Japanese restaurants: "not charging tourists more, just charging locals less"
cnn.com
cnn.com
[1] https://www.idscanner.com/knowledge-base/coverage-chart/
Privacy? What's that, and why would we want it?
And that’s without even getting into the weeds around the fact that there is a non-insignificant number of US citizens born and raised here without an ID (hence the endless controversies around proposals to implement a mandatory voter ID requirement for voting, which pop up every election cycle).
I wonder if anyone has made a list of such establishments so that tourists could avoid unfair price gouging/being rorted while on holiday.
It's amazing folks write off treating customers unfairly just because their from a different town and a "tourist". Gross af.
Charging what the market will bear is a core capitalist principle and seems like good business to me.
Adding reply since I’m rate limited: I understand the “reality” with things like cars, but I’m asking if that’s what you want. A society where everything requires constant negotiation is not just exhausting but leaves lots of room for discrimination. Also regarding public utilities - I believe California recently proposed discriminatory pricing for utilities.
But we're discussing commerce here and in commerce, prices are rarely the same for everyone.
I suppose the equivalent of not buying the T-shirt would be not traveling to touristy destinations.
> Astounding such behaviour exists in modern times
Go shopping in a Moroccan medina some time and you may really have your mind blown - "such behavior" is the whole point there; every sale is a negotiation, no fixed prices for anything. Cultures vary!
I've seen businesses in the US use the exact same "logic". It's disingenuous because there's zero logical difference between charging party A more than party B and charging party B less than party A.
> “We need (this pricing system) for cost reasons,” Yonemitsu said.
I understand the practice and genuinely think it's perfectly acceptable. But to explain it in that way is deceptive.
Staff discount. Is it really staff discount or charging regular customer more?
The iconic example from Ninotschka is man walks into a coffee shop and asks for coffee without milk, server says we’re all out of milk but have cream. Black coffee is black coffee, but what matters is the act of saying no to something.
Sublation is not equal to something not existing or being.
In either case, Joe is not attending the party, but in one scenario Joe might feel left out, insulted, etc.
So there is this universal capitalistic incentive to over price the Gweilo. Of course a way to soften this is to invoke capitalism again and allow competition to drop prices. But then this dives into things like price elasticity for tourists versus natives, and how clientele feel about tourists. If the local clientele are xenophobic the bar may even expel those they don't like much less charge a higher price, and from a capitalistic perspective this may be a tactic to retain ongoing regular customers.
I would argue this type of reasoning is seen throughout many fields. For example, anything involving money and the field of medicine has wildly all over the place made up pricing.
I would argue in all cases, this is in fact scummy, and the solution would be to mandate a clear pricing schedule (specifically with criteria on if and when different people are charged different prices) and thus open information availability to inform the customer. Tourists can then voluntarily say "I really want the food here, I'll pay the premium" or voluntarily say "on principle this is unfair, I'll vote with my feet and go to the even-priced competitor"
There are various discounts for things like senior citizens and military and such throughout, so none of this is a new idea.
Only in America. In countries with better healthcare systems, prices are fixed or very regular.
>I would argue in all cases, this is in fact scummy, and the solution would be to mandate a clear pricing schedule (specifically with criteria on if and when different people are charged different prices) and thus open information availability to inform the customer.
In the few places in Japan currently doing this, AFAICT, they do print it clearly. So far, it just seems to be a few places that then get lots of media attention.