this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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I worked in a Walmart on the overnight shift (cleaning, separate company) when they rolled them out 3+ years ago here in Canada. They've honestly become the norm in grocery stores and other large stores here. If some company was going to be sleazy about them, it probably would've happened already (Loblaws, I'm looking at you).
I straight up asked why they were being installed, and it's two-fold. One, they can save money cause now they don't have to pay staff to go around and change the little paper tags, which takes an absurd amount of manpower and is easy to fuck up. And two, they can all be changed over to a barcode/QR code during inventory, which speeds up the whole process. I'll be the last person to defend corpos, especially Walmart, but I don't think this one was done with the intentions of directly fucking over the customer.
I feel like it's one of those things that someone came up with the benign idea first, and then later some jackass was like "Hey, we could use these to change the prices every time a customer looks at it."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
I've worked retail and one of the things that baffled me was just how wasteful price tags were.
They change SO OFTEN and it's so much paper and plastic just tossed it the trash every time. Never even thought about it until I worked at a store and had to change them.
God, right?! I could fill a bag full of the things nearly every day when I was cleaning before they switched over! I literally had a little bin I'd save them up in to take home to use as kindling for the fire pit cause they'd already been replaced. Though, I think the lack of waste is more a pleasant side effect than a reason why these companies did it. Either way, it's still a positive!
Best buy and other stores have genuinely already been using these for ages.
I once worked retail and it was a pain to run around printing labels for hours. Granted, I got paid by the hour, so there were much worse things to do.
I also don't believe this is a nefarious plot, but it does enable dynamic pricing. Stores are creepy these days, they have sensors and network hardware that can track you in the store. They also can do facial recognition.
So they know who you are, where you are / where you went, what you ultimately buy (just enter your rewards number!). So they could literally see someone coming and raise prices on certain items as they enter the store.
Not to say that is a strategy companies are actively employing, but all the pieces are there.
Reference to help you sleep at night: https://documentation.meraki.com/Wireless/Operate_and_Maintain/User_Guides/Monitoring_and_Reporting/Location_Analytics
I definitely get what you're saying, and in any other context, I'd definitely agree. I just can't quite see it working without some sort of identifying thing, like a loyalty card or some intense customer tracking (and we all know how that went with the Amazon Go stores). Mainly because there's not a good way to identify a specific item taken from a shelf full of the item, given UPCs are the same for all units of a product so it'd have to be done by cards or tracking.
I could be wrong, but given the current state of tech, I don't really see it working in a large, busy store like a Walmart or Canadian Tire. At least, not to reliably target individuals. I could see it being used to change prices for everyone, based on time, date, temperatures, and stuff like that, but yeah...
Also, apologies if this doesn't make full sense. I'm radically under caffeinated right now 😅
I'm just a developer, so admittedly I'm unsure if the frames they refer to have any uniquely identifying information. Hopefully not. At the very least they get a heat map of where phones are in the store.
If you connect to the wifi they will get your MAC address for sure, but that's usually randomized every time you connect.
Hypothetically if you hop on their wifi they can track your device for the duration of that connection all the way to the register. Then you use your credit card or rewards programs and they can put it together. (When I swipe my card at microcenter they always say "do you still live on.." since I've purchased online from them.)
Locally at one of our sports stadiums you swipe your card walk in to a snack area, grab what you want, and walk out with it. They use cameras and other sensor to make that possible. If they can figure it out Walmart certainly can.
This is all tinfoil hat stuff based on pieces of information I have, but it sure is interesting to think about.
I guess they could do it with rfid tags on every imdividual item but at $0.05-$50 per tag that doesn't seem remotely worthwhile.
They actually have some neat features, if implemented. There's one where you can scan a QR code to go right to the product page where you can get, among other things, more verbose allergen info, reviews, or, if the product is out of stock where you scanned it, it can give you similar alternate products or stores that have stock.
It can also allow you to go on to the website, find your item, and ask the pricetag to flash.then you can look for the flashing pricetag if you can't find the item on the shelf.
I haven't seen the QR codes linking to the product page yet, but I've seen the flashing tags to find stuff, and it's cool af! Like, yes we may be quickly sliding into a dystopian hellscape, but we can have some cool little things along the way... As, y'know... A treat lol