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[–] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

If you don’t like what the price tags show, just change them yourself using an app.

From the article, it’s interesting that some U.S. states have banned the e-pricetags:

  • Maryland banned surveillance pricing in April
  • Connecticut signed a ban into law in June
  • New Jersey signed a ban into law in July

Europe is not on the ball AFAIK.

The one good thing about these electronic tags --you would expect-- would be accurate prices. But I’ve already discovered cases where the cash register price differed from the shelf price. I took the cashier back to the price, and the shelf price was still different (thus it was not a case of the price changing after I grabbed the item.. it was in fact a database inconsistency). I have also seen cases where the price per unit wildly differed from reality, which is contrary to what you would expect if everything is electronic.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    Price inconsistencies are primarily because companies sell half assed solutions.

    Company A sells the PoS system, it's CRM, database, management seats and support.

    Company B sells the e-pricetag system, its CRM, database, gateway (most either use Bluetooth or a custom 802.15.4 based protocol, ZigBee but not really), management seats and support.

    Since there's literally hundreds of Company A's and Company B's, and there's absofuckinglutely no standard for either product, it's a hit and miss if the systems can actually work together - primarily because the acquisitions aren't done by involving engineers/experts who pick the best fitting system but by having some dumbass VP or C-suite who knows a guy who knows a guy (and most likely there's a nice kickback chain), and another dumbass middle manager picks the other, compatibility being potentially the least important aspect.

    Then you have the clusterfuck of systems not working together, and needing someone to manage the PoS, someone to manage the price tags, and either a C-suite's 15 year old nephew who's a "programming genius" (managed to prompt Claude to write a calculator app he showed off once) gets some nice money for writing a godawful bridge between the two that kind of works when the stars align right (and breaks after three months because both systems got updated), or there's an actual underpaid gofer whose sole task is to keep the databases in sync.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Also, are those really e-pricetag bans, or hostile pricing tactics bans? I think that distinction matters.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    The links are there. I followed one of them to this:

    “State legislatures across the country are actively working to protect their communities from the dangers of ESLs, introducing bills banning the use of electronic shelving labels and the practice of dynamic pricing in our food and drug stores.”

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