Interesting you'd think every single person would have to pay attention to every single product to notice surge pricing. But it's just one of those things that yeah, someone would notice and it would actually be newsworthy for someone to start doing that here. They'd be the first to bringing in an immediately hated practise.

But hey, maybe you're right and they're managed to do it without anyone knowing. You never know I guess. I just don't believe that.

I have literally several years worth of notebooks full of what items costed at various locations. Paper shopping list, write the price down of the item on that specific trip at that location.

Started so I could compare costco prices to Walmart to local grocer because size and sales aren't always guarantees of best price. My local grocer in particular often charges extra for the bulk version.

You aren't the first to suggest this crazy but I was at one point feeding enough children that this mattered. I was using pricing to determine final cost of each meal and would drop meals in a out of rotation based purely on cost.

This was also a fun teaching opportunity, make the kids mentally add up all the prices with multiplers and coupons and try to see who gets closest to the actual total. Also to always do the math to determine per unit price whole accounting for sales and coupons.

Most of them are adults now but I still have a mental model around pricing. It's also how I know prices have increased by 50-150%, cpi and other stats be damned.