We have a lot of those in the EU as well, except prices change once every 48 hours at most, due to discounts activating or expiring. Shit like this is thankfully completely illegal, as is expected in any resonably advanced country.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Is like to point out that the USA is not a reasonably advanced country. It's more like a third world country with a Gucci belt.
So, what if I go to the store with limited cash, choose the items I can buy with it, and then while I'm on my way to the register, the prices increase?
I get how this can save money in labour but there should be laws or regulations that prices cannot change during store open business hours. If not, greed wins yet again.
Was in one today and they haven't made it here yet
I wish I could boycott them, but haven’t gone there in years
But seriously, they’re not talking about price segmentation, just a more efficient way to update their prices
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Are the cameras going to detect when I have a fever and then triple the cost of Tylenol?
Actually, they'll start with surprise specials and flash deals, like KMart used to do with their blue light specials. They will use it to discount over-stock as it gets near the sell-by date.
And then, once they've got you used to the prices changing at random times, maybe even getting people to come back in shop in the store more often but offering really great deals (like black Friday started out) . Then they will begin to have "peak pricing", where you pay more on busy days and times.
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I worked in a Walmart on the overnight shift (cleaning, separate company) when they rolled them out 3+ years ago here in Canada. They've honestly become the norm in grocery stores and other large stores here. If some company was going to be sleazy about them, it probably would've happened already (Loblaws, I'm looking at you).
I straight up asked why they were being installed, and it's two-fold. One, they can save money cause now they don't have to pay staff to go around and change the little paper tags, which takes an absurd amount of manpower and is easy to fuck up. And two, they can all be changed over to a barcode/QR code during inventory, which speeds up the whole process. I'll be the last person to defend corpos, especially Walmart, but I don't think this one was done with the intentions of directly fucking over the customer.
I feel like it's one of those things that someone came up with the benign idea first, and then later some jackass was like "Hey, we could use these to change the prices every time a customer looks at it."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
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How would it work if the price changed between getting the item off the shelf and paying for it? Will I have to take a picture of every price tag in case the price goes up?
(In Germany) The legal purchase agreement is made at the register, which means you agree to those prices. The prices on the shelves are technically irrelevant, although if they are intentionally falsified you could sue for deceit or false advertising.
Which is why almost all stores will honour the prices on the shelves, even if they're wrong, and also it's just cheaper to adjust the price than to argue with customers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ideally they should keep prices locked for 24 hours between changes
afaik there was somewhere that was suggesting having these labels adjust with who was in front of the item: track you through the store, link that to their internal profile of you, charge more if they think you can afford it/figure your susceptible to certain sales/etc
Wow that's crazy. I can't believe they're doing this without telling the market or regional teams. They haven't even told store managers about the individual pricing!
Because it's not a thing. The digital price signage is so they don't have to change individual labels on the thousands of items in the store, saving a huge amount of tedious labor.
Source: married to a store manager.
Just had her proof read this for accuracy and she pointed out that the digital prices can be changed from the office and price changes drop on Monday but still require someone to push them to the shelves. It is possible someone observed a price update while they were looking at the shelf, or this is just wild speculation.
Should be a law that they can only set the price at the start of the business day with an exception for perishable goods marked down before they go bad, where the fresher ones are still regular price.
You can only lower the price while the store is open for business. Any price hikes must be done between business hours. 24 hour stores can raise prices once per day during off-peak hours or something.
Edit: replied to the wrong comment, moved to where this one belonged.
Hahahahaha
Great joke!
Why?
Currently they release new prices on Monday, on a weekly basis, and they're changed by hand throughout the day. The non-digital signage with last week's prices can still be up while you're shopping but at the register items will ring in with the new price.
If that happens they will honor the price on the shelf as long as the UPCs match (people move those price signs all the time, on accident and on purpose).
I understand the corporate bad evil company stance but in this instance people are reaching conclusions based entirely on wild speculation.
This should absolutely be illegal. Not to mention how the prices don't include taxes, you don't know the real price you pay until you're already at the checkout which is horseshit. It's no wonder that online shopping has become much more popular.
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Be sure to handle them appropriately, the screens are vulnerable to damage, and replacing them would be more expensive than printing out a new paper tag. It'd sure be a shame if the corps lost money there.
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