy graham crackers. They know I've put up with price increases in the past. What is preventing them from adding $0.10 to those graham crackers' price tag the moment I walk down the crackers aisle? Literally nothing. They could, and that's reason enough for me to boycott
Personally I have been boycotting Walmart for over 15 years because they refuse to hire most of their employees full time so as to dodge having to provide mandated health insurance and they have a long history of completely screwing the lives of people who use their automated check out system.
Couldn't pay me to shop at their horrible stores. FUCK Walmart and FUCK the Walton family who've become billionaires off the back of poor people in America.
Yeah, my problem is that I'm too poor to shop elsewhere. So far my local Kroger is only a little more expensive, but at least I know that everyone is paying $8.49 for that six pack of graham crackers
Unfortunately that is by design. Walmart actively works to close down local stores and corners the market on wholesalers to control the price so they are the lowest price in any area. Only ones that can usually stand up to them or places like Aldi.
If they want to do dynamic pricing, maybe we'll just have to start dynamic shopping.
It's weird, the higher the prices get, the worse my memory and aptitude with self service checkouts gets.
these gonna get hacked...
Hacking a pricetag would do fk all, just leads to more people scanning it and getting a shock at the higher actual price.
Someone could hack it to make all the prices $1000, no one would know the prices and then ultimately probably not buy anything.
I will buy that for a dollar. (no really lettuce for a $1 is worth the hack)
My local store can not even get a reliable source of staple foods (the distributor often shorts them milk, meat or whatever), there is no way this:
A) Works
B) Is adopted by any non large store
C) Is accepted as anything but a hated cash grab
I've already seen them in several stores near me, including Walmart. The entire store was switched over to them.
If this happens, I will absolutely try to figure out how to game it
Bring items to self checkout. Scans as fast as possible. Walks out with a 20% dynamic discount.
remember if you see someone shoplifting food no the fuck you didnt
Especially if you work there.
honestly the best part about working at a supermarket was delivery day when i could weave through the maze of pallets and sleep on the paper towels behind everything like a fort. i sure as fuck aren't going to report anyone shoplifting food.
Thank you for your service in working minimum effort at a giant corpo
Or they could charge a customer more if they know the customer always buys the same product.
How so they propose changing an e-ink shelf label per customer??
Probably more timed towards certain times and demographics, but yeah it just takes a couple seconds to update and there are plenty of customers running "loyalty points apps"
What's the common way for updating these? I have some similar devices that use Wi-Fi but local stores seem to use some sort of nearby transmitter pointex towards the shelves, maybe infrared/optical
They seem to use infrared and or NFC for data exchange. I tried to read the NFC data with a phone app, however the data seems to be either encrypted, or it was some sort of image blob file that is shown on the display. You can read something, but it's not as trivial as reading other NFC tags.
It will probably be wifi and mqtt. You don't need a whole OS to get mqtt, just a TCP/IP stack.
Possibly it will use BTLE or BT5. If the store is large enough it might make sense for staff to go around with android app and manually update some prices, in which case BT5 in SPP mode might make sense.
probably they set certain times of day where there will be surge pricing, like around 12-1pm where more people come in for lunch, and around 4-5pmish where people off work.
It is morally correct to shoplift from stores that do this.
It might not be legal, but it's already morally acceptable to shoplift from Coles and Woolworths
I just don't because it would be a massive pain if I were to be caught
Great, I have a very bad feeling about this, given the possible crisis of 2026.
I'm going to start dynamic payments. "Oh, between 6-9pm I pay 10% less."
Dynamic pricing Price gouging. FTFY.
Portland banned it for housing. Time to ban it for everything else!
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