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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

We need laws to require special labelling with the price per net pound or price per net kiloggram clearly shown, and the previous price. Something like:

  $2.99/Kg (since 18/09/2023)
  $2.79/Kg (previous price)

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Safeway is somewhat insidious with things like this. They'll have a relative price (per pound/oz) for one size of an item, and then for the same item, different size, they'll use a different metric (per packet/slice, etc.) to make them not (easily) directly comparable.

> Safeway is somewhat insidious with things like this. They'll have a relative price (per pound/oz) for one size of an item, and then for the same item, different size, they'll use a different metric (per packet/slice, etc.) to make them not (easily) directly comparable.

Unless there is a really strong pattern, I think that might be a situation were you shouldn't assume malice when stupidity will do.

I think it's quite likely they get the data from that from some feed who's ultimate source (or sources!) is someone keying in whatever's most convenient without any organizational consistency controls between items.

IIRC, every package has to have a weight/volume measure, but that doesn't make the most sense as the "unit" for many products, and there's even room for legitimate disagreement on what the right measure should be (e.g. should you list a package of sliced cheese by the slice, to use the unit the consumer is probably thinking in, or by the oz, to make it comparable to non-sliced cheese).

Such ”incompetence, not malice” errors can be trivially solved by defaulting to the consumer receiving a discount on the item in the event of variations in how the items on the shelves are labeled. Boom, you now have an army of validation specialists going around checking the consistency of your labeling. A very low-cost solution if your errors are truly good-faith and infrequent, you are paying pennies per person-hour!

Some states offer a “scanner bounty” when items transitioned from sticker labeling to scanner pricing with only shelf tags, because vendors would often not update the shelf tags or item tags appropriately when they changed the scanner database. Find an error and receive 10x the difference up to $5.

https://www.michigan.gov/ag/consumer-protection/consumer-ale...

You will rapidly find stores becoming less incompetent overnight once they have an incentive to be. It’s not that they’re not capable of being competent, there just isn’t a legal requirement or a market incentive to be competent. A law without a penalty for (knowing or un-knowing) noncompliance is just a polite request.

They are profiting and thriving off the tendency for good-natured people to adopt the “incompetence, not malice” mindset and then accept that as a normal standard of behavior. After all, what can be done? Sho ga nai.

Most stores in the US do this, and have for decades. It is definitely intentional.

Presumably the people that write the integrations shop in grocery stores, and have noticed the issue.

You would think so; on the other hand, I just met someone who works for the search team of a major search engine but hadn't noticed that their results listings had turned to garbage over the last few years.

These companies negotiate everything, including where the boxes will be located on the shelves, the angles they will be placed at, which competitors will be allowed, the pricing schemes, etc. They will never go “well for the price per unit, let’s just go with whatever random unit our internal systems spit out”.

Its extremely convenient that the mandated data that helps customers cut through the millions they spend on marketing and pricing schemes is the one that is completely uncared for.

Kroger/HarrisTeeter too…

It is definitely malice because they use every unit imaginable to avoid allowing you to compare within an item type (kg, lbs, oz, g, fl oz, “unit” (where unit = package))

Nothing that a law to stick to single unit can't fix!

Yeah I’m guessing there must be a law about putting the unit prices already or else why would they even have them, so it seems an update might be useful.

I can remember using them like 10 years ago…

Thinking about it a little more I bet it is very difficult to legally define a product type.

They manage to do it for sales tax.

They could go by whichever the product itself shows most prominently, or require both units if 2 units are shown.

In France, at least the law requires showing the current price per kilogram. So what Carrefour is doing is highlighting that this has changed compared to the previous price.

This has been harmonized across the EU for, I think, 25 years.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

I think the former is the default in the EU/UK. I do find it really helpful, especially when comparing different brands or sizes.

It also allowed me to spot some shady pricing practices, the recent one: dishwasher tablets are 10% cheaper when buying a bunch of smaller packages, rather than a big one. I still buy the latter as it results in less waste but it pisses me off to know how unnecessary and bad for the environment these practices are.

Be careful to double check, in my experience, most of the time it's a labeling mistake...

nope, not in that case!

Ontario (and maybe all of Canada?) has the former. Adding the previous price would be nice, but I wonder if it can be games by changing prices frequently.

In US as well..

In EU, by law you are supposed to show the reference price (lowest price in last 30 days pre reduction) in small print. Different implementations in different countries but, at least for me, it does what is supposed to do.

>but I wonder if it can be games by changing prices frequently.

Could change it to "show last year of price info". In fact, make it a lineplot (with standardized design).

Lots of UK supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsburys have Price/Kg for different packages and products.

It makes comparing between products much easier.

Especially that all-important "price per 100 sheets" for toilet paper!

Or a graph of the price per unit over the last 1-3 years.

They would probably change the SKU so the comparison is harder.

That would manifest as a "price per unit" starting only recently, so immediately appear sus if you were buying the same product for a while.

Forcing an SKU change to have to translate to a "clearly labeled name change as well" would also help.

I get annoyed for similar reasons when nutritional information on a product is “per serving” and the serving size is arbitrary.

Oh, it’s only 4 grams of sugar per serving. Oh, a serving is 1 bite.

Required viewing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRMcZhqlVpE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grc_pFJG8T0

In theory, the serving side is supposed to be standard across brands and package sizes, so that you can compare brands.

I wish they would require a second column that is per ounce (for everything) so you could compare different foods.

Also, they should have to write everything to two significant figures. There are massive rounding errors on most labels.

2.5 servings per container.

Some would just raise it to $2.98 on September 17th.

Some US states do this. I think Connecticut does, for one.

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