Why are people getting worse at “The Price Is Right”? | Hacker News Reader

Why are people getting worse at “The Price Is Right”?

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I’d love to see some data on whether MSRP and average actual price paid have diverged over the years. It does feel like everything is perpetually “discounted” these days. If Price is Right is using the manufacturer’s list price, this would help explain why contestants undershoot more now — because the prices they tend to see advertised are in fact ~20% lower.

Prices on most things have also gone up somewhat substantially over the last 5 or more years fast enough I find I still think of some things being the price they were before and end up being surprised.when I realize it's been more expensive for a while.

The discount trickery plays into it. You never notice the price increases at first as it's fairly standard all around from what i've seen to raise the base price during a sale, to the point where i've seen them raise the base price at the same time a sale starts then, cross out the new 'old' price and show how great of a sale it is. Then the sale ends and the price is higher.

If you live the the US, that’s likely a violation of FTC regulations against deceptive pricing[0].

My guess is that the “discount” phenomenon has a somewhat more innocent explanation; it’s the result of aggressive inventory management and sophisticated dynamic pricing models. Launch at a high price to snag the price-insensitive customers, and gradually discount down to pull in the lower end of the market and keep your unit volume relatively predictable (very helpful for just-in-time inventory management).

[0]: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=b9b38b61c935105b8a...

I'm not sure, I live in Canada. I know years and years ago the grocery store I used to work at did this. We were told when I worked there that's specifically what they did.

You just described the Pixel launch model. Launch at X in October then by Black Friday have a $200 off deal or 25% pricing by other vendors for the life of the phone.

I wonder if that means the Pixel line is a much cheaper flagship, if the discount price is assumed to be the actual price execs are targeting after launch. I got a Pixel 2 then later a 3 for like 2/3 sticker price off promos by vendors and I'm happy with the price/features/etc. But I wouldn't pay launch price or it.

> Prices on most things have also gone up somewhat substantially over the last 5 or more

Have the effective prices gone up? Or have "normal prices" gone up and discounts increased in lockstep?

Apparently companies tried that and the consumers didn't like it even though prices were comparable or actually better.

It has been established as a norm annoyingly to those who would rather not have the noise.

The only thing I track over the years is the price of a regular sized candy bar at the grocery store checkout. When I was a kid in the 70’s and 80’s, they were $0.25, and now they are $1.25 or more.

Has the weight remained the same?

Nope - in fact, I hear that they prefer to change the size rather than the price because consumers tend not to notice it as much.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/25401945

That's basically matched to inflation - would be more surprised if unchanged

I have heard that too, but I don't believe in it. If they do it, it must be applied only in specific circumstances, and with some other mechanism to restore the size again. Because containers aren't getting silly small over time. They seem to be pretty much aimed at whatever is a convenient amount.

Coffee is sometimes that way. For more expensive beans brands’ll cut the weight and keep the price the same, shelve it right next to the other stuff. You have to check the weight to see which ones are expensive.

[edit] and of course 12oz has replaced 16oz as the “standard” size.

The UK mandates putting 'price per unit' on the price labels, which makes this kind of comparison a lot easier.

Some stores in the US have that, some don’t, and it’s always a lot smaller than the total price when they do.

I've come to really enjoy grocery shopping, planning a week worth of meals, being adaptive when good deals come up, trying new things, working to minimize waste. Eating a healthy diet.

One of the things I like about grocery shopping is practicing mental math, and I calculate price per quantity mentally when choosing between different brands/sizes. It's good mental exercise, and the ability to do that sort of division mentally occasionally is helpful in other contexts.

A lot of them that do mix units between products of the same class (one measured as volume per unit, and another as mass per unit), making it difficult to do a direct comparison.

What do you mean by "it's smaller than the total"? Do they literally write the wrong price or do they choose any unit they happen to think makes for a good sounding price per unit?

In most of Europe (probably all the EU countries at least, unified regulations yay) shops need to put the price per 1kg/100g/1L/100mL on the tags, depending on which is most appropriate for the product.

The physical printing is smaller.

Often much smaller. A few stores like Costco actually print it large enough that you don't have to get up close and squint at each price tag to see the unit price. Usually you can't just scan the shelf and comparison shop on unit price.

Same in Canada. Unit prices are useful for comparisons, but it's hard to avoid the big, colorful "ON SALE" tags.

This absolutely happens. But after a while, manufacturers increase the size & price at the same time, pointing out the increase in product, of course. None of this is new, it's been happening for decades.

It's a documented phenomenon that happens so regularly there's a name for it: shrinkflation.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/24/sweets-are-...

Specifically, Hershey's Chocolate Bars did it to maintain a 5 cent price from 1902 until 1969. By then, the bar shrank to half the size as it used to be, so they doubled the size of the bar and charged 10 cents for it.

Coke was also a nickel for a long time, and since it was frequently sold in vending machines it was advantageous to be able to sell it for a single coin. So they actually lobbied for the production of a 7.5 cent coin.

This is what happened in Ireland when new taxes on sugary drinks came in. Drinks that came in 2L bottles now came in 1.75L bottles at the same price. The diet versions with no sugar remained in 2L bottles. Companies like Coke are now only making variants like vanilla or cherry flavours using their diet or zero sugar products

This is why if you want to tax sweet drinks, you should charge it on artificial sweeteners too because otherwise it’s just a handout for aspartame.

...but that’s the idea. They want people to drink the artificially sweetened version instead. That’s what the tax is for. If they taxed both the same it wouldn’t work.

I think you've missed sight of the point of those taxes, which is to reduce consumption of actual excess sugar, not to tax things that taste sweet.

Both are unhealthy its not clear that fake sweeteners are better for you. Why tax a different kind of unhealthy less?

I'm no fan of artificial sweeteners or sweet things in general but the scientific evidence is pretty overwhelming that most of them are far healthier than sugar.

Non-sugar sweeteners are better for you in at least one significant way: they have almost zero calories.

Because the scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that artificial sweeteners _are_ better for you. They have no proven health impact and eliminate calories. The idea that they're somehow "just as bad" (or even worse) only comes from sugar and corn industry lobbying and marketing efforts.

Yep. Same thing happened with baked beans and corn chips recently. Shrink the size while offering a small discount (still more expensive per unit weight) and then a little later introduce a new jumbo size for more than the old price.

The one for me was breyer's ice cream. I was working stocking it at the time it happened. They used to show up as 5 packs of 500g cartons. One summer, during a sale, the prices stayed the same, but they started showing up in 4 packs of 450g cartons. I had to rearrange the whole shelf because they didn't fit the same way any more. So this really stuck in my mind. The cost was the same to the store too on the packing slips for a whole pallet. They just gave less and decreased the size of each carton.

I've told a related story from the same time period on here before about how they stopped putting handles on the large 4L ice cream buckets so they could save 1¢ per bucket. That was the same summer.

I also suspect the quality has dropped. It may just be because I'm not too big on sweets, or my palate becoming dull with age, but when I had a bit of Halloween candy recently it all tasted like wax and sugar. Even things that were favorites when I was a kid (Butterfingers and Whoppers in particular) were bland and flavorless compared to what I remembered.

The "fun sized" versions of candy generally given out at Halloween always tasted stale to me, likely due to the production and distribution methods for the holiday. I wouldn't use those to draw conclusions.

More likely they were actually stale, lots of people buy a big stash of candy and hand it out over several years until it runs out.

They were stale, but even freshly purchased ones are often stale. Candy goes stale faster than you'd think, and seasonal candy often sits around longer and is stored with less care than a regular candy bar.

nobody does this. Keeps halloween candy between years? why? there's no advantage to having a "big stash". halloween candy decomposes into empty wrappers naturally anyways. It has a half life of 9 days.

After Halloween specials on candy are amazing. Theoretically, people could just always buy those deals and save them for the next year. That holds for all after season items.

This is a perfect strategy for buying clothes, but candies? nobody stores candies this long :)

If you were buying winter tires sure but Halloween candy is on sale every year and the cost for most homes is negligible so it's unlikely people are stockpiling it

There’s no advantage to a big stash, but it’s easy to overestimate the number of trick-or-treaters, have a ton of candy left on your hands, and just stick it in the closet for next year.

No it's not

They probably are a little more stale than the large bars because many are in the unsealed paper wrappers.

I swear Twix used to be much better. I haven't been meticulously tracking it over the years or anything, but there is a simple logic that if you can cut costs by making something worse, and there's pretty much no higher-quality alternative, it'll probably still sell.

The quality has definitely dropped.

There have been discrete points where I would buy a Reese's peanut butter cup and go "Yuck!". We're currently in such a phase right now where I won't buy them anymore.

I really notice when they tamper with the peanut butter. But there have been a couple of times where they over-sugared the chocolate.

Normally, I would have blown it off as "getting old" except that I mentioned that I wouldn't buy one anymore and two children (14 and 10) agreed that they started sucking that year.

Yeah, peanuts really show the quality difference. Half of the fun size Snickers I’ve gotten the past few years have tasted straight up rancid.

The only one that's as good as I remember from childhood is Kinder eggs. That chocolate is amazing and waaaay better than we deserved as kids. Still get one for xmas every year although could do without the plastic toy.

Funnily enough I've always thought Kinder chocolate was way too sweet (even as a kid) and I remember being flummoxed by the tagline of Kinder ads (in Italy, but that's where they're from), which was "more milk, less cocoa". Kid me was thinking: "wait! Isn't milk way cheaper than and less delicious than cocoa?". But then again it was probably aimed at health conscious parents...

Is cocoa bad for you? It’s the milk and the sugar that are unhealthy, as far as I know.

Cocoa is pretty fat and (at least in Italy) there is a popular belief that it might cause acne.

I think it's also interesting to note that Nutella (also from Ferrero) has a history of being a post-WW2 pure chocolate substitute at a time when hazelnuts were much cheaper and easier to source. It seems to be in the company's DNA to produce chocolate-based confections while touting chocolate as the bad guy.

Cocoa powder is just fat and carbs with basically no other nutritional content but it's not really any worse for you than other sources of the same thing.

The milk is probably the most nutritionally rich thing in your average chocolate bar.

Kinder eggs are European chocolate, aren't they? European chocolate is much higher quality than the American counterpart, so maybe that would explain?

There isn't a European counterpart to American milk chocolate (which mostly tastes like Hershey's) is there? Like, the reason they are different isn't quality, it's that they are different.

Or have you sampled American chocolates that do not try to follow Hershey's flavor and found that they are all inferior?

AFAIK, In Europe the minimum cocoa content for chocolate is 20% while 10% in the US. The US mainstream chocolate handles the lacking cocoa by adding more sugar. Of course you'll find all kinds of boutique chocolates everywhere, but the earlier anecdotes seemed to be about the cheap mainstream stuff.

That's probably just your taste buds dulling with age, I have the same experience, many things I couldn't get enough of as kid now tastes bland (and not just prepackaged food. It's particularly noticable with sweets.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/05/526750174/wh...

That's plain inflation: $0.25 in 1975 would be $1.20 today

And yet to a kid wanting a candy bar, it's measurably worse. In the 1980's you would occasionally find a quarter on the ground. Today you never find a dollar on the ground, or even quarters.

> It does feel like everything is perpetually “discounted” these days.

Agreed, most of our general supermarket shopping seems to be on some significant "discount" since most of the time, to the point where we consider that the 'real' price and will avoid buying things when they're not discounted.

My general rule for shopping is that the real price of an item is the lowest price that it routinely goes "on sale" for.

Some examples (in my area):

- The real price of a can of Coke at my grocery store is $.25/can or $3.00/12pk

- The real price of Aerie underwear is $3.50/pair.

- The real price of KitchenAid stand mixers is $189.99

I do that mentally as well, but I generally ignore the word “sale”, and just focus on the most frequent low price.

Around a decade ago I regularly bought a particular food product for $10.99. Then one week it was 13.99. The following week it was “on sale” for 11.99. Then it went up to 12.99 for a few weeks before going back to 10.99. It was eye opening and I also learned to stock certain products.

This won't work for loss leader discount though.

Clothing and furniture are the most egregious in this regard.

So many stores with "everything 30% off!" signs out front that have been in the sun so long they're cracked and fading.

I’ve found Kohl’s to be a great example of this. If you happen to find something that isn’t 30, 40% off, just try again next week.

Was looking for this comment! I was at Kohl's with my wife and I saw the sticker price and was ready to leave, and she said, "oh, that's not the price you'll pay, everything has a discount." I don't like that game and I've not gone back.

This is exactly what my dad said about Sears in the 80s and 90s

I don't think my mother has ever paid full price at Macy's.

At the stores that use paper pricetags still, before you buy anything expensive, just rifle through the other pieces of paper behind the pricetags.

Sure, today it says "30% off". Behind, though, are pages for 50% off, 40% off, and 65% off

Then you know it isn't really on sale now.

I have to admit the Kohl's 'sale price' thing totally worked on me. I bought a piece of luggage that was marked down from around $300 to around $150. I felt very good about having acquired such a fine item for half price. Later I wondered if I would have felt as good paying $150 without thinking it was 'worth' $300. Of course I would not have.

the 'real' price has and will always be the price you are paying.

> will avoid buying things when they're not discounted.

A UK panel show called Mock the Week had a segment where panelists were asked to come up with ads that never made it to air. One panelist simply said "the DHS sale has ended". DHS (sofa retailer) is so renowned here for its perpetual sale that at this point they simply can't not have a "sale" on, as it'd confuse customers.

I wonder if companies should be forbidden of advertising discounts at all, maybe they should just list what is the price and the customers can look out the price history and compare with competitors themselves (which is the defence mechanism for the current situation).

I really don't like the idea of living in a society where companies I buy things from are trying to scam me by using Pavlov-esque techniques of using fake discounts to get my attention, especially because that works. Really, is that the society we want to have?

I would like to hear counter arguments to this.

You should see the documentary PROPAGANDA: Engineering Consent, on Edward Bernays' theory.

A lot of products you buy, especially those featured on The Price is Right, aren't sold directly to you they're sold to other companies/distributors for wholesale prices then they sell it on to you (or sometimes another step through a distributor). The manufacturer has no association with you at all and having them fix a price would remove competition from all those stores. It's coming really close to being a price control cartel too, it'll just mean stores can't compete on price to get you into their doors which will probably mean higher prices.

I think about this (in different flavors) all the time. It all comes down to: how much government control do you want in society? For places like the US, well, the answer was at the time of its founding: as little as we can afford (but then again, I don't think the founding fathers could have predicted how absolutely gargantuan the federal government was going to get). The idea of "as little government as possible" was a rough model that continued to thrive as people migrated westward and states were incorporated. With such little oversight came eras like the Gilded Age, during one can see the birth of the modern corporation and the freedoms they took to grow and exploit their markets as they saw fit, all in the name of profits.

We're now arguably in the middle of a 2nd Gilded Age; the size and scope of tech companies today would make the JP Morgan's/Rockefeller's of yester-century red with envy, and we've done jack shit as a society to hold them accountable for just about everything. And if we're in the middle of a 2nd Gilded Age, are we also in need of a 2nd wave of Progressivism? Most likely. I don't know how much they could get done though. The modern model of policymaking (especially at the federal level) is so choked with so many voices trying to get the attention of politicians that you often need a hefty budget to get anything done. Even then, it's at a snail's pace. And even if something smelling of a 2nd Progressive wave started to percolate, the sky-high polarization of public discourse on the Internet would make it nigh-impossible to get the facts straight. It makes it an even tougher sell to Americans that hate big government that we need to implement sensible legislation that is in their best interest.

This is probably one of the biggest hurdles today to getting anything done: convincing the general public that corporations are not your friend and do not/never will have your best interests at heart.

> I really don't like the idea of living in a society where companies I buy things from are trying to scam me by using Pavlov-esque techniques of using fake discounts to get my attention, especially because that works. Really, is that the society we want to have?

I concur with this sentiment strongly. I use websites such as CamelCamelCamel to see how long it has been at this "sale" price. But this only works for Amazon. I would love to see an equivalent site that tracks for many more websites.

It's particularly disgusting when you see "Black Friday Sales" that are an actual increase in the price. I saw a picture of a price tag of $219.99, with a sticker overlaid with a price of $249.99 with a "sale" price of $229.99. The kicker was the sticker was slightly transparent, and you could clearly see the original $219.99 underneath.

I've heard there are places with legislation that says you can only have on sale for as long as it was at the pre-sale price. I think this could help fight places with perpetual sales. The sad thing is this has become so ingrained in our culture, that when JC Penny tried to stop doing this, they lost a ton of customers, and a significant amount of money [0]. There would have to be a significant culture shift to go away from this.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4

The article starts by saying and showing with a graph, that people are now underestimating prices more than they used to.

It then ends with this quote:

> If you ever find yourself on the game show, the lesson from this research is that whatever you think the price is, your estimate should, as the host says, “come on down.”

Is it just me, or is this advice backwards, and based on the data and graph, you should add around 15% to your estimate to not overshoot the 20% average under-estimate?

I caught that too, I think he confused himself at the end there.

I thought the same thing. I expect it's just a mistake, but it could make sense in a way: it's possible over-estimates of price aren't counted, because any amount over and you lose. So if only successful guesses are averaged, only the negative side of the variance is going to be shown in the graphs.

If that's true and in reality variance in both directions is higher than it used to be, you might want to play it safe by reducing your guess, to limit the chances of going over.

... but that would probably still be a good way to lose the game, so most likely the author just got mixed up.

None of those things are the reason. The reason is simple. The Price is Right use MSRP. Back in the day, with only a few outlets, it was hard to get something less than MSRP.

Today, it's almost impossible to find something at MSRP. There are so many outlets and our information on pricing is so good, stores have to compete by offering discounts.

Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price

TIL. In India, they print the MRP (Maximum Retail Price) so I always assumed the M in MSRP was "maximum"

What happens if you try to sell above maximum retail price? Is that forbidden by law?

Fair trade laws were repealed by '75, and it took a while for pricing to diverge and become as highly variable as today.

Not sure whether anyone is doing it, but an early presumed advantage of internet commerce was that the seller could set a different price for each customer depending on the seller's knowledge of the customer's preferences, socioeconomic status, and other parameters. The global electronic village as the global electronic bazaar!

There was someone who got caught increasing prices for iOS users.

Travel sites are the worst for this.

Which sites exactly? I’ve never seen it actually happen and I’d like to experiment.

Travel sites are worst about it but I've seen it on Amazon which claimed it was a mistake. Smaller stores don't typically do it, but with an iPhone and an Android, one on VPN sometimes you can catch the site being funny about pricing.

Are any of the websites actually the official website of the hotel/airline/car rental?

I’ve never even seen a lower price advertised on a third party website compared to the official website of the vendor.

I've only seen this on third party sites. Never in direct sites. I've definitely seen cheaper prices on third party rather than direct sites on more than one occasion.

Netflix charges differently based on location which is a proxy for those.

Amazon offers multiple shipping option for various prices.

Location pricing was done before the internet and ad tracking. Some countries have richer people who can afford to pay more for luxuries.

Tons of sites do variable pricing, especially in the travel sector. Typically discriminating by device, OS etc.

And you'll often get a discount coupon after staying on a shopping site for a few minutes without interacting.

I’ve read rumors about this, but I’ve never experienced it on any hotel/airline/car rental’s website. I know people that work at chain hotels and they set the price, or the computer does based on shopping the other hotels around it, but never based on who is searching.

I’ve tried searching flight prices by remoting into someone else’s computer far away and comparing to mine, and I’ve always gotten the same priced even though I’m not logged in or anything. Ditto for car rentals.

I don’t use travel agents so I can’t say for any other kind of sites.

You can search for Wordpress plugins that do the above and then look at their documentation to learn the rules. Shopify has a setting you can enable to email a 15% off code to anyone who adds and item to their cart but doesn’t check out.

I meant in the travel sector, as the previous poster pointed it out specifically. For retail yes, all you usually need to do is add something to cart and then leave and in the next few days they email you a discount code.

I'll frequently get quoted different prices on travel sites when using different computers or after turning incognito mode on.

Are any of those websites the airline/hotel/car rental company itself? If so, which ones?

That's just abandoned cart recovery, which is pretty ubiquitous. I'd say it's very different than presenting different prices to different users.

I've definitely experienced a case (I think on hotels.com) where I was using two different computers to look for the same room, and they both displayed consistently different prices. I think on the more expensive one I was already logged into my account, so that may have made the difference.

But that’s a travel agent, not the hotel itself. And the big hotels brands guarantee they offer the lowest price on their website to their rewards members since they don’t have to pay commission to travel agents.

Unless it’s an opaque rate where you’re bidding for hotel rooms and don’t know which hotel you will get, but you’re forced to buy it once you bid. But I’m talking about publicly advertised prices.

Being that all publicly sold fares for plane tickets from the airline must have their price registered in advance of the sale, I agree I find it suspect in that case too.

Maybe sites like Priceline or similar places might do stuff like described, but I very highly doubt airlines do, unless they just don’t show availability in some fare codes to specific customers (which I also doubt, with the possible exception of elite status members).

I have a funny (IMO) anecdote: I used to be a cashier at a major regional chain. I once had a customer complain that an item rang up higher than the MSRP printed on it. I told the customer, 'MSRP stands for the average suggested retail price and that because it's an average, sometimes the actual price will be higher.' The customer didn't say anything else and bought the item (didn't ask for a manager or anything!).

In Germany the equivalent is called translated 'non-binding price suggestion'.

In Australia, it's called 'recommended retail price'.

And the exact wording might have been chosen to work around anti price fixing laws?

And I assume it is all one long word?

Edit: Apparently it is two long words instead: Unverbindliche Preisempfehlung

> 'MSRP stands for the average suggested retail price and that because it's an average, sometimes the actual price will be higher.'

It stands for manufacturer's suggested retail price, but I guess your point stands because it is only a _suggested_ price. Still, I can't remember ever being charged more than MSRP, although perhaps it's happened without me noticing.

Apparently you didn't buy a high end GPU card during the Bitcoin craze :-)

I did near the height of the frenzy (Jan '18), but I got lucky and got it for MSRP. That's a great example though, I remember seeing retailers charging 2-3x MSRP.

It's pretty common in Asia, especially if it's in a trading shop or importer.

99 cent arizona ice tea cost 2 bucks out here. : /

But the price is on the can though :)

It still beats drinking samurai brand soft drinks

It isn’t common but it can happen if something is in short supply with high demand. There can be regional differences too. I’ve seen the same item sell for more in a place with a higher cost of living than a place with lower cost of living 50 miles away, at the same retail chain. In those cases, the retailer is trying to squeeze additional margin to compensate for other factors that my run down profit.

It’s like how a 20oz bottle of Diet Coke might cost $1.00 in a small town, $1.25 on average, and $2.00 or even $2.25 in NYC.

We sell a brand who has MSRP and MAP at the same price, the margin is too low after freight, so we price it at approximately 25% above MSRP.

In most American states the customer is entitled, by law, to the lowest advertised or marked price. The store must honor that price.

In some cities, they're required to give the customer the item for free if the price at the register doesn't match what's on the product or on the shelf. My grandmother was notorious for holding up checkout lines for this reason.

Citation needed-I think this is an urban legend. Because it doesn’t account for innocent mistakes, which could be made with no knowledge of the stores. For example, an inexperienced staff member putting the wrong labels on.

This certainly applies to grocery stores in Massachusetts, and is even printed up on an informational placard tacked to the register, so that the customer can easily read it.

Basically: First item free if under $10, or gets a $10 discount, rest of items of same product at lowest price. Does not apply if lowest price is 50% or lower than the highest price (which seems too high to me, given that there are legitimate sales at that markdown level.)

I always assumed that was the store's way of preventing cashiers from overcharging and pocketing the extra, but sure enough: https://blog.mass.gov/consumer/massconsumer/the-price-is-rig...

It's to protect consumers who see what looks like a good price and don't notice the discrepancy. (A friend of mine whose budget is very tight has been caught out by this a few times, and is the one who pointed the law out to me.)

For a while, my closest grocery store (part of a local chain) was terrible at keeping pricing information up to date. Occasionally I'd get surprise discounts, but more frequently I'd get charged too much instead. I was going to buy those things anyway, but on the principle of not letting the store screw people over, I started being a stickler about it. And guess what? The store shaped up.

(I assume the mechanism was that the increase in the number of price overrides at the register caused a review, and the store manager allocated more employee-hours to keeping prices in order, instead of treating it as an optional task.)

Citation needed-I think this is an urban legend

Citation (Wal-Mart): https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/03/21/wal-mart-to-pay-2...

Citation (Walgreens): https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/walgreens-to-pay-m...

Citation (Whole Foods): https://www.organicauthority.com/buzz-news/whole-foods-marke...

Citation (Best Buy): https://www.cnbc.com/id/18846852

I could easily pull up several hundred more, but I'm on a VPN routed to another country and having a hard time getting U.S. news results.

Keep going then, because literally none of those mention a "law" about getting the item for free on a mismatch of charged price and advertised price.

From the very first link:

"Consumers should feel confident that the price on the shelf will be the same price they are charged at the cash register,” said Attorney General Harris. “Californians who shop at Wal-Mart should know that they have the right to ask for the appropriate discount.”

Are you under the impression that the attorney general of California is making up consumer rights that do not exist as law?

"12024.2. (a) It is unlawful for any person, at the time of sale of a commodity, to do any of the following: (1) Charge an amount greater than the price, or to compute an amount greater than a true extension of a price per unit, that is then advertised, posted, marked, displayed, or quoted for that commodity. (2) Charge an amount greater than the lowest price posted on the commodity itself or on a shelf tag that corresponds to the commodity, notwithstanding any limitation of the time period for which the posted price is in effect."

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

Right, the store must honor their advertised price... however, they are not required to give away mispriced products. That would be ridiculous.

The section of law you quoted says that the retailer can't charge a higher price than that on the shelf. So, if someone approaches them willing to buy the item at the advertised price, they could:

a) agree to sell at the advertised price (legal)

b) agree to sell only at a higher price (illegal)

c) refuse to sell

If they choose (c), then they're not in violation of the excerpt you quoted, as they're not 'charging' at all.

> Are you under the impression that the attorney general of California is making up consumer rights that do not exist as law?

Without getting into the competency of the current holder of that office...

What you are quoting is criminal law for retail in general. Certain chains that have a track record of overcharging are under consent decrees that specify protections for consumers that go beyond regular law, such as a free first item.

> Are you under the impression that the attorney general of California is making up consumer rights that do not exist as law?

I've no idea what led you to this, nor why you quoted and posted something unrelated to the charge that you've yet to show any law that requires sellers to GIVE THE CONSUMER THE ITEM, FREE OF CHARGE, when mislaeled.

I know the relevant laws (possibly because I've been a retail business owner,) I'll actually cite them. It's called Truth in Advertising and Marketing, and is governed by the FTC at the federal level and also enforced at the state level where more appropriate. To violate it would give you a charge of False and Misleading Advertising. It is a secondary derivative of the Lanham Act, which also prohibits false advertising.

Airlines got especially busted for price advertisements, and are now required to abide by Federal laws written JUST FOR THEM regarding their pricing advertising practices - 14 CFR § 399.84

This conversation is not about the price in your own ads but the MSRP, or the average price across retailers, or anything similar that depends on your competitors.

Are you required by law to price match?

No, you are not, because it is a SUGGESTED price. You can walk into a Wal-Mart, see a First Act guitar where the box clearly says "MSRP $99" and you'll see $129 on the actual shelf price tag below the item.

What about accidents?

I think morally we should agree that there is a difference between fraudulent pricing and price errors. Are you actually in violation if you accidentally advertise or label an incorrect price?

https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/us-retail-pric...

Some states, yes, even for a minor glitch in pricing.

> Federal laws written JUST FOR THEM

This isn't because the airlines were/are particularly egregious about false advertising, but, because the cost of a ticket is a particularly complicated equation and what, exactly, should be required to be included in a displayed price needed to be harmonized across the entire industry and I would perhaps argue needs to be harmonized further.

E.g. Delta sells a ticket on a route for $500 all-inclusive. Southwest advertises the same ticket for $300 but doesn't include $300 in taxes/fees/surcharges/whatever in that price. The Southwest ticket is more expensive but in the absence of standardization of what must be included in the advertised price, neither is inherently right or wrong.

The whole system there probably requires some updating now too, with some carriers now doing things like not including any checked baggage, or not including reserved seating.

Back in the late 2000's when I worked cashier at Wal-Mart in Alberta we did this. There was a threshold, something like 20% difference and it was free.

In all cases the customer was entitled to the lowest advertised price, be that in our flyer or the shelf. Rarely was the issue flyers. Most common cause of mis-marked prices was a stocker not updating the listed price on the shelf. Or an old price tag getting left behind the new price, and thus disappearing.

If anything this was a quality check, it gave the store a chance to catch mistakes without burning customers.

One source of supposed fraud was price tag printers getting left out. In theory a customer could use the printers to print up their own fake price tags, then request the fake price. Hence lectures from security on never leaving printers on shelf's unattended.

In Quebec we do have theses laws.

https://www.educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/price-labelling-and-a...

One of the exboyfriend of my sister was using this law to much to get cheap movies for free at Walmart.

I found a whole untrimmed beef tenderloin for $0.50 at Costco. The employees refused to let me buy it and ran to the back to get the rest of the incorrectly priced ones out of the cooler.

I was younger and didn’t press the issue. Now that I’m older I would’ve pressed the issue and grabbed the whole cooler but I don’t really want to get someone fired.

Who would you complain to if they refused to let you buy it?

Costco is membership based so they could just revoke your membership.

I'm not sure testing the law on that would have been something that worth it for them for a bit of meat. The impact on their PR would awful too.

Who would you complain to if they refused to let you buy it?

Your state attorney general. It usually has a consumer fraud department for this sort of thing. If your city is large enough, there may be an equivalent city office.

For things like gas, it's often the county or state department of weights and measures.

Insisting on buying at the mistaken price might have been legal, but it would still be a major jerk move.

> but it would still be a major jerk move.

Why? Genuinely curious.

Well, whichever worker accidentally mislabeled it could have a really bad day, depending on how much money the store ended up losing.

That's fair.

To me it's basically stealing. The misprinted price is clearly not what the store intended, which means it would not be a consensual transaction.

I'm in turn genuinely curious how this is not obvious.

Would you be comfortable doing the same to someone who accidentally omitted a zero on their used car sales price on Craigslist?

How is this downvoted? Is capitalising on someone else's innocent mistake at all costs really the high road to take here?

I'm sure it's some HN algo why I can't reply your reply asking for citations so replying to here instead.

None of the links in your reply support the statement "In most American states the customer is entitled, by law, to the lowest advertised or marked price. The store must honor that price."

Just because I looked this up for another response, here's California's law:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

Westchester County, New York:

"3. It shall be a violation of this code: a. To stamp, tag, label or otherwise mark any item of consumer goods at a selling price greater than the selling price advertised or displayed for that item. b. To stamp, tag, label or otherwise mark more than one (1) selling price upon an item of consumer goods offered for sale in Westchester County unless the prior selling price is unmistakably deleted or obliterated or is otherwise marked so as to indicate clearly the prior selling price is not the current selling price. c. To sell or offer for sale any consumer goods or services at a greater price than the price displayed or advertised therefor."

https://consumer.westchestergov.com/consumer-laws/consumer-c...

I could be misinterpreting those laws but they still do not seem to support your point. They aren't about MSRP. They are about your own ads. MSRP is $10, you can advertise $15, if you then charge $20 you broke the law by charging different than you advertised. If you charged $15 you'd be fine even though it's above the MSRP

> In most American states the customer is entitled, by law, to the lowest advertised or marked price. The store must honor that price.

Advertised by whom? If you mean advertised by the very store in which the customer is trying to purchase the good, that makes a lot of sense (in view of consumer protection /truth in advertising).

However, the previous comment was about the MSRP - the manufacturer suggested retail price. While that's not an average per se, neither is it a mandatory limit. As the name suggests, it's a suggestion.

The comment is pretty clear that the price was printed on it.

> I once had a customer complain that an item rang up higher than the MSRP printed on it.

They would have to put a sticker on top of that then.

How can you have an ‘average suggested retail price’? There’s only one manufacturer to suggest a price so what multiple values would they be averaging?

> The customer didn't say anything else and bought the item (didn't ask for a manager or anything!).

A very patient man then, I would have asked you why you thought an acronym beginning with M stood for average.

Aww, don't be 'mean'...

Is there data about that? Growing up in the 90s I thought we could usually by something for less than the MSRP. When I watched the show in the 90s I always felt the actual prices were high.

Your observation is consistent with the parent comment. The article says, "accuracy of people’s guesses sharply decreased from the 1970s to the 2000s". Presumably by the 1990s, stores had already begun to sell well below the MSRP.

Precisely. We are much more conditioned to shop and compare with places that undercut MSRP, that many people would never run across anything selling at the actual MSRP.

Even if you’re trying to do “research” to see how much something costs in advance, the MSRP is often obfuscated, even ok the manufacturers site.

MSRP has always been a bit of a scam b/c it’s just showing what the suggested price is and the amount of markup between wholesale and selling to end users is variable — some manufacturers have historically been protective about what the price could be, but others have cared less. And now that many manufacturers sell direct to consumers themselves, even their own MSRP is often “slashed” as they sell at a lower price to compete with other retailers.

Back in the day, with only a few outlets, it was hard to get something less than MSRP.

Ummm... no. Not even remotely close.

I find it strange and mildly amusing how so many people in this thread have positioned themselves as experts on this, and have subscribed to some kind of fantasy that before the 1990's that everyone paid MSRP and that we now live in an enlightened internet-powered wonderland of rampant competition and low low prices. These must be people who weren't alive much in the last century.

I spent many years shopping in the last century. The best you could do for price comparison was to scour local paper for deals at nearby stores, or if you were lucky, the sears catalog.

You didn’t have instant access to the best worldwide price.

International shipping took a lot longer and was more expensive back then. I remember going through computer parts catalogs in the mid '90s to find the best prices for the parts I needed to assemble a new desktop.

Exactly. So no one did it and your local store didn’t have to compete with those international prices.

You didn't spend as many years as my mother did.

Also best world wide price is a fiction.

This comment breaks the guidelines by being snarky and shallow. It would be much better to instead provide some information about what the world is/was actually like (in your experience). How did pricing vis-a-vis MSRP actually work? What do you actually remember about it? This would be much more interesting than just directing belittling rhetoric at someone else for getting it wrong (in your experience).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

MSRP seems only used for bonus/loyality programs these days. where the price after adding your overpaid vouchers still has a hard time competing with market prices.

Between ebay, craigslist, goodwill, etc., I rarely pay anywhere near full price for most manufactured goods.

As a society, we've built more than enough stuff. We just have to redistribute it properly to the people who want it. And the cost of that is way less than the cost of producing it in the first place.

Wasn't "The Price Is Right" changed several years back specifically to make the game less predictable-- using less common products, for example, or changing the options on cars? https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-p...

They used to repeat the same products over and over, and now they try to never repeat a product or do variations of the product at different prices.

For the most entertaining version of the answer, watch this really cool movie (1) with math, intrigue, and daytime television all rolled into one. It’s called The Perfect Bid. (Not affiliated just a fan.) I think I watched it on Amazon or Netflix.

1. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6854248/

Doesn't inflation directly lead to a decrease in the percentage of the likeliness you are going to be able to hit the correct number for the same kind of products?

Also I think Apple and China kinda destroyed the whole "relative value, everything only has a 5% markup compared to their cost" price evaluation model. You know the thing that used to allow people like our Grandparents to be able to afford things like the American Dream on a single poor person's salary.

That's my theory anyways. Or maybe people are just getting lazy and not studying as hard as they used to. Or perhaps Bob Barker finally kicked his cocaine habit and no longer needs to keep taking the bribes?

Bob Barker hasn't hosted the show in over a decade.

I worked in the Casino Technology industry and learned that Casino's generally prefer non-skill-based games in their game product line. This makes sense when predicting the financial outlook, based on customer behavior and spend profiles. In my opinion, in order to 'give out' less to their game participants, they most likely provided ways to randomize the win-ratio so that consumers win less, so it is less "skill-based"

Where you working in America?

My understanding was that in the US casino games were required to be non-skill based. Is that not the case? Or maybe it differs by state jurisdiction?

Federally the only laws for US gambling are about online/interstate gambling. The rest of the laws are state/local laws which vary greatly.

There is a bit of skill involved in Blackjack, and a lot in of it in Poker. Some slot machines also allow you to manually stop the reels in a way that can influence the outcome, though I don't think they are common in US casinos.

The laws are usually the opposite: games of chance are more tightly regulated than games of skill.

It's the other way around, if a game can be shown to be skills based, they don't fall under gambling regulations. This is why a lot of gambling type games that issue tickets and target kids are legal.

video poker, blackjack, and poker can be made to have positive expected value with enough skill. Also roulette I suppose, if you go down the Thorpe and Shannon route of putting a computer in your shoe.

How about: "People don't care as much about the TV show anymore, so they have less practice before participating"

From the research: 'contestants have increasingly underestimated the true price of the good over time with an increasingly greater magnitude, suggesting that individuals have become more inattentive to prices.'

Does it suggest that? Or does it suggest that underestimating is a better strategy?

Article mistakes the actual price you pay for something with the manufacturer's (fictional) suggested retail price.

I loved that a guy was able to win a Tesla because their pricing is so transparent. Yeah the prices change often but at any given time the price you get is the price everyone gets, no haggling.

I would guess it's cumulative inflation of the nominal value: if something is 500 and then 750 later there's more numbers to guess in the space altogether.

The effect is measured in percentages.

Is there any app that allows to track prices in real stores over time? Something like CamelCamelCamel for real stores (not only US) would be great, I'd be down to input prices manually if I could track them over time. Something more than an excel sheet tho.

Inflation, ya Boomer. You didn't notice because 20 years ago you purchased the last of all the appliances and things you'd need until your death day.

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