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Comment by losteverything | Hacker News Reader

I wish there was a mention that 5 people can buy the same milk and all can each pay a different price (and none know what the other paid either)

I always thought it would be something to charge a wealthy person more since they can afford it. With GO franchise i could charge $20 for milk to the teacher pensioner backed by my tax dollars; $0.50 to the poor mother of 3 kids, and $10k to jeff bezos. Then I could stop subsidising farmers.

Of course my points are extreme but we never had a way to charge different people this easily

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The checkout free experience doesn't magically exempt them from price display laws.

Here a store has to display prices for a high percentage of the items on the shelves and if there is a discrepancy at the register the displayed price is the decider.

It'd also be perfectly possible to implement different prices with a traditional barcode scanner. Just have a button on the register (or say, give a discount if the person signs up for a store card...).

So they display the lowest price they'd accept (could even be automated) and have the checkout try to change the price to higher values based on the customer.

If the customer notices a discrepancy, they give them the lower price. They win out in the long run since it depends on the customer to notice the discrepancy and point it out.

Any minor advantage at their scale wins out as a pretty big deal.

That's called fraud.

I think a better approach would be to display an initially high price, and mention automatically applied coupons at checkout - or require the user to use their smartphone's app to apply the coupon.

That makes calculating the final price far too hard. If the customer has to use a smartphone app to shop anyways, why not just have the app display the personalized price?

This is how Amazon Books stores work. Prices aren't displayed on the shelf, but using an app. The price is different for Prime members vs. non-Prime members.

Last time I was in an Amazon Book store, BOTH prices were displayed on the shelf - Prime and regular. Has this changed?

No prices on the shelf in this article: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/24/15683852/amazon-books-nyc-t...

Maybe it depends on the state, and its laws on price marking.

Grocery stores already obscure prices with specials.

$3.75 each Or buy two and get the second one at 25% off with bonus card.

I suspect that few customers do the mental arithmetic to figure out what their final cost will be.

Look at Recode's pictures. There are prices for the items on the shelves.

https://www.recode.net/2018/1/21/16913984/what-does-photos-a...

> If the customer notices a discrepancy, they give them the lower price. They win out in the long run since it depends on the customer to notice the discrepancy and point it out.

That kind of fraud is what the corner bodega does, not what Amazon does.

Amazon offers free bodegas to anyone as long as they get a cut.

And then they get sued for breaking the law?

What you described is called fraud.

So how much of my personal life do I need to hand over to a faceless corporation so it can decide how much I ought to have to pay for milk?

Just my annual income, or should it also take into account if I've had an expensive medical procedure recently? Or my number of dependents? The value of my stocks? Or if my breadwinning spouse just threw me out of the house?

What a treat this info would be for the ad department.

Are there no prices on the shelves in an Amazon Go store? Surely people want to know the price before they buy an item? Not having a checkout doesn't change that does it?

Yes there are prices on the shelves.

https://www.recode.net/2018/1/21/16913984/what-does-photos-a...

So what is losteverything talking about? How do they charge people different prices if the prices are printed right there on paper?

Not this specifically, but with a totally electronic system and no point of sale to anchor there is large opportunity to easily and programatically have dynamic pricing at the known individual level. Supply, time of day, whatever can be instantly baked into a pricing system.

And why not? No humans needed to change pricing. Plus i would think you could scan to get "your" price. Prime member $x. Etc..

I hope i did not imply this was happening now..

Aaaah... you said

> I wish there was a mention that 5 people can buy the same milk and all can each pay a different price (and none know what the other paid either)

And the answer why it isn't mentioned in the article is... because it's not a thing that's happening.

It's hard to do that in a physical store since everyone can see the same price display. I doubt many people would be happy in a store where they need to look up every single price on their mobile device.

Kohl's seems to be doing pretty well with that system. They print a high price on the tags, then discount it by rack, and mail out 30% off coupons with short expiration dates to some of their rewards card holders every month.

Yep. The author gives reasons for Amazon's decisions. I wanted a pricing discussion. My bad

I wonder too. I assume they are electronic. So snowstorm- raise milk and bread.

So the prices change based on who's looking at them? What if two people are looking at them at the same time? How does this work?

How about the one who happens to be looking at it the "closest" (according to the algorithms)? That would pretty much immediately turn into a "I see you can buy it for a lower price, how about I pay you to buy it for me instead" situation...

I suppose you could use lenticular screens like those used in some cars to avoid driver distraction[0 - old article but you get the point] or for the 3D effect in the Nintendo 3DS. This might be getting a bit silly though...

[0] - https://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2008-12/mercedes-benz-sp...

This is quite common in third world countries. Essentially, foreigners, whether expats or tourists, will pay a different price to locals for everything from street food to rent to government run tours. Local prices are displayed in the local language, foreigner prices in English.

One of my go-to lunch spots offers a discount if you have an in-state Drivers License.

Thereby allowing poor mothers with 3 kids to start a business as supermarket shoppers for Jeff Bezos types of people?

But then their prices would go up because their income goes up, pretty much crippling their business model.

So they are encouraged to recruit other poor mothers to become part of their downline and receive a percentage of what those mothers bring in.

Basically, a MLM but with milk and Jeff Bezos at the core.

10/10, would invest

> charge a wealthy person more since they can afford it. With GO franchise i could charge $20 for milk to the teacher pensioner backed by my tax dollars

You think teachers are wealthy? Dude,... get some experience with reality instead of believing b.s. you read online.

Yeah, I don't know what type of world they live in. I know a lot of teachers, most of which work for 30-50k their entire lives.

After an entire life of teaching/putting up with kids, I don't think it's unreasonable for them to be rewarded with an actual retirement. It's not like their pension allows for them to buy a new car, even.

It's strange seeing this sentiment from an industry that routinely makes over six figures, many while still in their 20's or 30's.

Teachers never come anywhere close to that in their entire career.

My example is strictly NJ based. A different place 4 sure.

Btw. is our current system of farm subsidizing that different?

Subsidiaries by and large are paid from money collected through taxation. Anyone's level of taxation is ~based~ should be based on the personal income.

So we actually have this, somehow, today. Without the need for every shop to actually know about the customers wealth level.

I wonder if only poor people will visit such stores in the future, once the word of this gets around.

Yeah, all the people that this would affect negatively (as OC described) have the power to prevent it. It likely would work the other way around where the rich automatically get it deducted from their taxes, somehow.

> all the people that this would affect negatively ... have the power to prevent it

This is based on the incorrect assumption that the people being gouged by variable pricing are rich (or at least "not poor").

> (as OC described)

The OC's pricing - like his patently incorrect view of teacher income - isn't based on reality. Being poor is very expensive[1][2]. The entire point of this new wave of price discrimination is to use modern data analysis to minimax how much each individual can be gouged. This is always regressive, because the poor do not have the same ability to shop around for better deals, buy in bulk, and other money-saving techniques that require up-front investment of time and/or money.

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-greutman/why-being-poo...

[2] https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21663262-why-lo...

I completely agree with everything you've said.

My point was that the OC's scenario couldn't happen because, if it were even on the table, they would prevent it from happening.

I have such a visceral dislike of this. I don't trust algorithms to be fair (see multitudes of examples in Weapons of Math Destruction), or for algorithms to consistently work without interference from malicious actors.

What something should cost should be it's "worth", however two parties entering in a transaction deem that.

Or, worse to worst, I think there's a case for "vintage stores" if dynamic pricing goes live at brick/mortar stores--come one, come all, pay the same.

This would send me back to the traditional grocery store.

Wealthy people buy the cow.

Wealthy people invest in a fund that has tax-sheltered elements operating in the global cow sector.

Poor people are not allowed in the store. A login to your Amazon account with the app on a smart phone is required to even enter the store.

If that system was ever popularized, rich people would just have poor people shop for them. More so than they already do I guess.

Not going to happen as long as GO has to compete with traditional grocery stores.

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