Shelf Label Changes Price Before Shopper Finishes Reading It
The largest grocery union wants digital price tags banned. In Aisle 7, one tag went from $3.49 to $3.79 between the dollar sign and the cents.
COLUMBUS, Ohio—At 2:41 p.m. Saturday, Darlene Fisk, 61, a fictional retired school librarian, stopped in front of a jar of creamy peanut butter (Aisle 7, middle shelf, between the honey and the regret) and began reading its electronic shelf label. She got as far as the dollar sign. By the time she reached the cents, the price had gone up 30 of them.
"It said three forty-nine," Fisk said. "Then it said three seventy-nine. I was still on the three."
It said three forty-nine. Then it said three seventy-nine. I was still on the three.
The label, a gray rectangle about the size of a playing card, updated itself in what store records describe as "a routine wireless refresh." A fictional store log labeled ESL-7 shows that the tag changed nine times between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., a pace a fictional regional pricing coordinator, Trent Mabry, called "well within the normal range for a Saturday with weather."
4
Seconds the shopper spent reading the tag
2
Prices displayed during those seconds
30
Cents added between the dollars and the cents
Source: Source: Aisle 7 Price Integrity Log, kept in pencil. Fictional. Form ESL-30 filed in triplicate, all three now cost more.
"The shopper was reading at a below-average speed," Mabry said. "Our system is optimized for a reader who finishes a price in under two seconds. We are exploring large-print tags that update more slowly for people who read every digit."
The incident comes as the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents more than 1.2 million people, has called on newly elected Democrats to ban electronic shelf labels and so-called surveillance pricing in grocery stores, according to Business Insider. Walmart and Kroger have been replacing printed tags with digital ones that can be updated remotely. New Jersey has put a one-year moratorium on the labels, and Maryland requires retailers to hold prices for at least one business day. Walmart and Target have said they do not use personal information to charge shoppers more.
None of that was visible from Aisle 7. What was visible was the tag, which Fisk began to read again, out loud and faster. "Three," she said. The label blinked. "Seventy-nine." It held. She photographed it, placed the jar in her cart and pushed briskly toward the registers, where the scanner charged her $3.84.
