The Corporate Scumbags' Latest Scam...

[Minimalist]

Seeking new ways to price gouge the criminal fucks have a new trick.

https://www.rawstory.com/kroger-pricing-strategy/

Kroger's new dynamic AI pricing scheme is 'corporate greed is out of control': critics

As the senators wrote, the chain first introduced dynamic pricing in 2018 and expanded to 500 of its nearly 3,000 stores last year. The company has partnered with Microsoft to develop an Electronic Shelving Label (ESL) system known as Enhanced Display for Grocery Environment (EDGE), using a digital tag to display prices in stores so that employees can change prices throughout the day with the click of a button.

As Warren said on social media on Friday, digital price tags allow stores to "use surge pricing for water or ice cream when it's hot out," or raise the price of turkeys just before Thanksgiving.

I imagine the magatards think Fuckface would put a stop to this.  That's why they are assholes.

[pattylt]

Seeking new ways to price gouge the criminal fucks have a new trick.

https://www.rawstory.com/kroger-pricing-strategy/

Kroger's new dynamic AI pricing scheme is 'corporate greed is out of control': critics

As the senators wrote, the chain first introduced dynamic pricing in 2018 and expanded to 500 of its nearly 3,000 stores last year. The company has partnered with Microsoft to develop an Electronic Shelving Label (ESL) system known as Enhanced Display for Grocery Environment (EDGE), using a digital tag to display prices in stores so that employees can change prices throughout the day with the click of a button.

As Warren said on social media on Friday, digital price tags allow stores to "use surge pricing for water or ice cream when it's hot out," or raise the price of turkeys just before Thanksgiving.

I imagine the magatards think Fuckface would put a stop to this.  That's why they are assholes.

So, I’m guessing that this is legal right now?  It sure shouldn’t be.  If munitions during the war were declared illegal, this should be too.  Everyone has to eat.

[Minimalist]

Warren has been trying to protect consumers.....apparentl, the republiKKKunts dare not let such a thing happen.  Scumbags.

[TheGentlemanBastard]

Seeking new ways to price gouge the criminal fucks have a new trick.

https://www.rawstory.com/kroger-pricing-strategy/







I imagine the magatards think Fuckface would put a stop to this.  That's why they are assholes.

So, I’m guessing that this is legal right now?  It sure shouldn’t be.  If munitions during the war were declared illegal, this should be too.  Everyone has to eat.

This smacks of criminal profiteering, though I doubt our current government has the balls to pursue it.

[mordant]

This is a classic case of technology allowing you to do something and providing zero guidance on whether you should.

I see this particular thing as a self limiting problem though because people will simply stop buying from you if you fuck with them all the time. Stable and predictable pricing environments are necessary for customer loyalty.

Also doing something dumb like this outs you as the opportunistic greedy fucker that you are.

Increasingly as the enshittification of corporate America proceeds, I am just not buying shit. It's amazing what you can do without in the service of your own self respect.

[Thumpalumpacus]

So, I’m guessing that this is legal right now?  It sure shouldn’t be.  

Gasoline has always been surge-priced, and they've probably been using AI to do it for a while.

[airportkid]

Y'know, I'm real tired of ordinary economics being tagged as "greedy scumbaggery".  This example is straightforward pricing as a function of demand.  The price of something is what the market will bear, not some proportion of what the seller paid for it earlier.

We all scream "life ain't fair!" when the price of groceries goes up, or the electrics bill is increased, or our favorite online magazine is suddenly paywalled.  Oh the injustice!!  But when's the last time you got an annual pay boost (merit based or not) and you told your boss not to do that because it just makes everybody else have to pay more?  You didn't?  Really!

Every nickel you pay more for something than you did last week is a nickel into others' salaries, and you're telling them that extra pay is a waste of money?  But your raise wasn't exactly the same waste?

Now there'll be the usual noise on here about how all the extra charges are just lining Elon Musk's pockets, and that is of course a real problem, but does not infect the entire market, and is NOT an argument to derail market demand pricing as an economic principle.

There are also issues about how to price life commodities like housing, medical care, transportation, etc., where demand pricing leaves segments of the population destitute, but, again, is not a reason to derail the entire demand pricing paradigm in all market sectors.

Making demand pricing efficient and responsive in real time to fluctuating market drivers seems to me an advance, not a regression.  It works the other way, too, lowering prices as demand falls, automatically.

And I'll wager that everyone on these boards would be the first to welcome a personal pay bonus for being the one that proposed it to their company.

[pattylt]

Y'know, I'm real tired of ordinary economics being tagged as "greedy scumbaggery".  This example is straightforward pricing as a function of demand.  The price of something is what the market will bear, not some proportion of what the seller paid for it earlier.

We all scream "life ain't fair!" when the price of groceries goes up, or the electrics bill is increased, or our favorite online magazine is suddenly paywalled.  Oh the injustice!!  But when's the last time you got an annual pay boost (merit based or not) and you told your boss not to do that because it just makes everybody else have to pay more?  You didn't?  Really!

Every nickel you pay more for something than you did last week is a nickel into others' salaries, and you're telling them that extra pay is a waste of money?  But your raise wasn't exactly the same waste?

Now there'll be the usual noise on here about how all the extra charges are just lining Elon Musk's pockets, and that is of course a real problem, but does not infect the entire market, and is NOT an argument to derail market demand pricing as an economic principle.

There are also issues about how to price life commodities like housing, medical care, transportation, etc., where demand pricing leaves segments of the population destitute, but, again, is not a reason to derail the entire demand pricing paradigm in all market sectors.

Making demand pricing efficient and responsive in real time to fluctuating market drivers seems to me an advance, not a regression.  It works the other way, too, lowering prices as demand falls, automatically.

And I'll wager that everyone on these boards would be the first to welcome a personal pay bonus for being the one that proposed it to their company.

I understand the point you’re making but….the greed of corporations is becoming absurd.  If my eggs went up by a dollar but I knew the clerks saw 5¢ of it and eggs were in short supply, I’d be a bit more agreeable to the increase.  If eggs aren’t in short supply and corporate bosses just want to increase their already gross salaries…well, sorry but I’m pissed.

[mordant]

The price of something is what the market will bear, not some proportion of what the seller paid for it earlier.

It's generally not illegal to charge what the market will bear (aka: price gouging) except in times of high demand or supply shock, when some jurisdictions (rightly IMO) deem it predatory. But it's one of those "fuck around and find out" kinda things. Like I said, it's not a question of whether you can, but whether you should. Consumers rightly expect "fair" pricing, that is, you make a reasonable profit rather than an unreasonable one. Yes, "reasonable" is somewhat subjective but I don't think anyone thinks a 200% margin on a product that typically has a 20% margin is "reasonable". And if you have a choice between someone marking up 50% and 25% guess who you will buy from. And then with this new scheme, if I can't tell what someone will charge for something, maybe I will question if I even want the thing? I dunno -- it's possible. Life is chaotic enough without some asshat deliberately making it more so.

This might be less obnoxious if someone lays it out up front: we have a surcharge of x from 11 am to 1 pm. That could even out demand and make staffing simpler I suppose. If I really want what you're selling, maybe I will wait until after 1 or whatever. But I don't get the impression this sort of scheme is that transparent usually. They are hoping you're not paying attention and/or have no choice. And if your competitor has stable pricing, maybe I'll learn to love their offerings instead. It would certainly be my preference. Maybe I flatter myself to think it would be most people's preference, I dunno.

Without predictable and stable pricing you can't budget and so you either do without or you stock up more, buying when the prices are acceptable to you. I have a deep pantry for that purpose, for instance. Food prices have gone up so fast of late that for those things with a decent shelf life, buying 3 to 24 months of those things in advance saves me quite a bit of $ in exchange for some cheap plastic shelving in the cellar. As a bonus, I'm somewhat insulated from future supply chain problems, if those crop up again. If the pandemic taught us anything, it's that those chains are fragile.

It isn't just a question of people not liking you wringing every last farthing out of every transaction; it is also that you are hoping people will buy high but you are driving people to buy low. The old saying is that you get what you measure; it applies to pricing in this way: you shape people's buying habits by what you (dis)incentivize.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Every nickel you pay more for something than you did last week is a nickel into others' salaries, and you're telling them that extra pay is a waste of money?  But your raise wasn't exactly the same waste?

Can you show that every bit of that nickel went to workers and not owners or investors? Because I know I never got a raise when the price of gas went to $5/gallon. Never a one-time bonus, either. Of course, I was only a front-line manager.

I don't mind owners or investors getting their share, but this idea that you're positing is in essence Reaganesque trickle-on -- er, down.

The assumption that all, or even the majority, of price-hikes flow into worker paychecks needs to be supported by evidence.

[Minimalist]

I see this particular thing as a self limiting problem though because people will simply stop buying from you if you fuck with them all the time. Stable and predictable pricing environments are necessary for customer loyalty.

Under normal circumstances that would be right, Mord, but when grocery store chains are buying up other grocery chains thus trying to become monopolists there are not a lot of other convenient choices.

For instance the criminals named most prominently in this story, Kroger, is trying to buy Safeway.  Safeway, back when Fuckface's scum-sucking pigs were running things, bought up a chain called "Albertson's."  The pattern is clear.

[SYZ]

Here in Australia, a fuel excise rise took effect in February
this year, and sees the petrol excise rate increase from
48.8 cents per litre to 49.6 cents per litre.  

While 0.8¢ is by no means a dramatic rise, this increase will
mean close to AU$40 (US$26) in total excise costs per tank
for an SUV with a typical 80-litre (21 US gallon) fuel tank.

"As of today, at an national average retail price of 197.2¢ per litre
we're paying 49.6¢ per litre in fuel excise and 17.9¢ per litre in
GST  —so roughly 67.5¢ a litre, or 34% of the average retail
price, in Federal government taxes," the CEO of the Australasian
Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association (ACAPMA) said.

(GST = Federal goods and services tax)

The core issue of this is that theses taxes are paid into Federal
consolidated (or general) revenue, but not used specifically for
roads construction, infrastructure, and maintenance.  In this
case the state and federal governments are the "scumbags" rather
than the corporatists.

In Australia, a petrol reseller gets around 3¢ to 4¢ per litre profit
from the bowser.

   I'd be interested in a comparison with
   US gasoline pricing and tax surcharges.     

[Minimalist]

The federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon.  This supports the Highway Trust Fund and has not been raised since 1993.

Each state has its own gasoline and/or sales taxes on the purchase and the amounts vary widely.


Meanwhile, Exxon and Chevron are noted on this list.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article...s-in-2021/

These 19 Fortune 100 Companies Paid Next to Nothing—or Nothing at All—in Taxes in 2021

Just saying......

[brewerb]

I've heard the hookers charge more when the CWS is in town. 

[Minimalist]

Chicago White Sox?

[SYZ]

The federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon.  This supports the Highway Trust Fund and has not been raised since 1993...

Fuck me!   That'd equate to around 4¢ per litre downunder.

Compared to the federal excise taxes we pay of 68¢ per litre!

[brewerb]

Chicago White Sox?

College World Series

[Minimalist]

Damn those acronyms!

[Minimalist]

The federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon.  This supports the Highway Trust Fund and has not been raised since 1993...

Fuck me!   That'd equate to around 4¢ per litre downunder.

Compared to the federal excise taxes we pay of 68¢ per litre!

Don't forget that the states do take a hefty swing at taxing gasoline sales, too.

[The Paladin]

Actually, I think these dynamic pricing models might be a good thing to get Americans to understand just how corrupt corporations are. This concept is all about engineering fake imbalances in the supply/demand of a product. If you go to Wendy's and there's 20 people in line to get a burger, they may raise the price by 25 or 50 cents, but is there an actual shortage of burgers? No; they have plenty of patties and buns and cheese. There's just a long line to wait in because lots of people are taking lunch at the same time of day. That's about biology, not production. There's zero shortage of the product. If you can't wait that long or feel it isn't worth it to wait for a burger, you could go down the street and get fried chicken or pizza instead. This whole dynamic pricing model idea is 100% contrived and people should be furious enough to take action.

On a side note, even the wait itself is completely unnecessary. There are a few restaurants that have designed their system to handle surges with ease. No new and expensive technology, just good practices and trained workers. I can get in and out of a certain chicken sandwich restaurant in just a few minutes even with 20 cars in the drive through. If I go to the leading burger chain, I'll likely be waiting twice as long if there are more than two cars in the line. The long wait time is not really because of the customers; it's the fault of the business.

[Minimalist]

The corporate pigs have been price gouging whenever they can get away with it.


People love to worry about drug cartels.  How many of them understand that the food cartels right here are every bit as bad.  Research the concept of "food desert" to see what I mean.

[mordant]

On a side note, even the wait itself is completely unnecessary.  There are a few restaurants that have designed their system to handle surges with ease.  No new and expensive technology, just good practices and trained workers.  I can get in and out of a certain chicken sandwich restaurant in just a few minutes even with 20 cars in the drive through.  If I go to the leading burger chain, I'll likely be waiting twice as long if there are more than two cars in the line.  The long wait time is not really because of the customers; it's the fault of the business.

^^^ This. They used to call this "fast food". I think they still do, but lost the thread on the meaning of "fast".

Service in these places by and large is now not only slow, but inaccurate. You order an Egg McMuffin with ham and get one with sausage, or whatever.

Part of the problem is poor quality intercom between the person ordering and the person taking the order. They can't seem to understand you, even when there aren't English-as-Second-Language issues. I always end up shouting to be heard. It seems like a good quality mic / amp / headphone properly adjusted should be Job One there.

[Rhythmcs]

If I had to guess, surge pricing (for kroger) is a way to make more cash from their in store brands.  We know it's not going to employee pockets because wages have fallen as a percentage of krogers business even as the price of food has gone up by 25% and profit per share skyrocketed - which they never tire of mentioning on investor calls. IE, someone comes in and buys a bunch of decent ice cream - they don't keep alot fronted..and krogers sitting there wishing it could charge haagen daz prices for it's remaning ice cream flavored frozen product.

As for the idea that they will use this to take prices down - pull my other one. They can already slap a reduced sticker on things that aren't selling well, daily or in whatever timeframe they want, and they don't. Most of what a grocery store sells is shelf stable and non perishable. Nothing forces them to sell low no matter what the purchasing habits of it's customers are hour by hour, day by day, or month by month. Absolutely nothing.

[Minimalist]

Yup.


https://accountable.us/grocery-giant-kro...ices-soar/

Grocery Giant Kroger Rakes in Billions While Food Prices Soar



WASHINGTON, DC —  Today, Kroger reported $736 million in Q4 2023 profits with annual profits of over $2.1 billion—sky-high totals that comes after last month’s Consumer Price Index report revealed that cooling inflation was stilted by stubbornly high food prices. In February, the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) filed a new lawsuit seeking to block the proposed merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, a move Accountable.US praised as a major step towards cracking down on big food industry price-gouging. 

You can bet your ass that Fuckface would kill that lawsuit if he wins.

[Minimalist]

Disney with their own atrocity!

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-hou...rcna166618

Not many people read all (or any) of the fine print when they sign up for a Disney+ account (or any account, for that matter). Perhaps even fewer people would think that such a routine action would block their subsequent wrongful death lawsuit on their spouse’s behalf from being heard in court.


Yet that’s essentially what Walt Disney Parks and Resorts lawyers have argued in their push to force such a case into arbitration. They raised the claim in response to the wrongful death suit in Florida state court from Jeffrey Piccolo, who said that his wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, died from an allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant in Disney Springs.

Disney’s lawyers argued that the matter should go to arbitration, citing terms they said Piccolo agreed to in creating a Disney+ account and in using a Disney website to purchase tickets to Epcot.