Consumer, we have detected that you are above the poverty line. The 99¢ price printed on this Arizona tea can only applies to those below the poverty line. Your total comes to $3.67.
I am going to go to Kroger, speak with the manager, and scream loud enough while complaining for the entire store to hear, and never return the first time this happens.
I'm lucky enough to have options. A lot of small towns aren't. This idea needs to die fast, and it won't unless we are loud and borderline violent in pushing back against it. Tank their sales and reputations as quickly as possible.
Edit: because people think I hate th manager, changed wording. And yea, it sucks that I can't scream directly at the CEO, but if you've silent, this gets implemented with no friction at all, and they declare it a success.
The barely above minimum wage manager doesn't make these decisions and all you gain from screaming at him is bringing down the mix of everyone around you.
The best way to handle this is to not shop at Kroger. Not when they start doing it. Now. Kroger won't get my money until they publicly admit this is a bad move and walk it back before it happens.
I think the implication of screaming is more to let the whole store know just how exactly fucked this idea is, to get everyone talking about it. Yea the manager doesn’t make the decisions but if he here’s no push back, the rich fucks at the top sure don’t.
That doesn't mean that they would have power over the policy, though. They might just get policy that they're expected to carry out, no questions asked.
In an extreme scenario, a store manager may bend the rules, but they wont hold their job for long. The company would probably prefer to replace them with someone who will follow company policy.
Yelling at people for just trying to make a living also is a bit harsh. Not all deeds are excusable because they provide people with income, but managing a Kroger is not really a bad thing.
This idea has been around for many years and it's already in place in many places. Do you think that Amazon shows you the same price for a pair of shoes that it shows me? There's no reason that it should, if the programmers don't want it to.
Sometimes the scam is a little bit deeper. If we go back to Amazon, for example, you often find different vendors that are selling the same good, because you can look at the pictures and see that in fact it's the same product, but the vendors are selling it for different prices. Who decides which vendor you see first? The Amazon developers do, of course.
Anyway, those are Amazon examples, but we should pay attention to them because the problem already happens, and it's not hard to set up the scam, and a protest alone is insufficient. Their needs to be massive legal penalties for any company caught running this type of price fixing scam.
Hmm, Amazon seems to match CamelCamelCamel’s price history tool when I “have” to use that store about annually. Maybe the clickable coupons are offered based on customer data?
Kroger shutdown in all the small towns around here years ago. Most of them left are in the upper class part of towns. I haven't been to one in a decade or more. I have no doubt they wont be the last to stick another tax on people.