This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
A store near me adopted those a long time ago. Then they realized it was even cheaper to not use them at all.
Now they simply don't have any visible pricing. You want it, you will buy it. Simple as.
Turns out their prices are becoming absolutely insane when you check the receipt.
In my state the customer would be able to reference the last visible sales tag or printed circular if no posted prices. So some granny could have an ad from whenever this all started and basically have grandfathered in grocery prices until the manager finally decides he is losing enough money and starts putting signage up again.
Couple this with some armed guards and you've done a thing.
It never stops being funny how the US is always 10-20-30 years late with most things and it's always done in the worst way possible. We've had these for many years here in Sweden and have none of these issues. All I've heard from friends who work at grocery stores is that they're better and takes less work to change, giving more time for other things.
The reason is labor is cheaper. The people who put up signage in shops get paid close to minimum wage and get restricted hours under 35 so corporate doesn't have to pay for benefits like healthcare. So the only incentive for changing to electonic tags is being able to charge customers more.
I am thoroughly confused. Where I live almost all supermarkets went from printing labels on paper, to putting this e-ink little displays. Did price fixing explode overnight? Obviously not, we have bloody laws that prevent that, it's not the responsibility of a stupid little screen...
The more I think about it the more dumber it sounds... There is this terrible practice that is our society worse every day, but tomorrow with this new technology they can do it twice faster! That's bad, we should ban the technology, so they can only make our life terrible, and not double terrible!
How the fuck would surveillance based pricing work in real life. Prices would have to change every time a different person looked at it. Can you imagine the chaos at the self scan checkouts when the pricing flashes up wrong on every item you bought. Most people would just leave
There's already in-store camera based tracking and ID of customers. Takes very little effort to send that ID to the PoS to use your personal pricing at checkout...
Its weird how they keep breaking and they have to keep replacing them.
Interesting, in my area they keep disappearing instead of breaking.
On a completely unrelated note I have a fancy £50000 puzzle on my fridge right now.
Are they easily hackable? Asking fir a friend...
Depends on the model of the displays. Check out OpenEPaperLink ;)
I used to go around and take the sd cards out of kiosks. I had bags of them.
How is that an improvement? Higher cost and less jobs?
Did every exec forget everything they learned in business school?
our WFs in my area are using this right now. they often go on the fritz, when an item gets removed from being sold in the store, or the item has to be moved to another area.
And next week someone vibe codes an app that automatically registers all prices on the electronic labels as they walk around with their phone in hand and tells the customers in real time what is overpriced and much cheaper in nearby stores. Store owners will be outraged and demand the app to be taken down. The next day there are five apps doing something similar.
We've had that tech for 16 years, but it's implemented differently — and costs a lot more now.
OurGroceries is one of the first apps I've downloaded in 2010. It was $5 to remove the banner ad. We paid $15 for it. $5 for me on Android in 2010. $5 for my wife on Android in 2010. And $5 for me on iOS in 2016. They since made it so where if one person buys it, everyone who shares the lists with each other gets to use it for free. Only, now it's $20.
So here's how it works. It's synced grocery lists. You can totally do this with Google Keep or any other shared note system — Apple Notes does it, too. But we did this in 2010 when we didn't have access to those (iPhones did not even come to our area until 2014!). So my wife and I would make a list. She'd drop me off at one store and then go to another. We'd put Bluetooth earbuds in our ears and go shopping together, but at different stores. We'd go down the list and call out the price. Whoever could get it cheaper would put it in their cart. We'd both check out, and then she'd swing by and pick me up.
Not illegal. No stores have kicked us out for doing it. Now imagine if you have 3+ roommates and you're on a party line.
But where will they hide when the revolution comes?
This headline just made hundreds of retail executives orgasm at once.
Just like flock cameras, destroy them.
Farmers markets.
