Stores are going to be aisles of vending machines where you pay as you go soon.
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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i don't patronize them any more. one of several.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXmnBbUjsPs "The film exposes Wal-Mart's unscrupulous business practices through interviews with former employees, small business owners, and footage of Walmart executives. "
people still shop at Walmart?
Pros: I heard on the Hackaday podcast where these discarded digital price things were (somewhat simply?) hacked to make fun hacker convention badges. So that's neat. :D
2 inch networked e ink looking signage?
I want to play with a couple.
Found the article if you're interested! :D
I completely understand the retailer's desire for electronic shelf tags, and it doesn't have to be nefarious of the store taking advantage of customers.
Way back in my youth when I worked retail, keeping shelf tags up-to-date was multiple-peoples full time jobs. This is was for a whole bunch of reasons.
The obvious:
- prices go up
- prices go down
The not so obvious:
- new products come in that don't have an existing tag so one needs to be created
- products are out-of-stock and will not be replenished, so someone has to go to that shelf and pull that tag off
- promotions have some stock moved from its normal shelf location to an end cap or otherwise special display in a store so more tags needed for the same amount of product
- shelf space being utilized differently such as more product being oriented vertically where before it was horizontal so more tags needed for the same product
- patrons steal shelf tags (who knows why), but it means a new tag must be printed and deployed to the shelf
What's more, if a shelf tag isn't updated and the price rings up higher at the register, many retailers will honor the shelf tag listed price so there is a financial loss to the store from poorly maintained shelf tags. I am not surprised at all that it is cheaper for the retailer to buy and implement an entire electronic shelf tag solution over paper tags and labor.
There is legal obligation to honor the shelf tag if it says a product should be lower than what it rang up for. Otherwise it's essentially a bait and switch, and can usually get a store in trouble if a customer complains to the right people.
There is legal obligation to honor the shelf tag if it says a product should be lower than what it rang up for.
At the federal level (in the USA at least), there isn't. Some states might, no law covering the entire nation.
Otherwise it’s essentially a bait and switch, and can usually get a store in trouble if a customer complains to the right people.
The legal barrier for "bait and switch" is higher than that. Bait and switch is if the price is intentionally lowered and advertised, then raised or not offered when the customer tries to buy. If a customer took one of these "expired shelf tag" situations to court, the retailer could easily point to their sale promo from the week before showing the price was valid at that time, but that the old shelf tag hadn't been properly taken down. The retailer would win, but the retailer knows this too and the cost of legal representation, bad press, and losing a customer usually isn't worth winning the legal argument, so they usually just honor the mistakenly lower price and move on.
It makes good business sense to do this, especially in a huge store like Walmart, with thousands of SKUs. It will be faster and more accurate, and you might even get to fire a few people. That's always fun.
The problem is that Walmart does everything in bad faith, so you just know they are going to use it for surge pricing. Get ready to see things like beer prices going up on the weekends.
Yup, next to no chance this doesn't get used to set flux pricing unless we make laws to counteract it. Businesses have shown us repeatedly they only have the ethics we force on them.
Our food prices will be like the stock market.
Dynamic pricing is only part of it. When you are anticipating higher persistent inflation this makes it easier to tick prices up daily. Enjoy your Trump cost of living adjustments! Lol.
Plus the side effect of it is shrinkflaiton, and cheapflation. many items noticible made with cheaper ingredients turned out the product is crap.
I've been doing dynamic pricing in Walmart for years. I go in ready to pay for stuff but end up walking out with meat in my pants. The prices become free while I'm in the store
Is that steak in your pants...
If they won't shift from a fraudulent Trickle Down Economy, to a proven Trickle Up Economy, then we'll shift to a Robin Hood Economy.
Hands off independent, Mom & Pop businesses, in fact give them ALL your business, but for major corporations? Steal EVERYTHING!
In China especially the Hema stores have had these for years. Nothing new there.
Dynamic pricing is not legal in Canada, but what our Real Canadian Super Store does on some items is set the price super high, then every day you go in it is a different "sale" price. On a specific soymilk the price ranges from 3.50 to 9.00.
sounds like the same thing, but with extra steps.
A workaround the law
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Anything new in a Walmart is destroyed or disorganized within a day of its installation. It’s already impossible to find anything on the right shelf, and the jaded underpaid employees won’t do shit to fix it. Walmart is basically a junkyard with a roof.
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This kind of stuff is inevitable with capitalism, in their continuing effort to make human workers obsolete and save money it makes perfect sense to replace static paper displays with digital ones. I would assume the only reason they didn't do it any soon is the up front costs.
Dynamic pricing is of course a real concern, but its not like you can't do dynamic pricing with paper labels, it just takes more effort (and so the prices will probably reflect that as they change). It's neat how we call it "dynamic pricing" now. but like when it happens in other places its called Hyperinflation, are there still some people foolish enough to think "dynamic" means it could go down also?
...what? How would dynamic pricing be done with paper labels? Have someone stand there, and switch out labels as new people approach?
It would be a shame if anyone went around the shelves with a car window breaker surreptitiously tapping on all of the price tags.
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