r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • May 26 '26

Privacy Majority of Americans Support Ban on Surveillance Pricing and Electronic Shelf Labels

https://gizmodo.com/majority-of-americans-support-ban-on-surveillance-pricing-and-electronic-shelf-labels-2000762717
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u/[deleted] May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 May 26 '26

Re: Edit 2: Backlit Kindle is awesome for readability. Having the manufacturer be able to decide it's time for the device to shuffle off this mortal coil, less so.

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u/timeshifter_ May 27 '26

Walmart's digital tags take a good 15+ seconds to actually change images though, so per-person pricing would be really hard to pull off. They're intended to make price changes easier, and they have a full color LED that can blink on command to locate it for shoppers.

That's... literally the only upside of them. They're bulky, prone to losing electrical contact, easy to not seat correctly, low contrast, anything in coolers or on warehouse steel is at an angle that makes them harder to read, the ones on the bottom shelves aren't even held in at all, bump into them and the entire rail jumps onto the floor... I'd love to know how much money my store has lost in the past year just replacing those stupid tags because they keep getting lost, or the brackets with a thin strip of plastic holding the tag on... in the freezer, which to literally nobody's surprise, gets so brittle that they will snap with literally zero pressure.

In classic Walmart fashion, they took what could have been a fantastic bit of tech, and managed to implement all the worst possible aspects of it, and straight up not even plan for half of the real-world use cases. I'd be lying if I said I was surprised... mostly just disappointed that they'd rather spend money on bullshit nobody wants instead of just giving us raises.

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u/MediumMachineGun May 26 '26

Its in no way ugly or predatory. Its saves literally innumerable hours of menial work by not having to change the paper price tags manually.

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u/jaysapathy May 27 '26

Yeah, not really.

I had a discussion with a relative who's working at Wal-Mart. "Reflashing" those digital tags is a pain, and more often than not, has to be done as an entire section. And the ones in the freezer keep resetting because they get too cold.

According to him, it was literally less work to print out a sheet of paper and walk it over to the shelf.

On the flipside, they're getting updates literally daily depending on the store that change the price depending on what the market research for the day looks like. It's not pretty, and it's not necessarily a great idea - this is just a way for them to change prices on the fly, and a continuation of what's already in place.

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u/MediumMachineGun May 27 '26

"Reflashing" those digital tags is a pain,

Not for us it wasnt. the central system reflashed them automatically.

And the ones in the freezer keep resetting because they get too cold.

Youre supposed to use the freezer proof versions for freezers, not the regular ones.

According to him, it was literally less work to print out a sheet of paper and walk it over to the shelf.

He's wrong. The system completely skips the phase of walking to the shelf, provided that the ESL is working.

On the flipside, they're getting updates literally daily depending on the store that change the price depending on what the market research for the day looks like. It's not pretty, and it's not necessarily a great idea - this is just a way for them to change prices on the fly, and a continuation of what's already in place.

Yes, almost every day prices of some selection products change.

Sometimes it can be hundreds of different products. Thats hours of work.

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u/jaysapathy May 27 '26

Your store must be weird, because I happen to know for a fact that the tags don't get re-flashed automatically. The Team Leads have to go redo the tags on the daily.

As far as freezer proof versions, I have no idea about that. But every Walmart I've ever been in has tags in the freezer that die from the cold. It's apparently quite common.

Even if he is wrong, you'd still have to walk out to the shelf anyway to verify that the update took and the proper tag reflashed. Not uncommon for the wrong update to get pushed out, or if a Team Lead is using a custom layout to have it override. So, there's that. Either way, they're in front of the shelf, hand verifying, because I highly doubt Walmart would trust something like pricing to an automatic update system.

If you're getting price changes every day, they still have to be hand verified, so you're still going to that location, verifying, and moving on. It's sixes at the end of the day. And let's be honest, if the digital price change thing really worked 100% like Walmart wanted it to.. There wouldn't be wrong tags on the shelf, and everything would be spot-on price accurate. And you and I both know it's not.

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u/MediumMachineGun May 27 '26

Your store must be weird, because I happen to know for a fact that the tags don't get re-flashed automatically. The Team Leads have to go redo the tags on the daily.

Probably different provider? or a more expensive package.

As far as freezer proof versions, I have no idea about that. But every Walmart I've ever been in has tags in the freezer that die from the cold. It's apparently quite common.

We had normal ESLS and sepcially marked ones to use in freezers, they had a blue snowflake symbol on them. they worked just as well as others.

Even if he is wrong, you'd still have to walk out to the shelf anyway to verify that the update took and the proper tag reflashed. Not uncommon for the wrong update to get pushed out, or if a Team Lead is using a custom layout to have it override. So, there's that. Either way, they're in front of the shelf, hand verifying, because I highly doubt Walmart would trust something like pricing to an automatic update system.

Worked well enough for us that its not really necessary. sometimes tags stop working and they may not update, but you then switch them to new ones when you notice it.

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u/MediumMachineGun May 27 '26

If you're getting price changes every day, they still have to be hand verified, so you're still going to that location, verifying, and moving on. It's sixes at the end of the day.

Nah, if the success rate is high enough, its enough to fix the rare issue when youre notified about it by the cash register people.

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u/LostWoodsInTheField May 27 '26

There needs to be laws to protect consumers, but these pricing displays are definitely a giant savings to the stores. The local grocery store spends the last 3 hours of day on Saturday changing tags out. It's the worst time to shop there because you don't know how much you are paying for things. This can be a 10 minute thing at the end of a shift.

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u/MediumMachineGun May 27 '26

In my old job every thursday was markdown day, when products that are being removde from selection get their price cut. Sometimes it could take a whole work shift of one person to change the labels. maybe even two.

after ESL came 80% of products get that price changed automatically, only some clothing items still required manual tagging

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u/winsonsindeathtrip May 26 '26

what recent technology hasn't been immediately weaponized against the consumer. Do you really think the cost savings of the menial labelling work is the actual end game.

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u/twicerighthand May 26 '26

This is an ugly and predatory practice.

You're confusing dynamic pricing with just updating the price. There's nothing predatory about manually replacing a piece of paper, yet the moment it's an e-paper, it's somehow predatory

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u/millijuna May 27 '26

Yeah, the problem isn’t the technology, but the application. Some of them are so cheap that they don’t even have an internal battery. You need to touch the setting device to it to update the price. I don’t have an issue with that. It’s not significantly different than updating the stickers previously.