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.
dude just use the store card like the rest of the town. number’s 8675309
I… cant tell if this is real. I feel like someone probably made an account with that phone number though
totally real. just use it. if it’s one of those stores with gas benefits i bet you could try there too, but i bet those get drained fast
Whelp, im going to quickly find out how many accounts i can cancel
None? It doesn’t work that way. if you call up and tell them you want to close the 867-5309 account they’ll laugh at you because they themselves use it
If i have an account at a store with a loyalty and theyre using my data, and i can now use the Tommy Tutone code to get same loyalty rewards, i can cancel my account and stop giving them my data.
oh i have the stupid. i have been dealing with wannabe edgy teenagers all day and “hehehe i’ll go cancel all the 8675309s” is just the kind of stupid they infected me with.
I live in Japan. The weak yen meant it was hard to afford traveling overseas even to see my family. Now, thanks to overtourism, it’s hard to even travel domestically because hotels and places increase prices to get tourist money pricing locals out. In this context, I’m perfectly happy to have resident vs tourist tiered pricing. Some hotel prices have doubled.or even tripled compared to when I got here and my salary has certainly not made that same jump (and indeed my salary converted to USD is more like what I made 20+ years ago in the US).
Discounts for seniors (health copays here even drop with age), disabled, students, etc. make sense to me.
I am not a fan of loyalty-card-based discounts or anything like that.
Payment methods I get because the processors take a cut. I have a small business so I either punish people paying with cash by raising all prices or have other payment methods priced to offset the processor’s cut (I sell produce from my tiny farm). I don’t want to punish people paying in cash to support card payments. Cashless societies have a lot of dangers and punish those suffering from being unhoused and other issues, but that’s a whole other story.
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.
The data would be almost useless if they couldn’t advertise to you, so they wouldn’t bother.
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.
Yes, it’s clearly a prong of a breach of the public trust…late stage capitalism stuff.
In the context of a supermarket (but applies to most other sectors), the major players have functionally agreed to split territory rather than compete for existing ones. So, in lieu of competition, basically what we see is forced loyalty where they attempt to capture each consumer entirely in their networks. It’s the answer to the “Wal-Martification” of the west: there’s still a skeleton of anti-trust so we’re not seeing 3 Wal-Marts split up the world…we’re seeing alliances of mega-corporations from different sectors work together.
What this looks like is your grocery store soft forcing you to use their preferred bank, gas station, sporting good store, etc, in exchange for what used to be normal prices. The only way you can avoid it is by having more money so you can join a more elite network that gives you a different illusion of selection and deals.
The horse has almost entirely left the barn. Long ago we allowed retailers to envelop too many sectors, retailers to own their manufacturers, retailers to forge monopolies. It was, of course, all promised to bring savings to the consumer…but all it does is bring profits to the few.
I want them to stop saying something is 399 and just come out and say it’s 400.
Even better, make it mandatory to display the price you’ll pay at the cash register, including all taxes, etc.
Like the majority of countries do
I can’t stand it either. At least in most cases you can give a throwaway email to get the better pricing. It’s kind of the devil you know at this point.
Dynamic pricing, on the other hand, is true evil as I see it. Adjusting prices on the fly to suit whatever arbitrary condition is set by corporate jerkoffs…it’s price gouging in real time.
The thing that feels hopeless here is that “dynamic pricing” is like…the natural way to sell stuff if that makes sense? Standardized non-negotiated pricetags evolved as part of the growth of industrialization and mass consumerism. It just wasn’t feasible to have individual salespeople trying to milk each customer out of the most possible money for every transaction for small purchases, and big box stores eliminated the shopkeeper role as a quasi-salesperson who might do that from time to time. But that still IS how many, many sales work today. It’s just that “negotiated prices” are reserved for big ticket items where salespeople get a big enough cut. Real estate, B2B deals, new cars, etc are sold by salespeople whose main job is moneymilking based on what they think they can con the particular buyer into handing over.
Technology, as the great optimizer, is merely making the job of a salesperson automated enough to be applied at the Taco Bell drivethru using your personal data.
You can’t negotiate for your nachos though
Well yeah, your ability to negotiate was always the downside to this system
I’ve been considering just making a spam email vs my regular email. I know there are “temporary” email services but they don’t always apply. For example you are at a store and the say “you get a 5% if you give your email” and you want to use one of those one time emails what are you supposed to do? Stand there, take out your phone, “one sec, let me just spin up a email address to give you”.
Thinking of just creating a email account on say hotmail(just for the lols) and direct everything likely to spam me there. There is the argument “they will still track you and sell your data to advertisers who will send spam to that account”. Yeah but 1.why do I care if I never check the account? 2. If I use Hotmail all it will do is cause increase cost to Microsoft so double win?
20-25 years ago it was our default behavior to fake these sorts of things. Somehow, we seem to have forgotten we can lie to computers.
Any place which uses phone numbers, use your local area code plus 867-5309 it works surprisingly often. Jenny probably has a bunch of points at 7/11…
So two thoughts:
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Get more comfortable with making these people wait. You want an email to give me a better price? That’s fine it will take me a minute to lookup my email address. It’s actually not that bad once you get used to doing this. I do it religiously now when I’m traveling and it’s never been an issue.
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Consider using DuckDuckGo’s email feature. They will quickly generate human-friendly throwaway addresses like “geek-rhino-spoon” at duck dot com. I have the ddg browser on my phone and once you have it set up, it takes just a second to search “ddg email” and first link goes to the page that generates a new address for you. So it’s super quick to do on the fly. When they forward emails to you, there is a banner at the top with a link to deactivate that throwaway address you used should you start getting spam. It’s pretty slick in my experience.
Edit: fixed a typo
Yeah but then I don’t get to make Microsoft spend money…
Ok fair point.
Granted its probably cents and less than a rounding error to them but…
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Nah fuck that. I’ll straight up in their face: “Sure mate, you can have my email. Just wait a sec while I spin up a new throw away.” They don’t give a shit if you do that. They’ll get their paycheck either way. Just don’t waste their time longer than necessary, they’ve also got managers breathing diwn their necks.
But what advantage does that have over just having 1 email account which you never check and only receives spam?
The only advantage I can see is maybe in several years it gets enough email that it fills up the free storage and I have to go delete everything twice a decade(being generous) but otherwise???
In Protons Pass App you can create email-aliases on the fly, and if you have a domain you can use it too, which makes it possible to just write an email you want to use down and add it afterwards to your aliases, which is pretty nice (and every mailadress is then available of course) - i’m thinking to get a domain just for that feature since domains are such low cost items.
Yeah…its possible… Or take 30 seconds to make a Hotmail account and slowly let it fill up with spam…
It depends.
Tiers based on age, disability, or ability to pay (e.g. child/senior tickets, lower prices for people who might not be able to fully enjoy an activity due to a disability, low-income people getting cheaper bus fares, etc) are all generally okay, because they expand access, tend to make things more affordable for those who actually need it, but don’t cause massive unjust increases in pricing for others.
Personalized pricing however should be illegal in most cases. (e.g. you order McDonald’s through the app and they charge you an extra $0.10 on every item compared to the in-store menu just because you got your paycheck recently.)
As for all the discount/reward/loyalty programs, I’d say it depends. If my small local grocery store gives me coupons in their email newsletter, that’s fine. Hell, even if larger chains do it, if the discounts are on a specific selection of items, and are probably designed to get you to spend money on stuff you otherwise wouldn’t have purchased, it doesn’t really matter to me if I can get them or not by giving my email, and isn’t that unfair.
If your rewards app is akin to a punch card like the one at my local ice cream place where if you buy 10 scoops, you get another one free, that’s also fine. It’s just a way to keep track of how loyal you are to the business so they know when you’re allowed a little bonus, and they benefit from you coming back to them instead of another place, because you’re betting on that free scoop.
If a place prices everything higher than they would normally do it should they not have an app, then requires you giving up sensitive personal details to lower it back down to a reasonable rate, that’s unfair, and should be banned.
If the place prices items down just a little lower than they would normally price items even if they didn’t have an app/newsletter, because apps/newsletters are generally just a good way to keep customers around and increase sales, that’s fine by me. (e.g. if my local grocery store just sends me an email saying “hey, we now have X item in stock” and it interests me, they’re gonna get a sale they otherwise would not have gotten had I not been signed up to their newsletter, and that offsets a small discount on everything else I buy there)
Tiered pricing is EVERYWHERE now
I don’t really run into it. Two stores I go to still use the “put in a phone number” (any number) and the price comes off. I have been using a friends mothers phone number for decades at one of them, and usually only for beer just for the fun of it.
The third just swipes their own card if you don’t have one, and that’s that.
The coop I go to has tiered pricing, you pay a one time lifetime member ship of $10. If you don’t its 10 percent more. Unless you are struggling, then they slide all the food prices to what you can afford.
I never eat fast food, because I like food. Fast food has always been a bad deal anyways.
But I sure see it in the other industries where it has been built in since forever: tickets, travel, lodging. I don’t care for it there, but it seems a lot more insidious when they are targeting a basic human need like food.
Somehow I feel ok with tiered pricing when it isn’t targetted/personalised. Most barbers have a lower price for children and for over-65’s, which I’m fine with. And I have no problem with student pricing, or some places which offer a discount to nhs or army staff. Those make sense to me and I have no problem with them.
But those feel distinct from “fuck you, get our app or give us your email address and your phone number, or else we will charge you more”, which is now how a lot of places seem to work, and most people just don’t seem to care and happily download a thousand apps and sign up for a thousand mailing lists to get 5% off.
Am I wrong? Is there a counterargument, or is this just how business works now? This is IRL enshittification. Do you agree?
Somehow I feel ok with tiered pricing when it isn’t targetted/personalised.
This seems to be the general consensus. Group discount rates are also common: group of 4 gets discount compared to 4 separate people.
I recommend having and using a burner email address for these sorts of things. Phone number is trickier but also much less common in my experience. If it was common, I’d probably look into a burner Google Voice number.
This is IRL enshittification. Do you agree?
Yeah, especially with the proliferation of apps that you mentioned. It has definitely made me trim down who I’ll do business with because I don’t want 500 fucking apps on my phone.
You’re right. I wish there was a way to stamp it out.
Or they don’t care and just pay 30% more. Encouraging every other place to pull the same scam.
This is another example of why businesses should have regulations.
Prices should be required to be identical regardless of method of order. In person, in app, 3rd party app, etc.
Prices should be required to be identical regardless of the individual person ordering. Discounts for groups of people such as seniors and children would be allowed.
Yes, price discrimination is discrimination and should be illegal.
I pay for an email alias service, every service gets a unique email which I can disable or delete when they start spamming.
Yeah, I do that too either with Firefox Relay or 10minutemail. But I kinda object to the principle. It’s not that I can’t get around their tracking, it’s that I have to acquiesce to their system to even partake in their business.
I don’t think it’s wrong for shops to offer a simple, optional reward program (spend x amount, get y discount) as an incentive to shop there. Often you can enter a fake name and temporary email address or email alias (simplelogin.io has a free plan for aliases).
It’s excessive data collection for targeting advertising, the push to install apps, and dynamic pricing which I strongly oppose, especially when there is a lack of transparency surrounding it.
It starts that way. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. Instead of straight discounts they have started with bonus missions where you have to buy x amount of this certain brand to get 1 more for free and stuff and it’s just maniacal
It’s just another thing which will enshittyfy with time
In my opinion dynamic pricing is the worst thing that any company can provide. I imagine it’s only going to get more popular in the future considering how much data is available now, too.
Even data collection from a grocery store isn’t inherently problematic. With all the perishables they have it helps plan inventory if they have more data.
Yes, analytics aren’t inherently bad. They can be helpful in planning inventory and improving services like you said, but that can be accomplished with anonymized data.
The problems arise when more data is collected than is necessary to make helpful business decisions, when highly specific individual profiles and digital footprints are created, and when the data is shared with third parties who can use it for purposes other than the ones listed by who you first gave them to.
I definitely agree
I like how OP points out a cultural issue, and everyone in the comments explains how to use the loophole.
If you need a loophole to deal with some bullshit, you’re part of the problem.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a grocery store where, when asked if I had the loyalty card and I said no, they didn’t just scan their own thereby giving me the discounted prices.
