A Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union investigation found that some grocery prices differed by as much as 23 percent per item from one Instacart customer to the next. In an inadvertently sent email, the company calls one pricing tactic “smart rounding.”
a lot of folks in all 3 🧵 are forgetting the point of food banks, that food brokers hate: grocery stores are food brokers: exploiting your habits is their entire industry.
I buy groceries at an employee owned chain that pays its people well, keeps unnecessary costs down, has a massive selection, and is consistently cheaper than almost anywhere else. It’s been interesting to see how some items have had minimal inflation while others have gone way up. And then to see those same items all massively overpriced everywhere else.
Anything I can buy there, I buy there. I spend a lot of money there. They have my undying loyalty, and all it took was for them to not be evil.
The people behind this shit? I wouldn’t piss on em if they were on fire. If they were being fed feet first into a wood chipper one by one, I’d only complain about the noise.
WinCo?
Yee boi! WinCo saving my ass out here!
Uhhhh how? Are they just not posting item prices anymore?
In an ideal world, this would be used to charge rich people more.
How do I already know it’s the exact opposite though
Lina
KahnKhan losing her position in the FTC is one of the most underrated negative consequences of the 2024 election. Sometimes I wonder if fear ofKahnKhan is why so many companies backed Trump even though wallstreet knew the economy would be healthier under Harris.Exactly what I’ve been screaming since the election. FINALLY the FTC was breaking up cartels and moving in the right direction. She was the most effective person in government for turning this country around.
First thing I thought wasn’t, “Oh shit, Trump again.” It was, “Oh shit, there’s goes Kahn, our last hope.”
Mamdami’s brought her onboard, so at least she’s still in the game!
*Khan
remember: theft of groceries is not theft
At this point, “stealing” from any sufficiently large corporation is just consumer recuperation of stolen wages and tax revenues, especially if that company finances lobbying.
It will only get worse. Did you look up symptoms for your fever? Or a toothache? Asprin is now 150% more!
Reading a recipe, and your fridge knows you’re out of milk? Price surge!
Been a while since elderly underwear was on your credit card [for your parents]? Surge it! … OR get it complimentary, with a 2 year plan to Netflix!
You don’t need to play Eve Online to know Market PvP is cutthroat, but it helps.
Fuck this future.
They should have kept the coupon racket going instead. it’s been working just fine
I hope that’s not legal in the EU
Is there an alternative app or service that doesn’t do this I wonder?
Go into the store, get a cart and throw shit in it. The only option really
Don’t have a car and I don’t live close enough to a grocery store.
Tbh, I don’t think there is a good app alternative and my priority would be moving somewhere where I can do my own grocery shopping. You don’t need a car if you’re close enough to go twice a week. I know it’s not easy, but that would be what I was working towards. You’re paying a serious premium with things like instacart even before you get to the delivery.
Companies can’t do this if you don’t use an app to shop for you. There are a bunch of reasons you shouldn’t use apps to shop even before you get to the insanity of the video.
- The people who fill your cart are instructed to grab older, worse looking produce to reduce waste
- It takes someone filling 10 instacart orders longer to shop than you would, meaning cold items will warm up more
- You are already being charged a premium for the service, as well as maybe a delivery fee
- The items you see to choose from are pushed by an algorithm. You’re practically unable to find unpopular items or compare two similar products
Don’t use an app, don’t use a rewards program. If those things didn’t end up costing you money overall, companies wouldn’t offer them.
Rewards programs can make sense without this kind of fuckery. My local pizza place isn’t adjusting their prices, they still match the paper take out menus and coupons. But they have a rewards program because it incentivizes people to come back, and repeat business is worth the slight discount.
just to say, I personally know two people who have done online order picking at two different grocery store chains in ireland and neither of them were told to get older things.
you are also able to click “rest of shelf” on items on the website to see what else they have that are available alongside that item in the physical store.
im just saying, those two things arent true or entirely true (it def takes effort to find lesser known things)
Interesting info, thanks. Unfortunately I don’t have much choice. Don’t have a car and I don’t live close enough to a grocery store.
Well no shit. If a department store can change the prices of items at the click of a button, you have to expect them to do it to make more money.
There are currently now laws against this kind of abuse, to my knowledge. There was no need for them when you had to pay someone to manually change all price tags.
My grocery store has labled prices and weekly ads.
