Walmart is aiming to assuage customers’ fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores.
In a statement posted on the company’s website, Walmart Inc.'s CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer isn’t using personal information like income, shopping history or a customer’s willingness to pay to set prices, and it won’t be doing so in the future either.
“We don’t set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won’t,” Furner wrote Friday. “Whether you’re buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it’s never a reason to charge you more.”
The pledge from Walmart comes as concerns are mounting from some shoppers, consumer advocates and lawmakers skeptical about the rollout of digital price labels by the discounter and other stores. Digital price labels are rapidly replacing paper shelf tags at U.S. supermarkets and let stores change prices instantly from a central computer instead of having workers swap out paper labels by hand.
Ah, ok so that is exactly what they are doing
Since the government made lying to customers essentially legal, yes.
Even if their statement was true, they haven’t explicitly ruled out updating prices in real time like a stock market and networking that across the US. In a cost of living crisis and an economy on the brink of collapse, they have effectively eliminated consumer budgeting.
Besides, a pledge isn’t legally binding and these tags can 100% hide the paper trail of changes from underpaid store employees who’d snitch on the manipulation. It can be controlled by loyal techbros on a backend server without store managers being in the loop.
I see this means they can change the prices in the store as quickly and easily as they do online. And, they don’t need to pay people to change the paper tags.
But, you’re not forced to log in before you can see the prices online, meaning they aren’t changing the price based on who is logged in, and I sincerely doubt they’d change prices on the shelves while the store is open, where shoppers could pick an item, and then the price is higher when they get to the check out.
It makes it easier for them to change prices, but the shoppers still can choose not to buy the product at the price offered.
Our focus should be on demanding higher wages, and more rights, through unionizing and voting. We can complain about this, too, but I doubt trying to pass some law against digital shelf signs will make much difference for us. I’m certainly not against it, I just don’t think it will help much at all.
Maybe I’m missing something obvious here, I’m not very smart.
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*for now.
What if two people are looking at the tag at the same time? Is it going to show a different price to each?
This is just stupid paranoia. Unless it’s unmarked until you scan the item at the register, stop being scared of your own shadow.
