Tiered pricing is EVERYWHERE now. In supermarkets, if you don’t have their app/loyalty card you have to pay higher prices. They frame it as a “discount” or “savings” for having the app, but clearly it’s just a punishment for not giving them your info and allowing them to track/advertise at you.
In restaurants/fast food places, you get “discounts” (i.e. regular prices) via the app/email list, and if you don’t have the app or give them your email address you don’t get the discount (read: you have to pay higher prices). And of course they can “tailor” personalised “deals” directly at you based on your past behaviour to optimise how much money they get out of you.
I just looked at a hotel and they’re advertising a “discount” if you give them your email address (read: a higher price if you don’t allow them to advertise at you).
I absolutely hate this behaviour. I know exactly why it’s there: some people are willing to pay more for convenience/no ads, and some are willing to go to more effort / put up with ads for a lower price. Either way they get more money out of you: the logical conclusion of capitalism and chasing higher profits.
It feels like this should be illegal. It feels like a cousin of price gouging, which is already illegal. Ofc it never will be outlawed in america - idk how much this happens across the pond though - but I hope one day this could be outlawed in europe.
I keep saying it: just ban advertising.
They want to track what you buy to more efficiently manipulate you into buying what they want you to buy. The data would be almost useless if they couldn’t advertise to you, so they wouldn’t bother. Other places wouldn’t be able to monetize their spyware if advertisers weren’t buying. Political campaigns wouldn’t have even a use for millions in ‘donations’ if they weren’t blowing it all on advertising. It’s an entire multi-billion dollar industry built on lying to people for profit.
What is advertising then? When a company explains the benefit of its own product? A link to a particular product or service? Would word of mouth among consumers be a form of advertising? If not, then why not companies showing a word of mouth for other (affiliated) companies? What is the distinction between a company and the owner in the case of a sole proprietorship?
My point is, if this wasn’t obvious enough, there are so many obvious problems and loop holes with this approach, you should give it a think for 20 minutes and then start saying something else.
Would banning advertising also include what packaging looks like on store shelves? Becsuse if not, I can see shit getting way worse with how shit is laid out or boxed if they were banned from advertising elsewhere. The product would be advertising itself even louder.
I dunno.
I think they would still collect and use the data to track our political leanings and whether we’re considering becoming a journalist that threatens their empire.