General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMallory McMorrow
I did not know about this kind of insidious pricing. Thank you for highlighting it!
— George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T14:30:13.103Z
Raven123
(7,790 posts)pwb
(12,654 posts)on Amazon. One price when I don't sign in and a different price when I do sign in.
Also, when I do an Internet search for an item, commercials for that item appear on my smart t v.
Kid Berwyn
(24,346 posts)The other two candidates for US Senate from Michigan are good candidates, but McMorrow has vision.
mopinko
(73,720 posts)erronis
(23,841 posts)Walmart and other vendors watch to see which products you are interested in (sensors in the electronic price tags on the shelves.) Tied to any facts they know about you (ever used a credit card there?), they can create amazing profiles of you price pain points.
One of many: https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/
Gaugamela
(3,501 posts)delivers the best quality for the best price. Surveillance capitalism throws that rationalization out the window. The virtue of capitalism is to transfer the maximum amount of wealth to the predator class.
applegrove
(132,167 posts)Last edited Sun Mar 29, 2026, 09:08 PM - Edit history (1)
Is 'given perfect information the market (demand and supply) will act... '. Well if the corporation has better information and the customer does not then it is messed up, but like you say to the benefit of the rich.
flashman13
(2,387 posts)LisaM
(29,632 posts)She has a way of drilling down exactly to the point. I really really want her to win.
moniss
(9,051 posts)and if you search them multiple times for the same item they will go up on the price. Once you see the higher price if you search for it from a different device (don't sign in) you'll see the lower price. I use a particular shock absorber for my truck suspension and that was how I found out. It was not a small difference either. The normal, first price, for the shock was $69 and then when I searched later that same day they had it for $109. I called a friend and had them check and the price for them was $69 and so I had them buy it for me.
I checked the price on my device 2 days later and it was back to $69. They're trying to get you and they know that you are hot on an item when you search for the same thing from them multiple times in a day. To be fair not all online merchants do this. I've also seen Amazon do weird things with item discounts where the first time I look at an item it has a discount available and then an hour later the discount is gone. But if you check from another device the discount is there.
station agent
(388 posts)She's Sinema 2.0
brakester
(602 posts)Capitalism!