Wendy's already walking back their surge pricing comments. They were testing the waters.
Wendy's already walking back their surge pricing comments. They were testing the waters.
See, World of Warcraft figured this shit out almost two decades ago now. Back in the day, they wanted to encourage more regular, daily logins so they added an "unrested XP penalty" where you would gain less experience points after earning a certain amount every day. Players absolutely hated this. They fixed the problem by saying the initial, normal XP gain was a "rested XP bonus", while the penalized XP gain was just the "normal" XP gain, while in reality, none of the numbers actually changed, they still rolled out an XP penalty dressed up like a bonus
If they just said "We'll give you a discount if you show up while it's dead" while quietly jacking up all the prices, people probably would have loved that shit
Exactly. Green number is good. Red number is bad. You can't tell people that their burger is more expensive because its lunch hour that's insane.
Line goes up? Booo! Line goes down? Yayyy!
This is a well established practice in the restaurant industry too!
“Wendy’s introduces Happy Hour menu” would barely even have been a headline, but that’s also surge pricing
"To clarify, Wendy's will not implement surge pricing, which is the practice of raising prices when demand is highest," Wendy's Vice President Heidi Schauer said in an email to NPR.
Wendy's didn't provide many additional details, but it said in a separate statement that the digital menus could allow the company to offer discounts to customers during slower times of day.
Rob Shumsky, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, suggested it could actually mean lower prices for Wendy's patrons.
"They talked about, for example, getting more breakfast customers in," Shumsky said. "They might actually reduce breakfast prices at certain times in order to encourage people to come during what they currently have as relatively low-demand periods."
they're gonna do the black friday thing where they take a $5 price tag and write
$6above itThe narrator: "It never means lower prices for customers"
The fuck they think I'm gonna look up breakfast sandwich prices like I look for cheap gas? Fuck outta here.
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Wendy's didn't provide many additional details, but it said in a separate statement that the digital menus could allow the company to offer discounts to customers during slower times of day.
Don't worry! The prices won't be higher at busier times, they'll just be lower at slower times
They're gonna raise prices even more so the "low" prices are at the levels of current prices.
Before: $5 for a burger
After
$9$5 for a burger!No no, it's a totally different thing. Here let me explain.
Let x represent the prices during busy times and y represent prices during slower times.
"Surge pricing" is when x > y (boo, everyone hates it, Wendy's is definitely not doing that)
"Dynamic pricing" is when y < x (totally different, consumer friendly, yay discounts)
So you see, x won't be greater than y, y will simply be less than x
That was absolutely the plan from the start
Bullying works, folks
They're just going to wait until everyone has forgotten about it then start doing it quietly.
Yeah whenever I hear about some awful business practice I just accept that it's inevitable these days.
"If [the] price is the same throughout the entire day, they are actually losing revenue during those peak period times," Shumsky said.
This is your brain on orthodox economics.
Econ 101 professors absolutely coooooming right now!
"Imma... IMMA... IMMMA GONNA MAXIMIZE MY PROFITS!!!!"
They will tell you that there is absolutely no difference between 8q at 10p and 10q at 8p.
"The revenue is the same!"
Externalities entirely external to their fuckin' domes.
I mean, what do you do in a drive through when you get to the window to pay and it's like 3x more expensive than you expected? Just drive away? I'm sure that's what people would argue, while completely ignoring that it's a massive social taboo and 99% of people would just pay because of social pressure.
Also, what happens if the place starts making the food after you order, but before you pay (so you can get your food more quickly and efficiently!). Have you committed theft, or defrauded the business by deciding not to pay? I mean probably not, but I'd hate to be the first person sued to test if it holds up in court.
There's a drive through problem, but it's not what you're describing. You know the price when you order and they're not going to tell you it's $10 when they give you your total then tell you $12 a minute later at the window.
The drive through problem is that many drive throughs aren't set up so people can just dip out of the line if they get to the order screen and see everything is way more expensive than they expected. So you'll have places like that where people have to wait in a line to not get food (slows down the line, and if there are enough cars in line people who do want food will go somewhere else).
Not that I disagree, but in my experience, the little displays that tell you what you're ordering (and how much it costs) are rarely used, and the worker on the other side often doesn't tell you how much it is until you get to the window to pay. So if you frequent a place often and already have a rough estimation of how much something is gonna cost (i.e. "I buy this meal at lunch every day" or whatever), and then you find out its twice as expensive, you run into the exact problem I've suggested.
You're definitely right about it slowing everything down though, and most drive-throughs get clogged very easily.
Imagine a trucker convoy but for a drive-thru, saying "whoops that price isn't in my budget, I'm going to have to cancel this order"
Just drive away
i mean yeah
Maybe work on the shit quality their food has fallen into instead of being cheeky online.
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Spicy nuggs have always been #1 never eat their beef products though Wendy’s has always been a chicken place to me.
Bullying works. Join a union.
Bullying corporations is always morally correct.
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How much more evidence do we need that the average person doesn’t know what is best for them
IDK about the regular average person, but I think this is more evidence that the average person with above-average money does not know what's best for themselves or the rest of us.
I mean just think about how many average joes fall in line without a second thought regardless of whether they have above-average money or not
industries that rely on the relationship between a company and its customers — such as health care — likely won't embrace surge pricing.
"likely"
Sorry you were shot when a gunman opened fire on a school killing 10 and injuring 23, but due to the sudden, unexplained surge of patients with gunshot wounds, the bill for tending your injuries is gonna be $80,000.
The only way this would make sense is in the form of a happy hour or a lunch special which I guess are all just reverse surge pricing, but can't just simply make things cost less in off peak hours in god's Amerikkka.