Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

someguydave

dirtbag egalitarianism wins again

dfxm12

Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no? ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program

uejfiweun

Dude, this "surveillance pricing" is fucking bullshit. Good on them.

xnx

Pricing will become increasingly adversarial. The Internet did too much to expose price differences to customers, so sellers are responding. Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Total price often isn't exposed until you show up at the hotel.

bediger4000

One thing about "surveillance pricing" I've not seen addressed is that it destroys the usual model of demand curve. A given buyer may be judged to have the resources to pay a particular (high) price for a good, but other factors may be relevant: that buyer might need to save on good A in order to buy more of good B. The "surveillance pricer" would demand a higher price for good A because it has no information about need for good B by the buyer. That's a simplistic example, but we've been lectured about consumer choices, invisible hands of marketplaces, demand curves and marginal value for so long I'm genuinely shocked that ill-defined "predatory pricing" is the issue we see in the news.

nzach

> While the law bans setting higher prices through surveillance pricing, it doesn’t address reducing prices. If a company raises its prices for everyone, and then offers individualized discounts, “suddenly you’ve arrived at the same outcome,” McBrien says. While I agree with the intent of this law, I don't think it will be effective. If you have a system capable of jacking prices up you can just multiply this calculated delta by -1 transform that into a discount. To effectively prevent this practice you probably need to ban any kind of personal discount. I don't think we will ever see such law, nor do I think this would be a good idea.

int32_64

Is haggling an individualized price? What's stopping companies from allowing arbitrary bids on any item they can choose to reject? What if the future of the grocery store is eBay, a true nightmare.

aquir

This sounds crazy! Makes budgeting impossible! Imagine someone is on low income and doesn’t know how much the grocery shopping will cost! Whoever came up with this should be burned

evanjrowley

If stores raise their prices and cite this law as the reason why, that will fit with Maryland's overall theme as an eccessively exepensive state to live in.

culi

More Perfect did a great investigation on this and Instacart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo

orangecat

Gosh, I hope colleges don't find out about this pricing strategy.

geremiiah

Is this why grocery stores are so keen to get you to use their coupon app or hand them your phone number? I always refuse, but I always wondered what they do with the data.

crazygringo

Sadly, this article doesn't explain how this "surveillance pricing" (which is just a scarier-sounding synonym for "dynamic pricing") would even work in a physical grocery store. Like, prices are displayed on the shelf for everyone to see. And they have to match what you pay at checkout. So how the heck would a grocery store even do this? And this law is specifically around grocery stores . Like, there was a big kerfuffle a while ago about how Wendy's was going to engage in dynamic pricing so that a burger would be cheaper during the slow period at e.g. 3-4 pm, compared to the lunch rush. But that wasn't personalized. And the outcry was so strong they never did it, no law needed. Also, this law excludes loyalty programs and promotional offers, which seems to be the main way that groceries have engaged in dynamic pricing in reality -- the advertised price doesn't change, but they give certain people certain coupons. And of course, my parents were clipping coupons from newspapers decades ago, as richer people couldn't be bothered, whereas people trying to make ends meet was clip and save religiously.

josefritzishere

All 50 states should do this. It's violently anti-consumer to price in this manner.

OptionOfT

Sadly, there is no provision in this law to allow consumers to sue the companies. You have to report it, and then maybe the office of the Attorney General _might_ impose a fine on the grocery store: https://governor.maryland.gov/news/press/pages/governor-moor... > Governor Moore’s proposal builds on the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act of 2024 by specifically targeting the intersection of data surveillance and essential goods pricing. Under the new legislation, violations would be treated as an unfair or deceptive trade practice under the Maryland Consumer Protection Act. The Office of the Attorney General would enforce the measure, with merchants subject to civil penalties of up to $10,000 for a first offense and up to $25,000 for subsequent offenses. If a grocer has the finances to deploy a system like this, they're close to the size of Kroger / Walmart. These fines are way too low.

Evidlo

Do stores need minute by minute pricing? Could they just update prices at the end of the day?

rockskon

Sadly the law Maryland passed contains enough loopholes and preemptions that it is literally worse than having passed nothing at all.

bilsbie

Is it weird to be pro free market but to be against this kind of pricing? I can’t seem to square the positions.

beasthacker

I worry that increasingly sophisticated dynamic pricing could one day make it nearly impossible for anyone to get ahead.