Which Price is Right?

slashdotNum2Big2Register writes "An interesting article at fastcompany about how things are being priced nowadays. The only drawback that concerns me is how each item and price can be connected to an individual. Amazon was already found to be doing this with their prices."

Amazon shops for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Amazon is figuring out what I want and how much I am going to pay for it?

So if I purchase a lot of items for my girlfriend, Is Amazon going to think that I'm gay?

Another reason not to use IE

[molarmass192]

using a Netscape Web browser turned up a quoted price of $64.99 -- 35% off the original price of $99.98, according to the online retailer. But several seconds later, a similar search performed with Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser resulted in a price of $74.99 for the same product.

As if folks needed more reasons to use Mozilla!

Use Mozilla...

[ryanvm]

From the ComputerWorld article:

a search for the Planet of the Apes DVD on the Amazon site using a Netscape Web browser turned up a quoted price of $64.99 [...] several seconds later, a similar search performed with Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser resulted in a price of $74.99 for the same product

Damn, if that's not a reason to use Mozilla, I don't know what is.

Special Offer!!

[mcd7756]

We're offering this post for $5.00. Shortly we will raise the price by 11.2%. Eventually you may read it for free, but only if you have the coupon.

::sniff sniff::

[Ayandia]

Hey, is that a discrimination lawsuit I smell?

Amazon Exec 1: "This customer buys Precious Moments figurines."
Amazon Exec 2: "They must be some middle-aged soccer mom. Charge them double for new releases, and half price for Disney."
Amazon Exec 1: "What about customers who buy How to Make a Million Dollars a Second?
Amazon Exec 2: "Charge double for everything. They'll be able to afford it eventually..."

Journalism ethics

[JudgeDredd]

From the article: The spokeswoman for a telecom company said, "We're not going to talk about prices, and the fact that we're not going to talk about it is off the record. You can't use the fact that we won't talk about prices in a story."

So he goes and prints it anyways? Can he do that?

Re:Not surprising that no one will talk...

[CrazyDuke]

"The real question is how businesses get away with such behaviour today."

bool getAwayWithIt(opinion& publicopinion, law& thelaw, gains potential, polititian congresscritter) {
bool permission=false;
while (!PRMess(publicopinion, thelaw, potential) && permission!=true) permission=congresscritter.lobby.addmoney();
if (permission==true) thelaw.setEffect(NULL);
return permission;
}

Re:Amazons pricing

[The Ribena Kid]

Now, they then charge full price and have items that they overstocked pull up higher in searches with edited customer reviews to make them appear better than they are. True fact. They started editing reviews back when I was there.

This can't be true, they don't mention anything about editting in their patent [uspto.gov] on discussing an item.

;-)

I can see the future now....

[TheNumberSix]

If the browser identifies as Safari, boost prices on anything hip or cool by 20% due to Apple-user lust for fashion and style.

If the browser is Lynx, lower prices by 20%, they can't even afford a free-as-in-beer graphical browser!

If the browser is Internet Exploder, blue screen thier PC and charge them a subscription just to access our web site.

Yum, the future of price discrimination!

Actually, this reminds me of a demographics company called Claritas that sells demographics assignment services based on where you live. (Try it for yourself here [claritas.com].)

So now in the future can we expect people to get assigned based on their browsers and OS identification?

Users who run Mozilla on Linux tend to have:

Three or more pets, play video games on a hidden Windows partition they don't talk about and consume Doritos by the truckload.

And at the heart of the system...

[Jonboy X]

...a random number generator.

Re:Fleecing the poor

[addaon]

Buy at mcdonalds and it's two days not hungry. One your fed, one's taken off your life.

Thanks Dude!

[Fantastic Lad]

For sharing the info.

I've been ripped off by Amazon before; anything you ship them by accident, (UPS driver switched the labels by accident between the small package and the big package), mysteriously 'vanish' in Amazon's accounting system so that you can't reclaim or bill for the goods, but the bastards sell the product anyway.

I was tempted to make my next shipment in the form of a pipe. --But I seriously doubted it would kill the bastards who really deserved it. So I'm holding off until I can devise some other method of mayhem which is more pin-point accurate. (And if you're some government spook getting a hard-on: I'm joking, you stupid asshole. I'm not really a plumber.)

-Fantastic Lad

Re:Fleecing the poor

[Kunta Kinte]

I wouldn't recommend instituting a 'women-only' hiring policy, unless you feel like running afoul of Equal Opportunity Employment regulations...

...So in other words

If you plan to start a IT consulting firm where the techs give lap-dances while configuring your routers, I think you're in the clear.

Re:Airline Pricing..and others

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree 100% but what's the solution? A flat tax where every man, woman, and child has to pay $20,000/year in taxes (and face jail if they don't)? Only in my dreams could we have a fair system like that!