If consumers can't opt out of spying and data collection while they are buying food, then these companies shouldn't exist. How unethical do grocery stores have to be before we end their privatization?
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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Grocery stores change their store music based on age groups and other characteristics that tend to visit at various times. Here's a mediocre source, I can't find one anymore that called out stores targeting specific demographics of people based on time of day.
So to me personally, I could infer that if they know old people shop on weekday mornings and young people on weekday nights and weekends, then fiddling around with the price every hour based on perceived ability-to-pay may amount to price-discrimination by age group, gender or ethnicity.
Combined with other interconnected devices and AI technology, the labels can also be used to make the shopping experience more personalized by performing βadvanced data collection and analysis,β which leads to βgreater profits and higher levels of consumer trust,β according to JRTech Solutions Inc., the Canadian retailer Sobeys is getting the labels from.
Dolansky agreed that for the average shopper, the changes often go unnoticed. βA lot of these items we just pick up and put in the cart without looking at the price at all,β he said.
Excuse me?! Go back to Dimension X, you Lizard-person
What happened to Canada having the most robust privacy protections?!
I'm sorry, what?? We have privacy protections?
Yes, we absolutely do.
For example: it's illegal for any company to request any PII when doing a return for a product, unless explicitly required to facilitate the return. For example, if someone needs to come to your place to pick up the return then requesting your address is within reason.
But if you bring the product back to the store, and have the receipt and payment method (debit/credit card) then it is illegal for them to refuse to process the return if you decline giving out your name, phone number, email address, home address, or any other PII.
Canadian Tire had a few lawsuits within the past decade regarding exactly that.
Stores still regularly insist on it saying "it's store policy and they can't return the item unless I give that info", but I flat out tell them what they just asked is illegal under Canadian privacy laws and their tune quickly changes.
I used to work at London Drugs up until very recently and their POS systems still prompt for that information. I never asked for it simply because I felt it was an unnecessary violation of privacy but I was there for years and nobody mentioned it was actually illegal.
We have some, but they're pretty weaksauce compared to the EU's, and the mechanisms for enforcing them don't have enough teeth.
Wish our govt was more like the EU with the GDPR and other protections
GDPR is not properly enforced against us mega corpos...
But hey the intent was at least in the right direction and that's the best we can hope for in 2025.
When I first came to Canada, around 2002, Canada had some of the most robust privacy protections in the world.
I've always felt they were very lacking and punishments seem to be just "the cost of doing business". It has always felt like we had to take care of our own privacy and when that fails just hope that our system protects us. We are still quite behind in this digital world, at least we only pay lip service to entities like MPAA and RIAA
The world has changed so significantly in the timeframe I'm referencing. I'm not surprised its changed, but we definitely need to address this kind of thing as a country.
I used to manage my cell phone privacy by disabling data. Now thats included in my basic cell phone package, I need to be more proactive. As consumers, we need to be proactively choosing to engage with this ckntent, not just passively letting it wash over us. But thats easier said than done when the companies with the money to fight this are all pushing the version of the world where they feed off your data like parasites.
That was never a thing, we have the most technologically ignorant government around. At least the US government can use privacy violation for their own gain.
dynamic pricing
barely measurable [to consumers]
/goose meme
If the dynamic pricing is barely noticeable, then why do the stores need it?
How is it legal for a price to be different between when you read the price on the shelf and when they charge you?
It is not legal to charge a different price at the register. Also, it would be quite difficult to ensure the price you pay at the register matches the price you saw on the shelf ten minutes ago.
If you suspect they are changing prices on you from the time you leave the shelf, take a photo of the price. If it's different at the register, you know it was changed.
Yeah, no. Ban the tags. Thank you.
It's not that granular. They're going to use surge pricing, so when you shop is going to matter a lot. The tag will match the till. Going to buy beer and hot dogs on game day? Surge pricing!
I can only see it working when the prices are changed for a full day, after the store is closed/before they open.
I can see how it would be feasible to change each day. I still hate it though.
Why? I can match the till and tag automatically and slip in a 30 minute grace period between. The number of customers who would be impacted would likely be marginal.
It definitely takes me longer than 30 mins to get through the store.
But the "why" is that I think a single customer being overcharged by this system is too many. I know it happens a lot by accident at the moment because staff screw up the paper price tags, but having it by design is no longer an honest mistake.
And worse, the answer to this problem is probably going to be "facial recognition" and I hate that even more.
These bitches appear to be starving, activate surge pricing, they won't say no!!!!
Will it be? It seems pretty easy to choose a transition time ( say an hour even ) and to charge the lowest price in the last 60 minutes.
Does it take more than an hour between pulling something off the shelf and hitting the register?
Anyway, I totally hate it so this is not me defending it.
It would be really hard to guarantee it. There are definitely times it has taken more than an hour to go around the store. It takes at least 45 mins on a normal trip, and the more kids that are with me the longer it takes. You need a lot of groceries when you're eating for 5.
They are already using them in Italy but the prices are not dynamic, mostly because they are forced to mark the date in which the price is valid. They also have to respect prices in printed documents (like catalogs or flyers) so it's virtually impossible to change prices on the go.
I used to work nights at a Loblaws grocery store
Thursday was price update day and I would spend the whole shift printing stacks of paper labels then walk the aisles updating them.
The digital tags would save a lot of money and paper.
And im perfectly fine with this use case. I'm not impressed with the idea of changing prices from day to day, and certainly not throughout the day.
I am too.
As long as they're held to a maximum frequency of updates this tech is net positive.
With fliers that would be true because there's just one weekly price per location.
Ive seen the tags, but pretty sure dynamic pricing breaks the law.
This is just discrimination. They're trying to figure out how to squeeze every last cent out of our pockets. They've already squeezed us as it is! If I can, I'll avoid any place that does this.
I wonder how difficult it'll be to mess with them. Can they be hacked? How easy can they be broken?
Edit: Actually, the only way I would accept this is if they had a database online where everyone could scan and scrape the data. If it was constantly being analyzed and they could prove they weren't screwing people, then sure, why not. It actually might convince me to shop there more if that were the case. That would probably be more fair than what they do now. As it stands, it's not like we can see how they change prices day to day all that efficiently. But I could see how they could use these to abuse prices a ton.
Well it's time to get a faraday bag for my phone.
The ones that I have seen still need someone to go and change he price they don't have power.
I saw one in Australia updating while I was looking at it. It was changing to a sale price, and it was very noticeable that it was changing. But it seems that it can be done remotely.
Do they not require power to display?
If they're eink, they retain the image for a very long time (like, months) after power is removed.
Ah, thank you.