Well, they're all discounts, for starters.

Surveillance pricing defenders claim that surveillance pricing is better because it works both ways--it might offer a higher price to someone who is desperate, but someone who is likely not that motivated might get a sweet deal. I highly doubt that. A highly-advertised, transparent discount or sale is how you sell to someone who is not that motivated. Surveillance pricing is how you (secretly) extract as much money as possible from the desperate.

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pc86 an hour ago | parent [-]

> Well, they're all discounts, for starters.

And they're subsidized by the revenue made by everyone else. A thousands of coupons start rolling in and meaningfully affecting revenue either the coupons go away or the MSRP increases. It's the exact same pig just slightly different lipstick.

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ellen364 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn't really seem the same. In coupon hunting, I might not want to spend time finding a coupon and decide to pay full price. That's my choice.

In surveillance pricing, I wouldn't get that choice, I'd just get a custom-to-me price. I'd have no idea how the company decided to charge me more or less than they charged my friend. And no idea how to change the price I'm offered, so it would be terrible if the algorithm decided to charge me +15% for everything.

	▲	gruez 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>In surveillance pricing, I wouldn't get that choice, I'd just get a custom-to-me price. I'd have no idea how the company decided to charge me more or less than they charged my friend. And no idea how to change the price I'm offered, so it would be terrible if the algorithm decided to charge me +15% for everything. What's the difference between this and the company charging an absurdly high base price, then your discount is "customized" to you? That's basically how universities work with various scholarship and financial aid schemes working as discounts.

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iAMkenough 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Now you’re on a list that indefinitely upcharges everyone that uses the “lipstick on a pig” idiom. Utilized by multiple big retailers.

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Eisenstein 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

What you are saying is that the amount of money people save getting discounts is made up by increases to the retail price for everyone else, and that this is equal to the extra money that individually priced people would pay or receive or discounts, so its a wash?

This assumes that the business would raise prices to make more money from people who they think can pay it and give that back to others as a discount.

Do you have evidence this would be the case?

	▲	gruez 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>This assumes that the business would raise prices to make more money from people who they think can pay it and give that back to others as a discount. >Do you have evidence this would be the case? This is pretty standard economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination