Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ (nytimes.com) 56
A study this week has found that shoppers using Instacart are often charged different prices for identical products at the same store at the same time, even when selecting in-store pickup rather than delivery. The Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy group, and Consumer Reports organized nearly 200 volunteers across four cities to simultaneously check prices on 20 grocery items. Price differences appeared on nearly three-quarters of the items tested. In one test, more than 40 participants selected the same Safeway in Washington, D.C. and the same brand of eggs. Prices ranged from $3.99 to $4.79 -- a 20% spread. At a Target in North Canton, Ohio, Skippy peanut butter was $2.99 for some shoppers and $3.59 for others. The full 20-item basket varied by about 7% within each store.
An Instacart spokeswoman said retailers on its platform set their own prices and that some run short-term, randomized pricing tests. The company said tests were "never based on personal or behavioral characteristics." Instacart acquired Eversight, an AI-driven pricing optimization company, in 2022. A Target spokesman said the company is not affiliated with Instacart and bears no responsibility for prices on the platform. Safeway and parent company Albertson's declined to comment.
An Instacart spokeswoman said retailers on its platform set their own prices and that some run short-term, randomized pricing tests. The company said tests were "never based on personal or behavioral characteristics." Instacart acquired Eversight, an AI-driven pricing optimization company, in 2022. A Target spokesman said the company is not affiliated with Instacart and bears no responsibility for prices on the platform. Safeway and parent company Albertson's declined to comment.
I laughed (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the most American thing I have seen this year.
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This is the most American thing I have seen this year.
Ironically, American Quakers [wikipedia.org] are the reason for stable pricing [npr.org] from sale to sale to begin with, so, I would definitely not call that the most American thing normally. But, this year, the Republican president is sponsoring national ownership of everything, so I can't really say departures from the norm in the US are odd...
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I watched the video too, but they didn't actually seem to acknowledge "surge pricing"?
They explicitly said "people tried to purchase X at the same time" - and the point of the algorithm at its most basic function, is to automatically apply a supply/demand curve. There are 5x of an item on the shelf, 4 people try to buy it within a few minutes of each other, there is no such thing as "instant" on a computer, each of these transactions will serialize, and the price will go up because demand hit hard all of a
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A lot depends on how much you believe their explanation. I don't. In fact, I suspect the person making the explanation didn't know the reason, and either invented what they thought would sound good, or just read something someone else handed them.
Corporations don't have a "central mind" that knows all the things they are doing and why they do them. To get a reasoned answer takes a long time, and usually isn't what they want to deliver anyway.
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Surge pricing? eBay did it first!
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It is legal to do so in the EU, BUT you must make the full process that generated that price transparent and you must state that it is a personalized price:
https://europa.eu/youreurope/c... [europa.eu]
I guess that pretty much kills the idea in the EU as it relies of customers not knowing. Anyways, have fun with your anti-consumer version of capitalism! So much winning! Just not for you...
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Exactly what I was thinking about US capitalism.
If there is any "personalized pricing", I would tend to believe that I am always being ripped.
We need an app that aggregates prices across different users at different times and displays a [Min Max] price history for each item over a period of time, like a month or so. That way you know if you are being ripped or not.
Online things are nice ways to apply all sorts of algorithms to ultimately rip customers.
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I shop at Vons in San Diego. Part of Albertsons. They have an app that you can use to get digital coupons but could also be used to shop with for pickup or delivery. You don't have to use the app to shop at the store. Anyone can walk in and buy stuff.
If there is any "personalized pricing", I would tend to believe that I am always being ripped.
So I have a handful of items I regularly buy and I don't actually care about the price. I get a personalized price on a few these items roughly every other week but sometimes every week. The personalized price is almost always less then the sale price. In the e
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Indeed. Obviously they do not want you to realize you are getting shafted. Looks like the algorithms are good enough now to successfully create that impression.
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If I got the sale price that was advertised, what's the problem? Sometimes, I get a better price.
Killing personalized prices would HURT me, as, if you read my post, I'm clearly getting a better price on items I frequently buy.
I'm guessing you think everyone should get every item at the cheapest possible price every single week, right?
I see this as I'm being given a "get you in the door price" because I always shop their.
At the end of the day, I never pay more then the advertised price. So therefore I'm not
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This is the most American thing I have seen this year.
Sadly it's infecting the rest of the world.
A lot of things that you get quoted will change price depending on location, time, browser/OS (user agent), IP, et al. I'm thinking specifically of flights, accommodation, insurance, and other things without a strictly advertised price which would mean they become subject to advertising laws and consumer rights.
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For Aldi, which uses Instacart, I assumed it was because there is no 'fee' for pickup, but they have to pay someone to shop for you. I consider the difference a convenience fee.
That said, by not shopping in store, I end up getting only what is on my list and end up paying FAR LESS than I would if I was wandering around.
Exploitable? (Score:2)
Re:Exploitable? (Score:4, Interesting)
The lower prices are still too high. It's a price maximization test, not a market optimization.
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If it's tied to anything external all you can do is try to hide your identity or pretend to be whatever gets the lowest prices. Really good tracking or detailed profiles might be hard to get around, but I suspect most approaches are still rather naive. This isn't anything new. Some years ago there was a big story about airfare prices being different depending on what b
they markup the in store price so maybe not (Score:2)
they markup the in store price so maybe not
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It is always cheaper in person at the store. Instacart has a mark up, plus fees. Unless you can somehow find loss leaders on Instacart, just show up at the store yourself for the best price.
I do find Instacart's inventory helpful - Instacart seems to know every store's inventory. If I want to know which store has something right now I check Instacart's inventory and then go to the store myself.
Caveat Emptor (Score:3, Interesting)
The best thing is, if you never go into the store, you'll never know! What a great scam. Bravo.
$100 more for a TV if you're in the parking lot... (Score:4, Informative)
https://consumerwatchdog.org/privacy/new-report-details-how-companies-use-surveillance-to-charge-different-prices-for-the-same-item/ [consumerwatchdog.org]
Punishing people as usual (Score:2)
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Re: Punishing people as usual (Score:2)
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Why should someone deliver to you for free?
Because that increases sales, like what happened at Domino's. Of course, even Domino's delivery wasn't really free but just hidden in the nominal cost of the pizza.
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In my experience, the delivery services increase per-item costs as well as charging a delivery fee, a service fee, a driver tip, and more. Something that's $10 on the shelf might be $12 on the site (which also increases sales tax), plus a $2.99 service fee plus a $5.99 delivery, plus a driver tip.
I have no problem with them charging itemized fees, so I can see and make my decisions, but hiding additional delivery company profit in per-item fees should be banned.
Re: Punishing people as usual (Score:2)
It's also a way to get around the prohibition on setting different prices for SNAP recipients. For example you can buy over the net from Costco with SNAP on Instacart but not directly. And the prices are higher there than on their site.
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The big problem with this is that the user is already paying a delivery fee which would imply to many that they've settled that part and are now paying store prices. Pushing up prices on what's being bought while also charging a delivery fee is deceptive, particularly since they don't declare the mark up let alone tell the user how much extra they're paying.
DoorDash pulls the same scam. I remember a number of years ago on one of the incredibly rare moments I decided to use the app I noticed I was eligible f
Delivered groceries should be cheaper. (Score:2)
You do not get to choose the product and the product could easily be from a grocery store 100 miles away.
There is no good reason why grocery delivery in the super expensive cities - New York, Zurich, etc. should be expensive. It should be cheaper. Grocery stores on the outskirts of the city could easily set things up so that they deliver food at a steep discount to the high priced grocery stories in them becuase they could pay literally half the rent.
But Demand is so high for food and the inhabitant are
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But Demand is so high for food and the inhabitant are so used to paying high prices
Not "used to", "have to". The inhabitants bought into the "no car, depend on mass transit" lifestyle. Now they can't shop at the big box grocery stores, let alone drive to the one a mile farther away to take advantage of a good sale. So far, working exactly to local merchant's plans. Soon, the big box stores will close (they need to draw customers from a larger area to survive) and everyone will depend on the corner bodegas for beer and ultra-processed junk food.
Welcome to the food desert. I hope Mamdami's
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That video reminds me of my local post office, got to love government run business!
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A relative used to live in DC, a few blocks from a certain Safeway store. Community slang was "the Socialist Safeway", because they were usually out of stock on whatever one wanted to buy. Moving to Virginia at an age too early to allow me in the door, so looking inside from the sidewalk, the local Virginia ABC (government liquor store) was a grim sight, with the Government Printing Office bookstore in DC running a close second is dismalness.
"They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan
behavioral segmentation (Score:2)
Behavioral segmentation is a long-time favorite of machine learning/data science product developers. Clustering users on behavior without using any private or protected information like race, gender, age, etc may have similar outcomes to just using private data. Instacart is another terrible Y-Combinator "disruptor" that is trying to solve one (non)problem without thinking about all the other problems it creates.
What people are forgetting (Score:2)
This Even Happens for In-Store Shopping (Score:3)
CVS drug stores sell two CVS-branded ointments that fight fungus. One is for athlete's foot, and the other is for jock itch. A tube of the jock itch ointment costs $2 more than a tube of the athlete's foot ointment. A close examination of the tubes reveals that they contain the same amounts of the same strength of the same product. They both have instructions for both kinds of fungus. Other than the names and the prices, they are the same.
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Since usually the exact formulations are trade secrets, the part that is not the active ingredient might have different proportions of components between the two products. But, they probably don't; the price is determined by the rental cost of the space the product occupies on the shelf, i.e. how many they sell.
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CVS drug stores sell two CVS-branded ointments that fight fungus. One is for athlete's foot, and the other is for jock itch. A tube of the jock itch ointment costs $2 more than a tube of the athlete's foot ointment. A close examination of the tubes reveals that they contain the same amounts of the same strength of the same product. They both have instructions for both kinds of fungus. Other than the names and the prices, they are the same.
There was a similar case a decade ago in Australia where the same painkiller was sold under different labels as "headache" treatment, "neck pain" treatment etc. It was all the same ingredient at the same strength, in different packets with different prices: https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
The Australian consumer watchdog was not impressed.
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Can't speak for the person you're replying to, of course, but there's a condition (at least one I know of) that causes people to be particularly susceptible to fungal infection. As you what you do to get it or avoid it, that's probably not a thing aside from maybe doing everything you can to boost your general immune system (diet, etc) and hoping that compensates some.
So what (Score:1)
reset your cookies or use a private browser, most companies won't know who you are. Those who are stupid enough not to price check deserve to be gouged.
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But most don't use it to track prices, I have seen several instances where I've opened up the same page in a private tab and the price is different.
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They simply ask you to login to add stuff to the cart. Once you login, they know you.
Law of one price? (Score:1)
If you drop rational pricing theory, why hold to old wives' tales about inflation?
If prices are noisy to at least plus-or-minus 7%, what does 3% inflstion mean? Could inflstion stats be noise, resulting from a random price at the particulsr time the survey was taken?
If inflation is noisy, why not adapt to it using indexation instead of sticking to ancient fantasies about the quantity theory of money?
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Inflation is a bogus number, used by the govt. to fool the public. If you take the inflation series over the last 20 years and multiply it all up, it simply does not reflect the ground reality of the prices I paid for most things 20 years ago vs today. Things are way more expensive than what inflation wants us to believe.
Re: Law of one price? (Score:1)
If you'd bought the S&P 500, would returns have outpaced inflation? So why not just index all incomes to nominal inflation, if inflation is just psychological noise?
News? (Score:2)
How the fuck is this news?
The food is more expensive than in store. Then, you have to pay a delivery fee. And then, you're expected to tip.
Total purchase is ridiculously expensive. No one should be using this, most especially the peasants. These people will complain about inflation and food prices and then turn around and order from Instacart. It's ridiculous.
But, Instacart et al user and revenue numbers just keep climbing.
https://www.businessofapps.com... [businessofapps.com]
Re: News? (Score:1)
Did you blip over the part that said "even when selecting in-store pickup rather than delivery" in your zeal to express a pre-existing mood?
Half-Whit (Score:2)
Did you blip over the part that said "even when selecting in-store pickup rather than delivery" in your zeal to express a pre-existing mood?
No I didn't.
You'll figure it out, though. Don't rush. It'll come.
Are you telling me Instacart isn't free? (Score:2)
Wait, I thought everything on the web was supposed to be free, and not affect prices in any way. Now you're telling me there's a price premium for convenience?