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    In den Supermärkten könnte es zu Preissteigerungen kommen, warnt die Bank of England

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    3. --_--__-- on

      >There is no evidence to suggest that UK supermarkets are using algorithm-driven dynamic pricing at present

      Ok, guess I will stop reading then. What a whole load of fucking shite.

    5. gopercolate on

      Shop elsewhere or go without until they realise you’re not going to pay whatever just because… and do the British thing of writing a strongly worded letter.

    7. CR4ZYKUNT on

      The thing with this is they hurt themselves. I’ve stopped buying the more expensive things because I refuse to pay that price. So now I buy less and the cheaper stuff. If people keep paying it they’ll keep putting it up. Don’t buy it till it comes back to a fair value. I stopped buying cheese completely even the cheap isn’t cheap anymore

    10. recursant on

      I used to shop at Safeway, around the turn of the century, before they were taken over by Morrison’s. They introduced something like this, and there was talk of them using it for surge pricing. I can’t remember whether that was just a rumour or whether they had announced something like that.

      As I remember, the actual price display was a tiny monochrome LCD, basically like you would get on an old-school Casio watch. So not the easiest thing to read. I think they had technical difficulties keeping them up to date. And, whether it was true or not, people were hostile to the surge pricing idea. So they didn’t last long.

    11. Delicious_Bet_6336 on

      So surge wages to compensate for busier times will also be standard then? What’s that? No? hmmnnnn

    12. Anonymous-Cows on

      Can’t wait to pay „peak time cheese“ no one ever

      French people have thrown CEOs out of windows for less than that.

    13. Standard_Response_43 on

      Great, so between my nectar/co-op/Tesco cards I now have to 🛒 in non peak times.

      I can see some prices rising right when people get off work to pick some food up for the evening meal.

      If it’s possible and will improve the profit margin….it will happen, mind u, prices are going up all the time….must be a pain in the ass to change the prices manually and expensive 🫰

    14. ExoneratedPhoenix on

      „Hey ChatGPT, when should I go shopping for lower prices based on AI algorithms to make the prices“

      So everyone goes cheaper times, and AI sees this so changes the algorithm and those times become pricey.

      „Hey ChatGPT, seems there’s been an update, now when is the best time?“

      It will be that song and dance every few months. Only now staffing levels will be always wrong. Suddenly a random Wednesday 9pm 400 customers arrive for cheaper goods, so the manager ups next Wednesday’s staff to find the new best time is Monday 11am where the 400 arrive.

      This is dog chasing tail stuff.

    15. TeflonBoy on

      Digital price tags, AI facial ID’s, you will be profiled and pay the maximum amount the algo thinks you can afford.

      Oh what a beautiful future!

    16. 08148694 on

      They’ve had this for a long time

      “Club car price”, “rollback”, etc

      This is the opposite of surge pricing, it’s price reductions to encourage people to buy items that have too much stock or with stock which will be expiring soon

      Through another lens you could flip it and say that anything not “on offer” is “surge price”, but the optics of that are worse than money off

    17. EuphoricCover8449 on

      Shopping at 5am and turning my phone off when I get to the supermarket is my best defence right?

    18. BikeProblemGuy on

      I really have no idea why people are so pissy about dynamic pricing, as if retailers haven’t always changed prices to respond to changes in supply and demand.

      Yes, capitalism sucks, rising cost of living sucks, but this is a small issue.

    19. 360Saturn on

      Doesn’t this already basically happen?

      Everyone knows suncream shoots up in the summer and is cheaper in the winter, supply & demand.

    20. jonny-p on

      I’m in two minds. If it’s very tightly regulated to prevent profiteering then I can see it might be useful to reduce food waste (supermarkets waste a criminal amount of food) buy reducing the price of items they have excess of and need to clear. Prices would need to go down as regularly as they go up meaning averaged over a weekly shop people are paying the same amount they would be otherwise. Supermarkets already jack the prices up in response to supply and demand, I had to go without olive oil for the best part of a year as I refused to pay over £10 a bottle. The biggest issue I can see would be for those who are on tight budgets and need to plan their shop in advance. As someone else posted I would also expect to see surge wage increases for staff during busy periods.

      Of course supermarkets absolutely will use this technology for profiteering and the government are terrible at regulating them so I’m against it.

    21. Heavy_Jackfruit4392 on

      Like they aren’t already.

      Small bag of mini eggs was a fiver last week

    22. Otherwise-Belt4892 on

      I do a bin dive once a week early into the morning hours of a local M&S

    23. AvadaBalaclava on

      20 yesrs ago I was told all vending machines would be moving to a model where they put prices up on hot days.. yet to happen

    24. shagwana on

      I just cant see how this could be implemented.

      In supermarkets, the shelf will show a price then by the time you walk to the till its a different price?. Sounds highly implausible and rife grounds for lots of bad newspaper headlines and ill will with customers.

      I could see it being a different price on a different day, maybe BBQ coals and meats are more expensive in the summer v the winter, however this already happens.

      Dynamic pricing in supermarkets as this article pertains too is nothing but a scare story/fairy tail. Digital market places like Ticketmaster, who already do this nonsense already get plenty of bad press about it when it goes wrong (Oasis tickets a while ago).

    25. TheLightStalker on

      If you’re not bulk buying Rice, Pasta, Teabags, Toilet roll, Soap etc online then you’re being ripped off.

    27. TheRealCostaS on

      Of course they use algorithms to help price their products. I work in this field and I know what they use.

    28. woowizzle on

      Introduce surge pricing.

      Limit the hours you are open.

      Every hour is a surge hour.

    30. PassingShot11 on

      Surging upwards never down.. like when a utility company writes to you about “changes” in your billing, never downwards

    31. New-Bit-8931 on

      You pick an item off the shelf with it stating £3.50. You get to the till and the price has gone up to £4.50 without you knowing. You also can not argue that the price was £3:50 on the shelf as it would now be showing £4.50.
      Multiply that by all the items in your basket/trolley and this is a recipe for real till shock pricing.

      Would either have to use their portable scanners and check each item as it is scanned. Or to photo the shelf of every item, then compare the picture as scan each item at the till. Taking ages.

    32. setokaiba22 on

      A lot of people aren’t reading the actual ‘fact’ in the article and just the headline and it’s ridiculous.

      They also can’t introduce surge pricing as they can’t increase the price once open they can only reduce.

      Legally you can’t have a customer take a bottle of milk for example off the shelf and buy the time they’ve got to the till it’s gone up in price.

      They’d have to wait till they have closed to do so

      From my time in retail honestly digital pricing is a god send. It’ll save a ton of sticker & paperwaste each day for some retailers and save an awful lot of time. Nothing worse then starting a shift and having 500 price changes to roll out by hand

    33. Ok-Witness4724 on

      Both electronic and paper shelf edge tickets and price systems don’t work this way. They’re all so old that overnight in the fastest they can make a change. So you won’t see sandwiches getting hiked by 20% over lunchtime, but it’s is possible for them to raise it overnight, so think whole chickens being more expensive on a weekend. Though most systems also don’t process updates after 5pm on a Friday or on weekends, so this isn’t something to worry about.

    34. AdrianFish on

      Any fucking excuse. I guess the prices will tumble down when everything’s ok again?

    36. TinitusTheRed on

      How about preemptively ban it? That way we as consumers avoid the stupidity and greed of it.

      Really simple.

    37. Lychee_Only on

      Price gouging. Lovely. We’ll be unemployed because of AI so probably won’t matter.

    38. Disgruntled__Goat on

      Lol Safeway already tried digital price labels 20 years ago and they were unreliable and constantly broke. Complete waste of time and money. I don’t really see how they would be different now, technology may be better but you have the same physical demands of them getting knocked on the shelf edge. 

      Edit: also did Morrisons only roll these out in the past few days? They didn’t have them last week when I went shopping. 

    39. NewPower_Soul on

      Coming to supermarkets? Fuck.. my local Asda has been charging extortionate prices for years. I spend my time shaking my head at the prices, every time I go.

    40. Hi-archy on

      Went into Tesco to pick up their cheapest 6 barn eggs, gone from 89p to £1

    41. frid44y on

      I think Lidl had been doing surge pricing for a while no? The have the etags in my local

    42. Loreki on

      Changing a price more frequently than once in 24 hours should be unlawful. All of this personalised pricing stuff is just a recipe for exploitation.

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