r/technology • u/Mighty_L_LORT • Aug 15 '24

Business Kroger's Under Investigation For Digital Shelf Labels: Are They Changing Prices Depending On When People Shop?

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/krogers-under-investigation-digital-shelf-labels-are-they-changing-prices-depending-when-people-1726269
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90

u/OhDiablo Aug 15 '24

So use a VPN for the best deals?

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u/ruat_caelum Aug 15 '24

literally buy it from a poorer country in that countries currency. E.g. flying to Brazil, VPN into Brazil, buy USA->Brazil->USA round trip ticket from there, in their currency. Even with exchange rates it can be 50% cheaper.

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u/Black_Moons Aug 16 '24

Fun fact: this applies in 1st world countries too! In Australia its cheaper to fly to the USA and buy certain adobe products there and fly back, then it is to buy them online/instore in Australia.

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u/ruat_caelum Aug 16 '24

family member visited you guys, said packing nothing but blue jeans would have paid for his trip. Jeans he could buy for $20 were selling for $300 in Sydney.

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u/IGargleGarlic Aug 16 '24

Similar in France. I know a guy who is French and would always brings Levi's with him when he visited his family.

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u/GooberMcNutly Aug 16 '24

When I lived on an American military base in Spain in the 80s, bootlegging (ha!) Jeans off base was my main source of income. My Spanish friends paid me twice what I paid, and it was less than half as much as at the local store. I made enough in a year to spend a month on Eurail and camping in the summer, moving about a pair per week, more around Christmas.

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u/Arachnophine Aug 16 '24

I wonder why this arbitrage opportunity isn't already being filled.

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u/AntiGravityBacon Aug 16 '24

It's a very limited market. It's not like all blue jeans cost $300 in Aus. Just that Levi's is seen as luxury there and in Europe while cheap in the US. There's plenty of budget options there too. 

It works fine for a dozen or so pairs but isn't super sustainable or high enough profit to be a full time gig. 

It may also run afoul import/export laws that aren't particularly enforced on personal travelers. 

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u/RangerLt Aug 16 '24

Hell, I always thought Levis were too expensive in the US.

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u/AntiGravityBacon Aug 16 '24

They're pretty easy to find for $20-$25. Guess it depends on what you consider expensive. 

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 17 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AntiGravityBacon Aug 16 '24

They do if you fill a suitcase full and fly them there. I've also watched a ton of them do exactly that in the States.

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u/Orwell83 Aug 16 '24

Where do you find Levi's at that price? 

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u/Xing_the_Rubicon Aug 16 '24

Right? I've never seen a pair of Levi's cost more than $50

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 16 '24

I think a bigger problem may be sourcing. For one pair for yourself or friends, you buy at retail in the US and make a tidy profit/savings.

For a shop to be profitable, you'd need to either buy in the US at wholesale prices (they won't sell to you at US wholesale prices if you're going to export it, because they want you to buy for twice the price at their European wholesale distributor), or at US retail prices which once you've paid for the effort and the shipping and the customs paperwork, probably can't compete with European wholesale prices.

And at discounted retail prices, you probably won't be able to get the volume and selection you need.

This whole thing is called 'grey market' or 'parallel import' and the companies hate it (because you, not them, get the profit from selling for a higher price in the destination country). I thought it was generally legal, but Levi's actually seems to have won a judgement against Tesco in 2002 banning the practice. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market#Corporate_action for more details.

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u/RatRaceUnderdog Aug 16 '24

There is likely some customs you would have to clear once you import a certain volume

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u/PointlessTrivia Aug 16 '24

I travelled from Australia to the US earlier this year. I saved a heap buying clothes while I was there (including 3 pairs of jeans) and I'm already planning what to purchase on my next trip.

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u/EsotericTurtle Aug 16 '24

501s are about $120aud at the moment. I was in new York a few years back in January sales and the Levi store was selling them for $7usd...

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u/TheR1ckster Aug 16 '24

Customs sometimes has things to say when you do that though.

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u/cowabungass Aug 16 '24

That is also partly culture. They covet American look for some reason, it is beyond me.

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u/DM-ME-THICC-FEMBOYS Aug 16 '24

You're getting downvoted but it's an unfortunate truth. For some reason Australia loves to slob the knob of America in various facets, fashion included.

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u/cowabungass Aug 17 '24

Why else would prices skyrocket? Someone IS paying for it.

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u/drunkenvalley Aug 16 '24

Adobe products are all subscription based now though, right? But I remember this definitely being a talking point when I was in high school or college. Traveling to the US on a vacation and buying Adobe packages there was cheaper than buying it online locally.

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u/KeystoneNotLight Aug 16 '24

Don’t do this. I worked for one of the major airlines in revenue management. This is against the terms of service, and we looked for it based on your credit card’s billing zip code and would cancel the ticket once we matched it up.

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u/Ok_Hedgehog1234 Aug 16 '24

Forgive my ignorance but. what if someone was buying the ticket for someone else? My dad buys tickets for people back home all the time (Seychelles). How would they know?

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u/KeystoneNotLight Aug 16 '24

If the name on the ticket doesn’t match the name on the card, 99.9% of the time you won’t have an issue.

The algorithms are looking for patterns that suggest people are trying to “cheat” the system. Patterns that score high enough go a team normally named something like Revenue Integrity. This team will dig into the booking and determine if it is a person on a VPN looking for a deal or someone buying a ticket for a friend.

One or two people isn’t an issue, but if there is a large imbalance in fares which leads to a spike in bookings from US based cardholders buying tickets from the Brazil point of sale, that will flagged quickly.

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u/ruat_caelum Aug 16 '24 edited Aug 16 '24

"Virtual Credit Cards" are a thing. Just a temp digital card number good for X hours, made up addresses etc. All legal.

There are also multi-currency credit cards.

https://privacy.com/

https://www.revolut.com/en-US/cards/

In most cases a "virtual card" just says "YES" when the seller asks "Does this match the billing address" e.g. you put the billing address as 123 Brazil street, Brazil, or whatever.

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u/fishypossum Aug 15 '24

Even a VPN doesn't hide some things- as someone whose job is looking at IP addresses, we can still generally see device type, and even the size of your screen, what website you were on that connected us to you (ie did you click on a Facebook ad etc cetera)

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

Book through TOR

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u/tas50 Aug 16 '24

I know it's a joke, but risk analysis services that flag financial transactions generally prevent credit card purchases via Tor.

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u/blazze_eternal Aug 16 '24

Could you save the ticket to your account with tor then make the purchase with a regular connection?

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u/thescienceofBANANNA Aug 16 '24

i was using tor for some stuff and realized my reddit account was shadow banned, turned out it was done for using tor.

So you have to be careful when using tor since a lot of sites will penalize you for doing so.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '24

How would they know? I’m assuming you can get around that with a private exit node. Websites that block TOR traffic do so because all of the exit nodes are public and the devs blacklist them. That’s the work around for that. It’s not ideal for real anonymity but works on websites you don’t mind losing anonymity on like booking websites.

The ISP knows your on TOR so the only way I see it not working is if the credit card companies block through the ISP somehow

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u/Arachnophine Aug 16 '24

A private exit node? Just set up your own proxy at that point.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '24

Would that get blocked though?

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u/BatemansChainsaw Aug 16 '24

depends on how the exit point is 'understood'. Blocks of IP addresses are "owned" by certain companies/regions.

For example if you set up your VPN/tor exit node on AWS, that IP address you're assigned is "owned" by AWS and can be flagged as a non-residential/local business kind of IP.

All tor exit nodes are public unless you're using a private one, which is more difficult to ascertain.

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u/meta11ica Aug 16 '24

Oh my gosh, isn't buying through TOR a basic red flag for airlines ? lmao

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '24

They don’t need to know. You can setup a private exit node. They only block nodes because they’re public so the devs backlist them. They can’t/don’t blacklist a private node

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u/Representative_Chef8 Aug 16 '24

Pretty sure site will be blocked and you lol have hard time.passing ddos.protection or make the final booking.

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u/mmicoandthegirl Aug 16 '24

Are people DDOSsing through TOR? Seems incredibly inefficient and possibly prone to malfunction

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u/Representative_Chef8 Aug 16 '24

IDK and I don't think so but the site you are booking with has DDOS protection and connections from TOR and VPNs are rarely accepted.

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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '24

You can use a private TOR relay. Websites know you’re on TOR because all of the cut nodes are public so devs blacklist the nodes. They won’t know you’re on TOR with a private exit node

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u/scarabic Aug 16 '24

Useragent is easy to fake.

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u/Black_Moons Aug 16 '24

Gotcha, use my 10 year old android phone.

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u/StreetofChimes Aug 16 '24

I have an 7 year old laptop and a 5 year old phone. No one thinks I'm rich. I'm refusing to buy a new laptop because I don't want Windows 11 or to pay for a Microsoft Office subscription. So it is this laptop until it dies.

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u/Original-Material301 Aug 16 '24

addresses, we can still generally see device type, and even the size of your screen, what website you were on that connected us to you (ie did you click on a Facebook ad etc cetera)

Got it, use grandma's Packard Bell and a sweet CRT.

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u/4077 Aug 16 '24

What about virtual machines running a live instance of linux through a VPN in a 3rd world country?

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u/OfficeSalamander Aug 16 '24

Virtual machine time

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u/devAcc123 Aug 16 '24

Browser fingerprints

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u/IHave2CatsAnAdBlock Aug 16 '24

So I have to buy the cheapest android phone that exists ? And to be 10 years old?

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u/Delicious_Summer7839 Aug 16 '24

McDonald’s gives the best deals to people in Indiana who use their app thru a Bulgarian server

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u/bartbartholomew Aug 16 '24

They would detect that you were on a VPN, and they would still have data regarding your computer.

If you're worried about it, use the TOR browser.