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Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

theguardian.com

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Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#91

Post by iamnothere »

everdrive wrote: post #49
xnx wrote: post #10

Pricing will become increasingly adversarial. The Internet did too much to expose price differences to customers, so sellers are responding. Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Total price often isn't exposed until you show up at the hotel.

>Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible. The only answer I see anyone suggest is _more_ complexity. "This complex system we've built is flawed. I know what to do: I'll add another layer of complexity and abstraction on top of it." "Needing" buying…

> Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible.

This is the way, but also, places like eBay are increasingly “professionalized” by huge resellers and refurbishers who squeeze out any possible margin. I’ve also noticed that thrift and consignment stores aren’t such a bargain anymore. You can often get a better deal from large retailers when they go on clearance.

P2P transactions still pay off but it’s not as easy as it used to be.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#92

Post by DavidPeiffer »

everdrive wrote: post #49
xnx wrote: post #10

Pricing will become increasingly adversarial. The Internet did too much to expose price differences to customers, so sellers are responding. Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Total price often isn't exposed until you show up at the hotel.

>Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible. The only answer I see anyone suggest is _more_ complexity. "This complex system we've built is flawed. I know what to do: I'll add another layer of complexity and abstraction on top of it." "Needing" buying…

Buying used is great and all, but so many more products and product features have become cloud and subscription reliant across all industries. They'll be able to get you profiled and locked into a dynamically priced subscription eventually.

I'm sure someone is working on an AI powered toaster though, and we'll be able to achieve the ultimate goal of a talking toaster as they had in the TV show Red Dwarf. Hopefully it'll use Claude tokens while it engages intelligently with us.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#93

Post by nathan_compton »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #47
ngcazz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers require consumer legislation and protections, not further entrenchment of AI oligopolies.

The only legislation needed is one that requires transparent, searchable pricing. If the sellers can use automation to set prices, then buyers can use automation to sort prices, making all the pricing games moot.

Perhaps that is all that is required, but I don't want the minimum. I want a simple life with enough to live. I don't want to optimize everything and I don't want to live in a world which is trying to optimize every interaction I participate in.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#94

Post by akramachamarei »

dTal wrote: post #71
crazygringo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand how that would work. Yes, e-ink is great for updating prices, I welcome it at grocery stores. But if both me and another person are standing in front of the prosciutto and cured meats fridge, we're seeing the same prices, even if I'm poor and they're rich.

Well that's easy enough - don't apply sneaky pricing when there's two people looking.

This arms race accelerates quickly. The question becomes stopping someone observing from a distance. It would have to be very tight to go unnoticed, and it seems likely to me that when detected it would quickly become a costly PR SNAFU, in addition to the cost of all the tech you need to deploy. I'd guess that grocers have little disposable capital anyway, given how low profits tend to be.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#95

Post by everdrive »

iamnothere wrote: post #91
everdrive wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible. The only answer I see anyone suggest is _more_ complexity. "This complex system we've built is flawed. I know what to do: I'll add another layer of complexity and abstraction on top of it." "Needing" buying…

> Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible. This is the way, but also, places like eBay are increasingly “professionalized” by huge resellers and refurbishers who squeeze out any possible margin. I’ve also noticed that thrift and consignment stores aren’t such a bargain anymore. You can often get a better deal from large retailers when they go on clearance. P2P transactions still pay off…

That's good to know regarding ebay. I don't use it much, but I wasn't aware. Agreed with regard to thrift stores. Some of them have seen quite a lot of inflation. I think it's yard sales and minimalism for me.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#96

Post by Tangurena2 »

crazygringo wrote: post #44

Sadly, this article doesn't explain how this "surveillance pricing" (which is just a scarier-sounding synonym for "dynamic pricing") would even work in a physical grocery store. Like, prices are displayed on the shelf for everyone to see. And they have to match what you pay at checkout. So how the heck would a grocery store even do this? And this law is specifically around grocery stores . Like, there was a big kerfu…

> Like, prices are displayed on the shelf for everyone to see. And they have to match what you pay at checkout.

Not all stores honor the prices posted on the shelves. Dollar General is one of the major offenders of this.

> Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has filed suit against Dollar General, claiming deceptive and unfair pricing at its more than 600 retail stores throughout the state. The lawsuit alleges that Dollar General violated Missouri’s consumer protection laws by advertising one price at the shelf and charging a higher price at the register upon checkout.

> The joint investigation revealed that “92 of the 147 locations where investigations were conducted failed inspection. Price discrepancies ranged up to as much as $6.50 per item, with an average overcharge of $2.71 for the over 5,000 items price-checked by investigators.”

https://progressivegrocer.com/dollar-general-accused-decepti...

The bill involved is HB 895. Maryland's online statutes have not been updated (yet) to include the new sections.

https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2026RS/bills/hb/hb0895E.pdf

The convention (among US state legislatures) is that existing language of statutes is in plain text, strikethrough is text to be removed and underlined is text to be added.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#97

Post by everdrive »

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #92
everdrive wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Or I'll just buy as little as possible and buy used whenever possible. The only answer I see anyone suggest is _more_ complexity. "This complex system we've built is flawed. I know what to do: I'll add another layer of complexity and abstraction on top of it." "Needing" buying…

Buying used is great and all, but so many more products and product features have become cloud and subscription reliant across all industries. They'll be able to get you profiled and locked into a dynamically priced subscription eventually. I'm sure someone is working on an AI powered toaster though, and we'll be able to achieve the ultimate goal of a talking toaster as they had in the TV show Red Dwarf. Hopefully it…

>but so many more products and product features have become cloud and subscription reliant across

And 100% of these products and features are trash, as are the companies pushing them.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#98

Post by tt24 »

everdrive wrote: post #87
tt24 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a bad thing that the man next to you pays 50% less?

It's only good for the man. It's not good for me. If you think I'm selfish, then you have no guarantee that it's the other man who would pay more and only I would get the discount.

It’s not good for anyone to pay more for anything. That doesn’t mean we create price control laws or make everything free lol

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#99

Post by Tangurena2 »

OptionOfT wrote: post #64

Sadly, there is no provision in this law to allow consumers to sue the companies. You have to report it, and then maybe the office of the Attorney General _might_ impose a fine on the grocery store: https://governor.maryland.gov/news/press/pages/governor-moor... > Governor Moore’s proposal builds on the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act of 2024 by specifically targeting the intersection of data surveillance and essent…

The fines need to be something big enough to notice. There are currently lots of stores with one price on the shelf with a higher price at the register. In the past, it would be easy for it to happen by mistake. Now it is happening so frequently & systematically at the smaller retailers - like Dollar General or Family Dollar - that it is becoming a noticeable issue for states with poorer communities.

> All told, 69 of the 300 items came up higher at the register: a 23% error rate that exceeded the state’s limit by more than tenfold. Some of the price tags were months out of date.

> The January 2023 inspection produced the store’s fourth consecutive failure, and Coffield’s agency, the state department of agriculture & consumer services, had fined Family Dollar after two previous visits. But North Carolina law caps penalties at $5,000 per inspection, offering retailers little incentive to fix the problem. “Sometimes it is cheaper to pay the fines,” said Chad Parker, who runs the agency’s weights-and-measures program.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pa...

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#100

Post by Starman_Jones »

crazygringo wrote: post #44

Sadly, this article doesn't explain how this "surveillance pricing" (which is just a scarier-sounding synonym for "dynamic pricing") would even work in a physical grocery store. Like, prices are displayed on the shelf for everyone to see. And they have to match what you pay at checkout. So how the heck would a grocery store even do this? And this law is specifically around grocery stores . Like, there was a big kerfu…

The use case that jumps out at me is long tail items and whales. Let’s say that you’re a wine store, and you have an assortment of nice Italian wines all priced at $40 (to make it tidy). You’ve priced them competitively to attract your Chianti drinkers to step up and splurge if it’s a special occasion. A customer walks in, and the system recognizes that’s it’s Giovanni Vinoamore. Giovanni only comes in twice a year, but when he does, he leaves with two dozen bottles of Brunello and Barolo. It automatically raises the price of all those $40 bottles to $50. In the moment, you don’t care if a Chianti drinker puts a bottle of Barolo back, because you’ll make way more than that off of Giovanni. Once Giovanni leaves, the prices return to $40.
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