It’s price discrimination. Lots of companies do it, generally based on marketing analytics they apply to their users.
It’s also the death of even the pretense of the American dream. Think about it. All pricing goes algorithmic, for all goods and services. Every company figures out the absolute maximum you can pay and charges accordingly.
What does this do in aggregate? It means that every raise you will ever get during your career is now immediately consumed by rising prices. This produces an economy where there is literally no point at all to advancing your career, gaining new skills, or bettering yourself. Why go to college or trade school, if the extra money you earn is just going to be consumed by companies charging your more for the same products? Why should anyone do anything but simply find the most tolerable minimum wage job they can, and simply work it until they die of old age? If all pricing is algorithmic, anything you do to improve your personal financial situation will be immediately hoovered up by the big conglomerates.
That’s why Walmart is switching to digital pricing so they can change prices on the fly.
This was worth the read. I’d like to point out that’s it’s for shoppers ordering from the SAME store location. Different store locations have different operating costs and often different pricing, but this is from the same physical store. The following quote is also interesting:
So Instacart’s varied pricing is allegedly part of an experiment that randomly assigns shoppers to different pricing groups, but brands whose goods are available on Instacart can use the company’s data-driven pricing platform to serve different prices based on different demographic data. For the end user, that likely feels like a distinction without a difference, as they are ultimately seeing different prices based on conditions that are outside of their control.
They have multiple programs currently going through which they alter prices to maintain affordability of essentials? Feels a lot like “pride and accomplishment”
More Perfect Union did a video with Consumer Reports about this study
Bonus Lina Khan at the end.
Fuck these companies. As a consumer I feel more and more like someone existing merely to be bled dry by all these greedy mfers.
We always were being kept alive to be bled dry. We’re unsurprisingly, in an even shittier version of the Matrix.
Here we go… Another company to boycott. The good news is that it’s a US company so it’s already on the no-go list.
They are helping a host of stores implement this. So best look up the list and boycott all of those too.
Well… Daah!
There can be good reason to offer different prices to different people. New customer discounts, student/senior discounts, etc. The problems arise when the nature of the reason they got a discount, or even the very fact that they did get a discount are hidden. Because then there’s nothing stopping them from more predatory pricing just because they think they can get you to pay more, or whatever other reason they have. It’s not illegal, but it’s incredibly unethical and really should be illegal.
New customer discounts, student/senior discounts, etc. The problems arise when the nature of the reason they got a discount, or even the very fact that they did get a discount are hidden.
I’d argue even these arbitrary discounts are bad from a public policy perspective. What you’re describing is a hodgepodge of marketing and PR, intended to cultivate a loyal customer base with an eye towards maximizing revenue in the future once your client list is fully captured.
The better questions to be asking are “how much resources does it make to create Product X” and “what material benefit does the client receive from consuming Product X”? A high price is justified when a product is difficult to produce and highly beneficial to consume, on the grounds that the higher price subsidizes capital investment that bring production costs down long term.
But what Instacart is doing isn’t adding value to a product or pricing in cost of production. The website is instead trying to maximize the marginal profit on the purchaser. It’s the AI-equivalent of you asking “How much is that product?” and the vendor replying “It costs as much money as you have in your wallet.”
There’s no incentive to improve efficiency or maximize throughput in this model. It is entirely a zero-sum game of taking the client for as much cash as the vendor can possibly extract per transaction.
It’s not illegal, but it’s incredibly unethical and really should be illegal.
Funny you should say that because Price Gouging laws are absolutely a thing on the books. And overcharging an individual customer relative to the median historical price is a textbook violation. The question isn’t whether these actions are illegal, but whether any state AG will press criminal charges.
I’m not in a position to reply in full to your comment. But I did want to point out that I’m pretty sure that price gouging laws only restrict predatory price increases on essential goods during officially declared states of emergency. Otherwise there’s no restriction at all
price gouging laws only restrict predatory price increases on essential goods during officially declared states of emergency
I mean, maybe there’s something in the fine print I’m unaware of. But do you think this Instacart model turns off for a neighborhood hit by a hurricane or wildfire or flood?
I don’t see AGs offices zealously enforcing laws at even this scale, so its something of a moot point. If your DOJ is owned and operated by crooks, they won’t be going after their friends and co-conspirators anyway. And Instacart is fully in bed with the Silicon Valley crowd, which have been successfully paying off politicians left, right, and center since the Clinton Administration.
