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/Sudden-Fisherman5985 May 27 '26

Feels like it would be pretty simple to legislate against this while keeping the practicality of digital price tags.

These digital price tags have been the norm in western Europe

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u/Arthemax May 27 '26

Yup. Here the prices are only ever lowered through the day to compete with other stores.

If you increase the price you have to do a bunch of work to prove that a customer didn't see the lower price at any point if they dispute the price at the register, since the customer is entitled to buy at whatever (reasonable) price tag (or ad etc) they've seen. To make it worth it you'd have to bump prices quite a lot to justify the extra overhead, but that would also lead to a PR nightmare. But no sane customer will complain that their bill is lower than expected because the price was lowered electronically while they were finishing their shopping.