We have a lot of those in the EU as well, except prices change once every 48 hours at most, due to discounts activating or expiring. Shit like this is thankfully completely illegal, as is expected in any resonably advanced country.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Is like to point out that the USA is not a reasonably advanced country. It's more like a third world country with a Gucci belt.
So, what if I go to the store with limited cash, choose the items I can buy with it, and then while I'm on my way to the register, the prices increase?
I get how this can save money in labour but there should be laws or regulations that prices cannot change during store open business hours. If not, greed wins yet again.
How would it work if the price changed between getting the item off the shelf and paying for it? Will I have to take a picture of every price tag in case the price goes up?
(In Germany) The legal purchase agreement is made at the register, which means you agree to those prices. The prices on the shelves are technically irrelevant, although if they are intentionally falsified you could sue for deceit or false advertising.
Which is why almost all stores will honour the prices on the shelves, even if they're wrong, and also it's just cheaper to adjust the price than to argue with customers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ideally they should keep prices locked for 24 hours between changes
afaik there was somewhere that was suggesting having these labels adjust with who was in front of the item: track you through the store, link that to their internal profile of you, charge more if they think you can afford it/figure your susceptible to certain sales/etc
Wow that's crazy. I can't believe they're doing this without telling the market or regional teams. They haven't even told store managers about the individual pricing!
Because it's not a thing. The digital price signage is so they don't have to change individual labels on the thousands of items in the store, saving a huge amount of tedious labor.
Source: married to a store manager.
Just had her proof read this for accuracy and she pointed out that the digital prices can be changed from the office and price changes drop on Monday but still require someone to push them to the shelves. It is possible someone observed a price update while they were looking at the shelf, or this is just wild speculation.
Should be a law that they can only set the price at the start of the business day with an exception for perishable goods marked down before they go bad, where the fresher ones are still regular price.
You can only lower the price while the store is open for business. Any price hikes must be done between business hours. 24 hour stores can raise prices once per day during off-peak hours or something.
Edit: replied to the wrong comment, moved to where this one belonged.
Hahahahaha
Great joke!
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I worked in a Walmart on the overnight shift (cleaning, separate company) when they rolled them out 3+ years ago here in Canada. They've honestly become the norm in grocery stores and other large stores here. If some company was going to be sleazy about them, it probably would've happened already (Loblaws, I'm looking at you).
I straight up asked why they were being installed, and it's two-fold. One, they can save money cause now they don't have to pay staff to go around and change the little paper tags, which takes an absurd amount of manpower and is easy to fuck up. And two, they can all be changed over to a barcode/QR code during inventory, which speeds up the whole process. I'll be the last person to defend corpos, especially Walmart, but I don't think this one was done with the intentions of directly fucking over the customer.
I feel like it's one of those things that someone came up with the benign idea first, and then later some jackass was like "Hey, we could use these to change the prices every time a customer looks at it."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
I've worked retail and one of the things that baffled me was just how wasteful price tags were.
They change SO OFTEN and it's so much paper and plastic just tossed it the trash every time. Never even thought about it until I worked at a store and had to change them.
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I wish I could boycott them, but haven’t gone there in years
But seriously, they’re not talking about price segmentation, just a more efficient way to update their prices
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This should absolutely be illegal. Not to mention how the prices don't include taxes, you don't know the real price you pay until you're already at the checkout which is horseshit. It's no wonder that online shopping has become much more popular.
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Are the cameras going to detect when I have a fever and then triple the cost of Tylenol?
Actually, they'll start with surprise specials and flash deals, like KMart used to do with their blue light specials. They will use it to discount over-stock as it gets near the sell-by date.
And then, once they've got you used to the prices changing at random times, maybe even getting people to come back in shop in the store more often but offering really great deals (like black Friday started out) . Then they will begin to have "peak pricing", where you pay more on busy days and times.
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Theoretically these have a lot of benefits as well, like saving on paper and ink. One barker could last as long as thousands of prices over its lifetime, and mean staff don't have to spend time changing them.
I mean, capitalism gonna capitalise and they'll be used for evil, mostly, but.
I wonder if they're all wired or run off batteries? If the former, then there's a single point of failure, if the latter then ho boy do I have a plan for a zigbee/wifi/whatever device.
I wonder if they're all wired or run off batteries?
Batteries. Asked my local store manager (aka my wife). She also added that if you have the Walmart app open and can't find an item on the shelf it will light the label up green so you can locate it.
I wonder if they're all wired or run off batteries?
Batteries, I asked my local store manager (aka my wife). She also added that if you have the Walmart app open and can't find an item on the shelf it will light the label up green so you can locate it.
They run off batteries. Usually an entire rail has one battery for all the tags. But they only need to use power to change the screen. I forget the type of screen but its like digital ink? They usually refresh and maybe change price around midnight where i work. They do run off of something wireless but hell if i know exactly how it works.
that seems… unlikely, just because of the labour cost to change the batteries compared to a DC power supply and plugging the shelves in
They have to change whats on shelves and distances between items all the time. So changing batteries isnt all that uncommon.They also are pretty power effecient since the displays are e-ink Edit: also we have a box of batteries in the back. If we notice a whole rail isnt displaying properly we can go grab a new one and have it switched out in like 2 minutes.
I wonder if they're all wired or run off batteries?
They may not be the same, but the ones we have in the EU, or at least the ones I've seen, run on batteries. They're not connected to anything. You can just yoink one and it works. I've seen some people do that and was tempted to myself. Not sure about the software side. If it's realistically possible to display something else entirely on them, then it'd be cool to have.
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Be sure to handle them appropriately, the screens are vulnerable to damage, and replacing them would be more expensive than printing out a new paper tag. It'd sure be a shame if the corps lost money there.
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Technically, a price can change at 9 a.m., change again at 2 p.m., and change again before the dinner rush.
Technically in one sense, maybe. Technically in a practical sense, no. Because the price on the shelf is the agreed price to pay, and if it changes after you put it into your cart, that's gonna break laws.
People are making hay over something that will not happen.
but let's say it does. People will absolutely lose their SHIT. And while companies are stupid, they are not THAT stupid. And even let's say they ARE that stupid: This is the type of the legislatures would love to pass laws about becauase it's easy to do and extremely popular. Like cops running stings. It's easy and shows they're doing something.
So I am absolutely zero worried about this and all this hype is stupid.
Will they changes prices nightly? Sure. Will they change prices multiple times during the day or for individual shoppers? Nope.
And if they were going to pull this shit, they'd already be pulling it online where they can already do that. And yet, not a single fuckin peep about that from any of these people hyping up this thing.
You're at Walmart doing grocery shopping, and you fill your cart with all kinds of foods. Are you going to realize the tomatoes are ringing up at $2.51/lbs when the label was $2.40 in?
I don't think it would be illegal, the price tag is not a contract and it's often mislabeled today. The question is, can you get people to accept that the price will go up or down before you checkout, and will they just pay when it goes up or create a new stock return inventory?
If the chicken you've been walking around the store with went up and you decided you didn't want it anymore, that's straight to the trash. What products will they target with this?
I think it's more likely to go down during the day to compete with other stores than to go up on you, but who knows what these greedy fucks are going to do.
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And they're already dogshit in practice. Some of them are broken, we can't tell where to put things because the stupid digital interface glitches. People misplace them. They aren't properly installed or they're a pain to install. They don't even blink when you try to find something.
Oh yeah, what a wonderful investment...
Yeah they break way too easily. I swear half the ones on the bottom shelf are wrecked from carts hitting them where i work.
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In a few months:
NEWS BULLETIN on TV: "bad thing" happened today. Prices of most things will go up...
Instantly the prices change before you make it to the cash register
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