And a Big Mac meal is pretty meh for $16.
The local burger joint, on the other hand, is still $12 with a beer. I might have to tip my waitress, but it's an all around better experience, and I can still be on my way faster than some of the McD's drive thrus in this town. Then again, I don't know if that's improved, because the only reason I've been in a McD's in about 3 years is because it was the only place to pee.
E: If you come around here bragging about not tipping waiters, you're a piece of shit. Either tip or don't go to the restaurant. But taking advantage of someone because the restaurant does isn't helping the cause other than showing people how trashy you are and trying to disguise it as something benevolent.
Idk about other areas but the wait times at all the mcdonalds around me have only gotten worse.
Like, people go there less because staff are so overworked that lots of mistakes are made and you usually have to wait a long time, but mcd's will always have rush times at lunch and dinner no matter how bad the location is. Since the reason people get Mcd"s is because they're starving/exhausted and need some food immediately.
So they've only improved their ability to give terrible service to more people lmao. I think they just keep cutting hours. And their obvious preference for the mobile ordering system only makes things worse; I've seen people pull out of the drive thru line behind me to online order instead and get their order before 3 cars in front of me! And my order was fucked up! lol
Neither compares to a big chunk of ground round, cooked in your own kitchen, on a nice crisp sough-dough bun,
for roughly half the cost.
And you don't have to pay for delivery!
Yeah I've noticed this recently here in Canada, McDonald's meal is 15, local pub has 5 dollar pints, and 8 dollar burgers, with fries.. when you include tax and a tip, it comes out few dollars more to go to a pub. McDonald's used to be the cheap option, it's definitely not anymore.
Lol. I tried, but the publisher doesn't think there's enough interest. I've gone through a *ton* of those old soul bassists, including Lewie Steinberg, Jerry Jemott, Wilton Felder, Chuck Rainey, Bob Babbitt, and even Hood. They're not interested!
I *did*, however, pitch a "101 James Jamerson full transcriptions" book which the publisher was very interested in, but the estate wasn't having it. It's harder than I thought to get green lights, and the Duck Dunn book was this weird fluke where it was a perfect storm of "everyone wanting to learn about him, but there was nothing about him."
I should, but setting up a video series is difficult enough to do the 60 second performance videos I did on Instagram! I do have a YouTube channel where I tried the "one man band" thing for a bit (where my name comes from), but it's now mostly a place I throw demo videos for auditions and some unique music ideas.
Wisconsin has a lot of bars. Many of the bars usually have good cheap food.
Bar dining has had an upswing since the major chains raised their prices.
I can go to the corner bar by my house and get a burger or chicken sandwich with all the dressings and my choice of fries for $8.00. I don't even think I can get a meal at McDonalds or Burger King for that in my area.
I just went to the local watering hole for the first time ever, and I’m nearly 40. I’d heard for many, many years that their chicken *slaps*. My friends and coworkers were not wrong. Generous portions of really great fried chicken, excellent jojos. I was mightily impressed. Two meals and two appetizers (mozzarella sticks and gizzards) came out to under $40.00 with a tip.
Last time I went to Chili’s the waiter came over, turned around a screen on the table and told us to order our food. Later he delivered our mediocre food. Time to pay and he tells us to pay on the screen.
It felt weird and alienating. Yes, it’s a cheap chain restaurant, but it’s still a sit down restaurant, and I had an expectation of human service. If I wanted to fiddle with a screen and have food come out, I’d go pick up microwave meals from the grocer and eat them in front of the TV. And you cannot tell me that level of indifference is worth a 20% tip, he wasn’t a waiter, he was just a food carrier.
I never went back to Chili’s and I don’t think I ever will.
Now it feels like that kind of bullshit is everywhere. It’s less weird now, but I still find it absolutely alienating and off-putting.
Chili's is just straight garbage. Absolute garbage. I have no idea why in god's name anyone would ever willingly choose to go eat there when they can just search on google for restaurants near them with a 4.5+ star rating and get something *way* better tasting for a similar or cheaper price, easily.
Sorry, gripe of mine with family who only ever wants to eat at Chili's and other similar trash chains even though we can go somewhere else and get the same style of food WAY better for the same price. But they've never heard of that place so they don't want to go there.
/rant
Reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad remarried to a woman who thought TGI Friday's was just the best thing under the sun. Every weekend that I had visitation with my dad, we went out to eat; that was her pick and she usually won.
That ended in 2002 when day after another Friday's visit I spent the entire day puking my guts out, and the next day my appendix ruptured. TGIF was probably merely the straw that broke the camel's back, but for years after I associated that place with my guts literally exploding and vehemently refused to go back
The Chili's locations around me are pretty good, I've found. It's chain restaurant food, but it's *good* chain restaurant food. Could just be that I'm going at the beginning of the day though, when there aren't as many people around (so the kitchen can actually focus on peoples' orders).
I mean, I see a promo for a burger, fries and drink from Chili's for like $10.99 though? My local McDonalds charges the same for a medium big Mac meal.
I'ma take the meh burger over whatever you wanna call the McDonald's burger any day.
It’s not special sale, they’re lowering the regular price for most household goods. Stores usually can only update so many prices per day, so they probably weren’t done yet.
This isn't true on any level. Thousands of items change prices in stores daily. Putting up new tags might take a morning but stores do not roll out new prices over multiple days. Source: me. I installed pos systems at stores like this for years and trained stores on how to do this.
I did retail when I was young, come in 2 hours early once a week to put up all the new tags. Somewhere in the realm of a thousand items with price changes in the store I worked at sometimes. Always happened in a single day.
For a while I had the job of changing price tags in a grocery store. I worked midnight - 9 am, because it would have been chaotic doing it during the day. Then there was some software update to run at like 4 am, to update the prices in the POS.
I actually kind of enjoyed that job.
Um, it is true. We can’t change the price without changing the tag, because then the shelf would reflect an incorrect price. Most stores only have one employee doing price changes, maybe two if we’re lucky. It takes time to change that many labels, and that one employee is typically in charge of clearance markdowns as well.
Furthermore, stores don’t receive all of their price change in the system at once. Usually it drops in throughout the week. So the person I responded to might have been shopping before those price changes dropped in or were activated by the price change person.
Source: I work at Target. Obviously I can only speak for Target and not other stores, but that’s the experience there as someone working in a store.
They got rid of their 1% cash back recently with the claim that their store deals would more than make up for that 1%, but that was an obvious lie. The "deals" are things like "buy $50 in household items, get a $5 gift certificate," but it's hard to get exactly the right items that fit the deal.
I tried it a couple of times, but when I used the first $5 gift certificate I earned on an order, one item they sent me was the wrong one. They refunded me for the wrong item, but then charged my credit card $5 to take back that gift certificate.
Now I won't shop Target unless I absolutely have to, which so far hasn't been an issue.
Not worth the time. Plus it's a principle of the matter thing. I'm not going to spend ten minutes on hold then five minutes explaining my problem to some CS rep just to get $5 back. I'm just not going to shop there anymore.
This isn’t groceries but I wanted to save 15$ on 2 new copies of some Mario video game and Walmart flat out wouldn’t price match for me. The gentleman was nice, it’s just policy there was no issue. I found it interesting. I went to target and they did it for me just fine. Same UPC of course just a few dollars off on Amazon. But it got me to go to target and browse their stuff.
No. This is the oldest trick in the book. You aggressively raise prices expecting backslash. Then you lower them, but to levels higher than before. You look generous while simply raising prices. Retailers do this constantly.
THIS.
Thank you. It's the same thing that happens on Black Friday deals. Price goes up 30% for 2 months before, then the deal becomes the standard price.
This is retail gimmicks 101
I think they actually are decreasing prices, whether or not a reasonable person would consider them to be "slashing" their prices... Not as sure. I think Walmart did it, then had a much better quarterly earnings, whereas others' earnings dropped--so they're trying to follow Walmarts lead. Lol, I'm not sure they actually see it as a mistake, though, they're probably pretty happy about the money they've been able to make these last couple years.
I have my doubts that they will reduce prices down to pre-covid levels. I want my groceries to cost as much as they did in 2019 and don't care what anyone says about that being impossible for one macroeconomic reason or another.
In my mind, there's no reason why it shouldn't or even at least return to a price level that would be consistent with non-greedflation inflation moving forward to what it should be today from those 2019 levels.
After all the work we've done to agricultural techniques and technologies, we should be able to produce more food for same price or the same amount of food for cheaper; but it continually grinds my gears to know that farmers are burning surplus crops and killing surplus live stock simply to keep prices high.
Now that everyone has shrunk or diluted all their products, they cut prices back to where they were before. There are just less product for the old prices.
They rolled 2L Dr. Thunder back to $1 in my stores after bumping it up to 1.40 for almost a year. Too late WalMart I've already swapped it out for tea and am liking it better anyway.
Do not ever trust this unless you've seen the price higher with your own eyes. It's a common tactic they use to make customers think they're getting a deal.
“Now that we have bled them all dry, let’s act like barely reducing the prices from their massively inflated state will get them back. Let’s put out a bunch of press about it”
What was $1 two years ago is now $4, but we'll cut it back to $3.25 because we gotta make it look like we're losing something other than a small portion of our pure fucking greed.
The grocery store had 16$ old slice deodorant and the toothpaste was 8$. Just saw it today. Crest toothepaste used to be like 2-3$. And an expensive deodorant used to be 6.99$. Fucking horse shit. People need to start getting pissed at the billionaires themselves.
That’s why the billionaires control the media, to propagandize the masses to fight amongst themselves like we are enemies when they are the true enemy. This is all a system of control
They also all bought islands and massive yachts to where if the people rise up, they can escape and hide.
The people need to put down the culture wars bullshit, unite, and turn attention to billionaires causing all this. I recognize that some of the people causing the harm are just crazy idiots and not rich, and that some people are just the sellout gears in the machine, but the source of this mainly is still massively the billionaires.
There is an employee owned (not managed, unfortunately) grocery store in our town. Prices went up there, like everywhere else, but far, far less. The store brand stuff they sell, like cereal, used to be 20 to 30% off. Now it is three to four *times* less expensive than the name brands.
Which means every other store, like Safeway, Kroger/King Soopers/Fred Meyer, Walmart, Albertsons, Target, they *all* happily joined in with the manufacturers to gouge their customers for the last few years.
And people clutch their pearls when the poorest decide fuck these people and start taking shit. Their real error is doing it in their neighborhoods and not the Richie Targét neighborhoods. It’s just stuff, people are more important. When things like laundry detergent need to be in cases, the system is broken not the people
> Now that we have bled them all dry
A vampire analogy is apt. They usually have two options. Suck blood from people until they're empty or suck enough blood to keep from killing their life's blood. They're moving back to Plan B.
costco has its fault, but on the whole their employees are treated better (varies a lot by store location) and they dont overcharge for products (this does not vary by location). they make the vast majority of their profit from memberships - not products.
And the rotisserie chicken too, apparently the second loss leader product at Costco are those rotisserie chickens, but like the hotdog, it's entirely worth it because it pulls in those memberships.
I wanted to celebrate Trump getting convicted yesterday, so we were planning to go out to a restaurant. After looking at the menu prices of many different restaurants, we decided to just go to Costco instead and eat at home. For the price of 1 dinner for 2 at a restaurant, we got over a weeks worth of food.
Shits just not worth it anymore.
So it wasn't even this year but last year's mother's day we did take out from a popular Italian restaurant chain. We tried to save money by getting the main dish there and then making our sides ourselves.
They added a mandatory 20% gratuity for takeout. A single 1 lb lasagna from them turned out to be $100. Couldn't even feed everybody. Saddest mother's day I've ever been to.
What's crazy is this restaurant is packed every single night, and it's just a chain.
A 20% mandatory gratuity for takeout?! Wow. They suck. I haven't been going out as much but tell me who they are so I can never go there. Ima boycott them on principal
It was Buca di Beppo. They were known for giving large family style portions and we thought it would be enough especially since we paid ahead on their website. That was the only thing that kept me from giving the lasagna back and leaving.
Costco was the winner. I didn’t even previously shop there and now it’s where I do all my grocery shopping. I can get two weeks worth of groceries there for the same price as a week’s worth of groceries at Walmart or Target.
Funny enough, what pushed me to Costco was my local Walmart closing all their self checkout lanes. No way am I waiting around for a cashier to check me out.
I hate self checkout. I am not getting paid for that work.
Well, not officially. As I was not trained, I am a very bad cashier. I miss stuff all the time and don’t even realize it!
Same. There are things I simply don't buy anymore because I'm not paying $9 for a box of goldfish crackers. It's not worth it to me. Aldi is the first place we go. And guess what, because I was willing to try Aldi brand, some stuff I found out is better. Like their sliced cheese. I will never go back to name brand cheese at Walmart. They fucked themselves by pricing shit so high and they lost me forever.
Compared to most sliced cheeses Aldi is just as good If not better, the packaging is the problem. Often it doesn't get a good seal so I highly recommend transferring it to a different container if you have a problem with it drying out or getting old too quickly.
Don't forget they also have their double back guarantee. Any of their own brands they will refund you the money and replace it for you. This way if you don't like it not only do you get your money back but you get another one to see if it was just a one off, or you genuinely do not like it. You do not have to get the same thing either, you could get a different flavor or a different product entirely if you really wanted.
Sorta same in Canada, but I've changed grocery stores and stopped eating out or getting delivery at all.
Their greed improved my health for once.
Except it's upside down here. Walmart is the cheapest grocery store in Canada right now outside of bulk stuff from Costco.
4 name brand 12 packs for $10 is more like 2004 not 2014. I definitely do remember the occasional 3×12 for $10 or 4×12 for $13 deals, back around 2014 when I still drank soda.
PepsiCo sucks ass. I have an uncle who retired as a biologist for them and gave them 50 years. He started out with respect and an office and ended with a security escort off the premises from his shared cubicle.
Greedy fucks. He’s the reason their Cheetos don’t suck, so let’s treat him like shit.
Isn't it weird how during this whole time, none of these companies noticed their competitors were overpricing and lowered their own prices in response, like the invisible hand of the free market is supposed to do automatically? It's almost like they're all colluding on prices, huh?
Economics is like one big prisoners dilemma. When it comes to price gouging, all corporations mutually benefit the most if everyone inflates their prices in unison. Consumers don’t have any option but to pay the higher pricing, and naturally spend with businesses based on need/convenience.
Short-term, decreasing prices will allow one of these companies to claim greater market share, so the smallest of these corporations (after doing a little homework, looks like Walgreens threw the first stone) stand to benefit the most from the good publicity and boosted market share. However, the response from competitors will be to lower their prices in response almost immediately. Now everything normalizes from a distribution perspective to where it was with everyone price gouging, but now everyone is making less profit.
So really it’s an ongoing game of chicken where these corporations all make more money when they move in unison. This phenomenon is called a Nash Equilibrium, a state where a business settles for a suboptimal strategy which becomes optimal based on the behavior of their competitors. Now that things are reaching a breaking point for consumers, corporations are shifting gears from driving maximum price points to finding a better balance where consumers are spending more money overall - the demand for goods was tanking since too many people were priced out.
So this isn’t a token of goodwill saying “hey we know you’re tapped out, here’s some relief” so much as “prices are so high that the increased profits are outweighed by the number of people who simply cannot afford to buy these things anymore. Come back and spend your money again. Please.”
Edit: [It’s really cool stuff](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-microeconomics/chapter/prisoners-dilemma/) if you’re interested in economics!
There is no free market, the entire concept is an anachronism from before we left the gold standard. Capitalism has gotten very good at what they do: extraction.
Like any anarchic system, a free market can only exist for a moment. As soon as an agent in a market has enough capital to put their thumb on the scale, it’s already a market dictated by the wealthiest.
Besides, a free market allows for slavery, child labor, exploitation. It was never virtuous for anyone but the exploiter.
Yeah that's always been a question of mine. The only way it's a free market is if you don't have enough weight to throw around. But... just the fact of being a reasonably-sized company in this day and age kinda throws the ideology out the window lol.
They don't have to collude on prices to collude on prices.
For any particular consumer staple good, there's usually only 3-5 choices of significant size. As a general store, that's Walmart, Target, Amazon, Best Buy, and a few specialty stores for certain niches.
These are all large national operations that use a ton of data. One of their data points is comps- price of comparable items from other stores. Many of these prices are adjusted by algorithm not by humans, based on various factors like cost from manufacturer, comparable prices in competition, how popular the item is, overall strength of economy, etc.
There's two problems with this.
One, on paper the economy has been pretty strong for the last several quarters. Most of those gains haven't 'trickled down' to the average worker, but on paper the nation is booming. So the algorithm goes for higher prices.
Two, everybody else does the same thing with similar algorithms, everybody else trying to push high prices, so the algorithms feed off each other. And you get the *effects* of collusion, without any actual collusion.
----
The same thing was done with a rent algorithm that was in the news several months ago- some company made an algorithm to price apartments for rent that would look at comps, occupancy, local economy, etc. You'd hire this company and feed it a bunch of info about your apartment building, and they'd feed you day-by-day pricing changes that keep your price right at the upper end (but not above) what renters in your area / market segment were willing to pay.
Issue was, what happened when all the apartments in an area use the system (or one like it)? Because the algorithm prices apartments high, that means all the comparable apartments using the same system are priced high. And thus you get the same effect as collusion (all competitors increase their prices more or less simultaneously) without any actual collusion.
-----
As for the stores- just like the apartment managers, the product was selling and profits were high so who gives a shit if we beat the competitor price as long as we're making bank? Of course the HUMAN aspect to that is that if you bleed the customers dry they can no longer afford anything. But the algorithm doesn't consider such things.
This! They are pricing with algorithms! The FTC is bringing lawsuits against at least three companies for doing this. Amazon, the rent pricing company almost every complex uses, and hotels. There is no ‘invisible hand’ when things are priced with algorithms. There is only collusion and monopoly power.
Amazon might succeed if only because Amazon was undercutting 3rd party sellers in their own marketplace often automatically before the 3rd party could react. Given that the standard 'sell your shit on Amazon' contract has a clause that you can't sell below the Amazon price elsewhere, FTC might just win.
The rent company thing I think should in theory be a slam dunk- even if the rent company ran a separate instance of the algorithm independently for each apartment complex, even if those instances technically competed with each other, the fact is multiple direct competitors totally outsourced their pricing to the same 3rd party firm, and that in itself could be seen as collusion.
If FTC loses that case, it will probably mean 'price algorithm' firms spring up in every major market and it becomes the *de facto* way to engage in price collusion.
The invisible hand works great when you have a bunch of privately owned small businesses competing with each other. Not so much with a couple of mega corporations that can copy each other without communicating. Why compete on price with your only competitor when you can match the higher prices?
Marketing theory emphasizes that you really want to do everything to avoid a price war. If you markup is 100% (say $1 item you sell for $2) and you discount it 25% then you lose 50% of profits. If your competitor can get away with charging a certain price, then you have every incentive to charge that price as well.
So yeah, it’s collusion but not with a bunch of guys on a golf course, it’s a bunch of pricing analysts who get well paid to say there’s no reason not to raise prices.
Yeah, I remember my great grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression, and they taught those frugal habits to my grandmother, who taught them to my mother, and me. The corporations are underestimating the cultural shift away from consumption that they are creating...or it's priced in. Raise prices 20% and lose 20% of customers works fine for them...
The Colossal Mistake isn't just some retailers bumping up prices for increased profits. But the Colossal Mistake does have to do with profits and power. The mistake is using every means possible to maximize profits: propaganda, wage stagnation, impoverishing billions of people, subverting governments, endangering the planet & the future of humanity, and inciting hatred and division as a means of control. When we should be approaching a glorious future with peace and happiness for all, we are still on the edge of losing it all.
We've got a really neat little movement happening in Canada. The largest grocery chain in the country is Loblaws and since the start of May, a boycott of them has been ongoing. While they certainly weren't the only chain to engage in price gouging, their owner Galen Weston Jr *was* the only one stupid enough to star in advertisements telling Canadians how much he understands our struggles and how he's on our side. While it remains to be seen how much of an impact we'll have on them, there is a constant stream of ppl discovering much more affordable options in local shops or even competitors like Walmart\* and the many Asian grocery stores we've got. More than affecting their bottom line, I think the boycott has gotten many ppl out of their habits to try other stores and that's really the lasting effect
\*I have no lost love for those union busting assholes but they don't have as big a presence in Canada and so they have to rely on much lower prices to pry ppl away from the bigger players.
companies will push it to the limit to get as much money out of it as they can until people realize and then they’ll start pulling back. And the media is their messenger. It’s pure capitalism. It’s pure greed. And noticed no one got raises as they were raking in the dough.
I think we should normalize the expression “oligopoly” because a) it is a more precise representation for the concept we often talk about as “de facto” monopolies/economies of minimal competition and b) as an added bonus it can help draw the association to oligarchs (which we definitely do *not* have in the western world, right guys?)
I have stopped going out to eat completely yet all I see on my drive are fast food places lined up around the store. I'm only one person but too many morons are out there patronizing these places regardless of price.
In fairness McDonald's just posted that for the first time in years their profit has fallen.
But that's it, they're still making a profit. Their pricing is just slightly backfiring on that growth.
They are pricing with algorithms! The FTC is bringing lawsuits against at least three companies for doing this. Amazon, the rent pricing company almost every complex uses, and hotels. There is no ‘invisible hand’ when things are priced with algorithms. There is only collusion and monopoly power.
I have been enjoying buying less and making more things at home. I bought a 3d printer last year and I use it build small item stuff. Need a paper towel holder? 3d print one from a download online. I made stands, drawers, a whole peg board wall. If they want to price everything so high, i will take my money out of the economy. Well, i still do have to buy filament.
The only reason any retail chains are changing course on price gouging is likely because they have warehouses full of shelf stable junk food that no ones buying anymore because the mexican stuff from Winco is just as good and still affordable. They're not doing anything because it's 'the right thing to do'. This is profit motivated
Yeah... Fuck 'em. If prices don't roll all the way back to the 90s, I'm just gonna keep learning how to do without. I've got too much shut already anyway.
Also, fuck McDonalds too.
They collectively slowly raised prices until they felt too much tension on the line and are backing back down a little now that they know they’re getting the most they possibly can out of everyone.
The new prices will still be inflated from what they should be. They will just sit back and count the billions they made over the last two years of rampant price increases to make themselves feel better.
Yes cut it back to 30% more than what they were charging before they bumped it up 50% and hear us all collectively exhale in relief and praise our masters.
They’re going to have to cut shit in half. I can’t go to the grocery store without spending at least $30. It’s insanity. I do not know how other people survive.
For real. Got a small turkey sandwich from the deli, 2 small (single serving) bag of chips, a small prepacked salad and a thing of celery and carrot sticks on my way to work today for lunch and it cost $25. That shit should have cost $15 max. It’s mind blowing.
for real tho Im thankful for their greed lol, im eating healthier then I ever have. going to buy a dr pepper at the register and seeing it cost almost 4 dollars is a quick way to remind me that I have water in my truck.
I'm actually a bit thankful. They used COVID to teach me that almost everything I used to want to buy is unnecessary and I'm saving so much just using the stuff I already have and if there's something I really do need I've learned to find it used for less than half price.
~~Mistake~~
~~Greed~~
**Criminal levels of price gouging going back decades, stealing the vast majority of American wealth and concentrating it in the hands of an elite few who are above the rules of the system and the laws of the land.**
FTFY
the issue with amazon isn't just the price, it's the flood of dropshippers posting cheap chinese products on the site.
unless you know exactly what you want, amazon has become more like a dollar store where you can find only stuff of questionable quality for ridiculous prices
And all it took was the government looking at other monopolies like Ticketmaster. I think it has nothing to do with sales and everything to do with not looking like the next best target after. This is what should have been happening for better part of last 30 years but didn’t
... So we're gonna get an apology from every economist that was adamant it wasn't corporate greed but somehow a barely over 1k stimulus check from 4 years ago, right?
Amazon needs to stop trying to sell me shit form bullshit "small companies" based in China. I'll spend the extra bucks to buy American. Other places should feel the same about buying from their country. Mostly, if I buy a shit product, at least I'm supporting people within my borders. If I buy a shit product from a shit Chinese company, I might as well burn my money.
Are they actually, though?
I’ve only heard Target say they’re cutting back on store brand prices
Yeah, I think it's just a ploy to get people back in (which I fell for). I looked last weekend and didn't see any special sale items.
Not looking for *special sale items, im looking for fucking average costs of all items to go back down. Get this greedy shit outta here already fack.
Yeah, I see the chili's vs mcdonalds thing all the time but like chili's was still a pretty meh burger for $20
And a Big Mac meal is pretty meh for $16. The local burger joint, on the other hand, is still $12 with a beer. I might have to tip my waitress, but it's an all around better experience, and I can still be on my way faster than some of the McD's drive thrus in this town. Then again, I don't know if that's improved, because the only reason I've been in a McD's in about 3 years is because it was the only place to pee. E: If you come around here bragging about not tipping waiters, you're a piece of shit. Either tip or don't go to the restaurant. But taking advantage of someone because the restaurant does isn't helping the cause other than showing people how trashy you are and trying to disguise it as something benevolent.
Idk about other areas but the wait times at all the mcdonalds around me have only gotten worse. Like, people go there less because staff are so overworked that lots of mistakes are made and you usually have to wait a long time, but mcd's will always have rush times at lunch and dinner no matter how bad the location is. Since the reason people get Mcd"s is because they're starving/exhausted and need some food immediately. So they've only improved their ability to give terrible service to more people lmao. I think they just keep cutting hours. And their obvious preference for the mobile ordering system only makes things worse; I've seen people pull out of the drive thru line behind me to online order instead and get their order before 3 cars in front of me! And my order was fucked up! lol
Neither compares to a big chunk of ground round, cooked in your own kitchen, on a nice crisp sough-dough bun, for roughly half the cost. And you don't have to pay for delivery!
Yeah I've noticed this recently here in Canada, McDonald's meal is 15, local pub has 5 dollar pints, and 8 dollar burgers, with fries.. when you include tax and a tip, it comes out few dollars more to go to a pub. McDonald's used to be the cheap option, it's definitely not anymore.
Hey, this has nothing to do with burgers but can you write a book about David Hood?
Lol. I tried, but the publisher doesn't think there's enough interest. I've gone through a *ton* of those old soul bassists, including Lewie Steinberg, Jerry Jemott, Wilton Felder, Chuck Rainey, Bob Babbitt, and even Hood. They're not interested! I *did*, however, pitch a "101 James Jamerson full transcriptions" book which the publisher was very interested in, but the estate wasn't having it. It's harder than I thought to get green lights, and the Duck Dunn book was this weird fluke where it was a perfect storm of "everyone wanting to learn about him, but there was nothing about him."
That's a bummer. Your Duck Dunn book is fantastic. Youtube series?
I should, but setting up a video series is difficult enough to do the 60 second performance videos I did on Instagram! I do have a YouTube channel where I tried the "one man band" thing for a bit (where my name comes from), but it's now mostly a place I throw demo videos for auditions and some unique music ideas.
Wisconsin has a lot of bars. Many of the bars usually have good cheap food. Bar dining has had an upswing since the major chains raised their prices. I can go to the corner bar by my house and get a burger or chicken sandwich with all the dressings and my choice of fries for $8.00. I don't even think I can get a meal at McDonalds or Burger King for that in my area.
I just went to the local watering hole for the first time ever, and I’m nearly 40. I’d heard for many, many years that their chicken *slaps*. My friends and coworkers were not wrong. Generous portions of really great fried chicken, excellent jojos. I was mightily impressed. Two meals and two appetizers (mozzarella sticks and gizzards) came out to under $40.00 with a tip.
I have a bar just around the corner from my place where on Wednesday, I can get fish & chips and a beer for $8 ($11, including tip).
Last time I went to Chili’s the waiter came over, turned around a screen on the table and told us to order our food. Later he delivered our mediocre food. Time to pay and he tells us to pay on the screen. It felt weird and alienating. Yes, it’s a cheap chain restaurant, but it’s still a sit down restaurant, and I had an expectation of human service. If I wanted to fiddle with a screen and have food come out, I’d go pick up microwave meals from the grocer and eat them in front of the TV. And you cannot tell me that level of indifference is worth a 20% tip, he wasn’t a waiter, he was just a food carrier. I never went back to Chili’s and I don’t think I ever will. Now it feels like that kind of bullshit is everywhere. It’s less weird now, but I still find it absolutely alienating and off-putting.
Chili's is just straight garbage. Absolute garbage. I have no idea why in god's name anyone would ever willingly choose to go eat there when they can just search on google for restaurants near them with a 4.5+ star rating and get something *way* better tasting for a similar or cheaper price, easily. Sorry, gripe of mine with family who only ever wants to eat at Chili's and other similar trash chains even though we can go somewhere else and get the same style of food WAY better for the same price. But they've never heard of that place so they don't want to go there. /rant
Reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad remarried to a woman who thought TGI Friday's was just the best thing under the sun. Every weekend that I had visitation with my dad, we went out to eat; that was her pick and she usually won. That ended in 2002 when day after another Friday's visit I spent the entire day puking my guts out, and the next day my appendix ruptured. TGIF was probably merely the straw that broke the camel's back, but for years after I associated that place with my guts literally exploding and vehemently refused to go back
Only thing to look forward to at Chilis is unending chips and salsa. I also like the queso dip. But that might be at least 50% nostalgia.
The Chili's locations around me are pretty good, I've found. It's chain restaurant food, but it's *good* chain restaurant food. Could just be that I'm going at the beginning of the day though, when there aren't as many people around (so the kitchen can actually focus on peoples' orders).
I mean, I see a promo for a burger, fries and drink from Chili's for like $10.99 though? My local McDonalds charges the same for a medium big Mac meal. I'ma take the meh burger over whatever you wanna call the McDonald's burger any day.
I don’t want to see sales so much as I just want to see shit priced back to “normal” levels. Sales are temporary, I want long term reductions.
It’s not special sale, they’re lowering the regular price for most household goods. Stores usually can only update so many prices per day, so they probably weren’t done yet.
This isn't true on any level. Thousands of items change prices in stores daily. Putting up new tags might take a morning but stores do not roll out new prices over multiple days. Source: me. I installed pos systems at stores like this for years and trained stores on how to do this.
I did retail when I was young, come in 2 hours early once a week to put up all the new tags. Somewhere in the realm of a thousand items with price changes in the store I worked at sometimes. Always happened in a single day.
Now, a lot of stores have digital price tags, and it can be done automatically without any human intervention.
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For a while I had the job of changing price tags in a grocery store. I worked midnight - 9 am, because it would have been chaotic doing it during the day. Then there was some software update to run at like 4 am, to update the prices in the POS. I actually kind of enjoyed that job.
Um, it is true. We can’t change the price without changing the tag, because then the shelf would reflect an incorrect price. Most stores only have one employee doing price changes, maybe two if we’re lucky. It takes time to change that many labels, and that one employee is typically in charge of clearance markdowns as well. Furthermore, stores don’t receive all of their price change in the system at once. Usually it drops in throughout the week. So the person I responded to might have been shopping before those price changes dropped in or were activated by the price change person. Source: I work at Target. Obviously I can only speak for Target and not other stores, but that’s the experience there as someone working in a store.
They got rid of their 1% cash back recently with the claim that their store deals would more than make up for that 1%, but that was an obvious lie. The "deals" are things like "buy $50 in household items, get a $5 gift certificate," but it's hard to get exactly the right items that fit the deal. I tried it a couple of times, but when I used the first $5 gift certificate I earned on an order, one item they sent me was the wrong one. They refunded me for the wrong item, but then charged my credit card $5 to take back that gift certificate. Now I won't shop Target unless I absolutely have to, which so far hasn't been an issue.
If u call the customer service line they will likely credit u back the 5.
Not worth the time. Plus it's a principle of the matter thing. I'm not going to spend ten minutes on hold then five minutes explaining my problem to some CS rep just to get $5 back. I'm just not going to shop there anymore.
Raised prices 70% over the last 2 years. Now cuts prices by 5%. Thinks that makes up for it.
100% guarantee the "slashed prices" are still gonna be higher than when they started. it's gonna be the "Black Friday discount" all over again.
and walmart. My local news referred to it as them having a “price war” but it’s really them returning back to their already overpriced shit
This isn’t groceries but I wanted to save 15$ on 2 new copies of some Mario video game and Walmart flat out wouldn’t price match for me. The gentleman was nice, it’s just policy there was no issue. I found it interesting. I went to target and they did it for me just fine. Same UPC of course just a few dollars off on Amazon. But it got me to go to target and browse their stuff.
Target is honestly great for price matching, I tend to shop there because of that and because certain things are cheaper than walmart
No. This is the oldest trick in the book. You aggressively raise prices expecting backslash. Then you lower them, but to levels higher than before. You look generous while simply raising prices. Retailers do this constantly.
THIS. Thank you. It's the same thing that happens on Black Friday deals. Price goes up 30% for 2 months before, then the deal becomes the standard price. This is retail gimmicks 101
It's the Black Friday discount all over again
I think they actually are decreasing prices, whether or not a reasonable person would consider them to be "slashing" their prices... Not as sure. I think Walmart did it, then had a much better quarterly earnings, whereas others' earnings dropped--so they're trying to follow Walmarts lead. Lol, I'm not sure they actually see it as a mistake, though, they're probably pretty happy about the money they've been able to make these last couple years.
“We put a “/“ in front of all prices and raised it by 10%, our prices are now slashed, darn you inflation!”
I won’t believe articles like this until my bill at the store is slashed
I have my doubts that they will reduce prices down to pre-covid levels. I want my groceries to cost as much as they did in 2019 and don't care what anyone says about that being impossible for one macroeconomic reason or another.
I'd be okay with that plus actual inflation rate. Not the 20x actual inflation version they went with.
Aldi is getting close. Still higher than what I remember, but they've had observable price reductions over the last year or two.
In my mind, there's no reason why it shouldn't or even at least return to a price level that would be consistent with non-greedflation inflation moving forward to what it should be today from those 2019 levels. After all the work we've done to agricultural techniques and technologies, we should be able to produce more food for same price or the same amount of food for cheaper; but it continually grinds my gears to know that farmers are burning surplus crops and killing surplus live stock simply to keep prices high.
My Dad used to say 'Put want in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.'
i wouldn't have faith that it is
Yep. They would pay money for headlines like this before actually cutting costs.
Now that everyone has shrunk or diluted all their products, they cut prices back to where they were before. There are just less product for the old prices.
I’ve been watching Amazon and have a bunch of stuff in the cart to track pricing. Nothing has changed that I’ve seen.
Stop buying over priced stuff. Watch prices adjust.
Work at a Walmart I'm not seeing prices noticeably lower
They rolled 2L Dr. Thunder back to $1 in my stores after bumping it up to 1.40 for almost a year. Too late WalMart I've already swapped it out for tea and am liking it better anyway.
I saw some tags at Target this week that showed the current price and the older, higher price.
Do not ever trust this unless you've seen the price higher with your own eyes. It's a common tactic they use to make customers think they're getting a deal.
I’m not personally swayed by a deal, but I get your point. I buy it if the price is reasonable to me or based on how much I need it.
> I buy it if the price is reasonable to me or based on how much I need it. The only thing that matters.
Cutting prices but reducing the size of product.
“Now that we have bled them all dry, let’s act like barely reducing the prices from their massively inflated state will get them back. Let’s put out a bunch of press about it”
What was $1 two years ago is now $4, but we'll cut it back to $3.25 because we gotta make it look like we're losing something other than a small portion of our pure fucking greed.
Why aren't you thanking me for stopping punching you?
For punching you *just a little less*
... the cop said to his wife.
We will thank you by treating you like a thief by demanding your receipt
The grocery store had 16$ old slice deodorant and the toothpaste was 8$. Just saw it today. Crest toothepaste used to be like 2-3$. And an expensive deodorant used to be 6.99$. Fucking horse shit. People need to start getting pissed at the billionaires themselves.
That’s why the billionaires control the media, to propagandize the masses to fight amongst themselves like we are enemies when they are the true enemy. This is all a system of control They also all bought islands and massive yachts to where if the people rise up, they can escape and hide.
The people need to put down the culture wars bullshit, unite, and turn attention to billionaires causing all this. I recognize that some of the people causing the harm are just crazy idiots and not rich, and that some people are just the sellout gears in the machine, but the source of this mainly is still massively the billionaires.
There is an employee owned (not managed, unfortunately) grocery store in our town. Prices went up there, like everywhere else, but far, far less. The store brand stuff they sell, like cereal, used to be 20 to 30% off. Now it is three to four *times* less expensive than the name brands. Which means every other store, like Safeway, Kroger/King Soopers/Fred Meyer, Walmart, Albertsons, Target, they *all* happily joined in with the manufacturers to gouge their customers for the last few years.
They just wanted to see how far they could stretch us before we snap.
That's provided people actually snap. Most people will roll over and die long before anyone organizes themselves to do something.
And people clutch their pearls when the poorest decide fuck these people and start taking shit. Their real error is doing it in their neighborhoods and not the Richie Targét neighborhoods. It’s just stuff, people are more important. When things like laundry detergent need to be in cases, the system is broken not the people
This is 100% just a marketing ploy.
> Now that we have bled them all dry A vampire analogy is apt. They usually have two options. Suck blood from people until they're empty or suck enough blood to keep from killing their life's blood. They're moving back to Plan B.
The kohls method. Mark everything up 500% and give a 200% discount
My shopping habits have permanently changed. Even with reduced prices, I've adapted to living without frequent visits to these stores. Thanks I guess?
Same. Also I started going to Costco.
costco has its fault, but on the whole their employees are treated better (varies a lot by store location) and they dont overcharge for products (this does not vary by location). they make the vast majority of their profit from memberships - not products.
You forgot the best part. $1.50 hot dog and soda combo baby
And the rotisserie chicken too, apparently the second loss leader product at Costco are those rotisserie chickens, but like the hotdog, it's entirely worth it because it pulls in those memberships.
I wanted to celebrate Trump getting convicted yesterday, so we were planning to go out to a restaurant. After looking at the menu prices of many different restaurants, we decided to just go to Costco instead and eat at home. For the price of 1 dinner for 2 at a restaurant, we got over a weeks worth of food. Shits just not worth it anymore.
So it wasn't even this year but last year's mother's day we did take out from a popular Italian restaurant chain. We tried to save money by getting the main dish there and then making our sides ourselves. They added a mandatory 20% gratuity for takeout. A single 1 lb lasagna from them turned out to be $100. Couldn't even feed everybody. Saddest mother's day I've ever been to. What's crazy is this restaurant is packed every single night, and it's just a chain.
A 20% mandatory gratuity for takeout?! Wow. They suck. I haven't been going out as much but tell me who they are so I can never go there. Ima boycott them on principal
It was Buca di Beppo. They were known for giving large family style portions and we thought it would be enough especially since we paid ahead on their website. That was the only thing that kept me from giving the lasagna back and leaving.
Costco was the winner. I didn’t even previously shop there and now it’s where I do all my grocery shopping. I can get two weeks worth of groceries there for the same price as a week’s worth of groceries at Walmart or Target.
Funny enough, what pushed me to Costco was my local Walmart closing all their self checkout lanes. No way am I waiting around for a cashier to check me out.
Ironically I did the reverse. Everytime I go to my local walmart they ONLY have self check out so I go to target instead.
I hate self checkout. I am not getting paid for that work. Well, not officially. As I was not trained, I am a very bad cashier. I miss stuff all the time and don’t even realize it!
Aldi
Same. There are things I simply don't buy anymore because I'm not paying $9 for a box of goldfish crackers. It's not worth it to me. Aldi is the first place we go. And guess what, because I was willing to try Aldi brand, some stuff I found out is better. Like their sliced cheese. I will never go back to name brand cheese at Walmart. They fucked themselves by pricing shit so high and they lost me forever.
Compared to most sliced cheeses Aldi is just as good If not better, the packaging is the problem. Often it doesn't get a good seal so I highly recommend transferring it to a different container if you have a problem with it drying out or getting old too quickly. Don't forget they also have their double back guarantee. Any of their own brands they will refund you the money and replace it for you. This way if you don't like it not only do you get your money back but you get another one to see if it was just a one off, or you genuinely do not like it. You do not have to get the same thing either, you could get a different flavor or a different product entirely if you really wanted.
Sorta same in Canada, but I've changed grocery stores and stopped eating out or getting delivery at all. Their greed improved my health for once. Except it's upside down here. Walmart is the cheapest grocery store in Canada right now outside of bulk stuff from Costco.
Same. I used to do a Walmart run once a week. Now it’s once a month and I grab fresh produce occasionally at Trader Joe’s.
$15.00 for a 24 pack of Pepsi that was $8.00 in 2019. Thank you, morons. You finally got me to quit soda.
I haven’t drank soda in a long time but I feel like just 10 years ago you could buy 12 packs on sale 4 for $10.
Yes! I don’t drink soda, but I remember that price cause it’s a good deal compared to beer. I see 12 packs for $10 now
4 name brand 12 packs for $10 is more like 2004 not 2014. I definitely do remember the occasional 3×12 for $10 or 4×12 for $13 deals, back around 2014 when I still drank soda.
Was dating a soda obsessed chick in 2014 and can attest that 4 for 10 was not as far back as 2004.
A 20oz mountain dew was $3.89 at target the other day. Three Eighty Nine
PepsiCo sucks ass. I have an uncle who retired as a biologist for them and gave them 50 years. He started out with respect and an office and ended with a security escort off the premises from his shared cubicle. Greedy fucks. He’s the reason their Cheetos don’t suck, so let’s treat him like shit.
I quit cereal.
Yeah. Ive grown to love the $2 Aldi knockoffs. Fuck if im paying $6+ for cereal.
Haha same. Had stopped eating cereal for over a decade and then Aldi pulled me back in.
This is the way. Aldi cereal and almond milk has rekindled my munchies game.
Isn't it weird how during this whole time, none of these companies noticed their competitors were overpricing and lowered their own prices in response, like the invisible hand of the free market is supposed to do automatically? It's almost like they're all colluding on prices, huh?
Economics is like one big prisoners dilemma. When it comes to price gouging, all corporations mutually benefit the most if everyone inflates their prices in unison. Consumers don’t have any option but to pay the higher pricing, and naturally spend with businesses based on need/convenience. Short-term, decreasing prices will allow one of these companies to claim greater market share, so the smallest of these corporations (after doing a little homework, looks like Walgreens threw the first stone) stand to benefit the most from the good publicity and boosted market share. However, the response from competitors will be to lower their prices in response almost immediately. Now everything normalizes from a distribution perspective to where it was with everyone price gouging, but now everyone is making less profit. So really it’s an ongoing game of chicken where these corporations all make more money when they move in unison. This phenomenon is called a Nash Equilibrium, a state where a business settles for a suboptimal strategy which becomes optimal based on the behavior of their competitors. Now that things are reaching a breaking point for consumers, corporations are shifting gears from driving maximum price points to finding a better balance where consumers are spending more money overall - the demand for goods was tanking since too many people were priced out. So this isn’t a token of goodwill saying “hey we know you’re tapped out, here’s some relief” so much as “prices are so high that the increased profits are outweighed by the number of people who simply cannot afford to buy these things anymore. Come back and spend your money again. Please.” Edit: [It’s really cool stuff](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-microeconomics/chapter/prisoners-dilemma/) if you’re interested in economics!
There is no free market, the entire concept is an anachronism from before we left the gold standard. Capitalism has gotten very good at what they do: extraction.
Like any anarchic system, a free market can only exist for a moment. As soon as an agent in a market has enough capital to put their thumb on the scale, it’s already a market dictated by the wealthiest. Besides, a free market allows for slavery, child labor, exploitation. It was never virtuous for anyone but the exploiter.
Yeah that's always been a question of mine. The only way it's a free market is if you don't have enough weight to throw around. But... just the fact of being a reasonably-sized company in this day and age kinda throws the ideology out the window lol.
"free market" just means "let the elites do whatever."
neo-feudalism
They don't have to collude on prices to collude on prices. For any particular consumer staple good, there's usually only 3-5 choices of significant size. As a general store, that's Walmart, Target, Amazon, Best Buy, and a few specialty stores for certain niches. These are all large national operations that use a ton of data. One of their data points is comps- price of comparable items from other stores. Many of these prices are adjusted by algorithm not by humans, based on various factors like cost from manufacturer, comparable prices in competition, how popular the item is, overall strength of economy, etc. There's two problems with this. One, on paper the economy has been pretty strong for the last several quarters. Most of those gains haven't 'trickled down' to the average worker, but on paper the nation is booming. So the algorithm goes for higher prices. Two, everybody else does the same thing with similar algorithms, everybody else trying to push high prices, so the algorithms feed off each other. And you get the *effects* of collusion, without any actual collusion. ---- The same thing was done with a rent algorithm that was in the news several months ago- some company made an algorithm to price apartments for rent that would look at comps, occupancy, local economy, etc. You'd hire this company and feed it a bunch of info about your apartment building, and they'd feed you day-by-day pricing changes that keep your price right at the upper end (but not above) what renters in your area / market segment were willing to pay. Issue was, what happened when all the apartments in an area use the system (or one like it)? Because the algorithm prices apartments high, that means all the comparable apartments using the same system are priced high. And thus you get the same effect as collusion (all competitors increase their prices more or less simultaneously) without any actual collusion. ----- As for the stores- just like the apartment managers, the product was selling and profits were high so who gives a shit if we beat the competitor price as long as we're making bank? Of course the HUMAN aspect to that is that if you bleed the customers dry they can no longer afford anything. But the algorithm doesn't consider such things.
This! They are pricing with algorithms! The FTC is bringing lawsuits against at least three companies for doing this. Amazon, the rent pricing company almost every complex uses, and hotels. There is no ‘invisible hand’ when things are priced with algorithms. There is only collusion and monopoly power.
Amazon might succeed if only because Amazon was undercutting 3rd party sellers in their own marketplace often automatically before the 3rd party could react. Given that the standard 'sell your shit on Amazon' contract has a clause that you can't sell below the Amazon price elsewhere, FTC might just win. The rent company thing I think should in theory be a slam dunk- even if the rent company ran a separate instance of the algorithm independently for each apartment complex, even if those instances technically competed with each other, the fact is multiple direct competitors totally outsourced their pricing to the same 3rd party firm, and that in itself could be seen as collusion. If FTC loses that case, it will probably mean 'price algorithm' firms spring up in every major market and it becomes the *de facto* way to engage in price collusion.
The invisible hand works great when you have a bunch of privately owned small businesses competing with each other. Not so much with a couple of mega corporations that can copy each other without communicating. Why compete on price with your only competitor when you can match the higher prices?
What do you think the purpose of capitalism is, competition?
Theyll never get convicted cuz they can just blame it on algorithms
Marketing theory emphasizes that you really want to do everything to avoid a price war. If you markup is 100% (say $1 item you sell for $2) and you discount it 25% then you lose 50% of profits. If your competitor can get away with charging a certain price, then you have every incentive to charge that price as well. So yeah, it’s collusion but not with a bunch of guys on a golf course, it’s a bunch of pricing analysts who get well paid to say there’s no reason not to raise prices.
The worst thing (business-wise) about them doing this is people learned about how much shit they don't need, and that lesson is forever.
This is the real truth. It went on for so long that people formed new habits. It’s not going back.
I'll never buy another pack of oreos..
Yeah, I remember my great grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression, and they taught those frugal habits to my grandmother, who taught them to my mother, and me. The corporations are underestimating the cultural shift away from consumption that they are creating...or it's priced in. Raise prices 20% and lose 20% of customers works fine for them...
The Colossal Mistake isn't just some retailers bumping up prices for increased profits. But the Colossal Mistake does have to do with profits and power. The mistake is using every means possible to maximize profits: propaganda, wage stagnation, impoverishing billions of people, subverting governments, endangering the planet & the future of humanity, and inciting hatred and division as a means of control. When we should be approaching a glorious future with peace and happiness for all, we are still on the edge of losing it all.
We've got a really neat little movement happening in Canada. The largest grocery chain in the country is Loblaws and since the start of May, a boycott of them has been ongoing. While they certainly weren't the only chain to engage in price gouging, their owner Galen Weston Jr *was* the only one stupid enough to star in advertisements telling Canadians how much he understands our struggles and how he's on our side. While it remains to be seen how much of an impact we'll have on them, there is a constant stream of ppl discovering much more affordable options in local shops or even competitors like Walmart\* and the many Asian grocery stores we've got. More than affecting their bottom line, I think the boycott has gotten many ppl out of their habits to try other stores and that's really the lasting effect \*I have no lost love for those union busting assholes but they don't have as big a presence in Canada and so they have to rely on much lower prices to pry ppl away from the bigger players.
companies will push it to the limit to get as much money out of it as they can until people realize and then they’ll start pulling back. And the media is their messenger. It’s pure capitalism. It’s pure greed. And noticed no one got raises as they were raking in the dough.
If we pay people more, our prices will go up! *prices go up, wages same* repeat repeat repeat
Or...or....or how about this? We buy alternative and NEVER go back?
What alternatives when these companies combined pretty much have a monopoly?
I think we should normalize the expression “oligopoly” because a) it is a more precise representation for the concept we often talk about as “de facto” monopolies/economies of minimal competition and b) as an added bonus it can help draw the association to oligarchs (which we definitely do *not* have in the western world, right guys?)
I have stopped going out to eat completely yet all I see on my drive are fast food places lined up around the store. I'm only one person but too many morons are out there patronizing these places regardless of price.
In fairness McDonald's just posted that for the first time in years their profit has fallen. But that's it, they're still making a profit. Their pricing is just slightly backfiring on that growth.
Some people are paying *even more* by ordering through food delivery apps!
Here the McDonald's are mostly ghost towns. All the coffee drive throughs are packed tho.
Let them. I like my money and I think I'll invest it instead.
They are pricing with algorithms! The FTC is bringing lawsuits against at least three companies for doing this. Amazon, the rent pricing company almost every complex uses, and hotels. There is no ‘invisible hand’ when things are priced with algorithms. There is only collusion and monopoly power.
At Target Today Milk was $3.79 instead of $3.99😂 Hooray 
10% lower price for 20% less content again? The new and improved shrink-greedflation
I have been enjoying buying less and making more things at home. I bought a 3d printer last year and I use it build small item stuff. Need a paper towel holder? 3d print one from a download online. I made stands, drawers, a whole peg board wall. If they want to price everything so high, i will take my money out of the economy. Well, i still do have to buy filament.
Continue only buying what you need where you've found it cheapest.
The only reason any retail chains are changing course on price gouging is likely because they have warehouses full of shelf stable junk food that no ones buying anymore because the mexican stuff from Winco is just as good and still affordable. They're not doing anything because it's 'the right thing to do'. This is profit motivated
They're slashing costs to bring back customers? Why don't they try slashing **prices**?
Target still too fucking expensive. Avoid. 25$ for a fucking shirt. A Ragady ass shirt. stay with aldi and goodwill stores.
Keep voting with your dollars. These companies are feeling the squeeze, tighten that grip!
Aka putting the same sales price label over a regular label. They’re not fooling shit
They still made that $$$$. That money doesn't get un-spent. They will shrink packages 25% and drop prices 10% and continue to make more $$$$.
Yeah... Fuck 'em. If prices don't roll all the way back to the 90s, I'm just gonna keep learning how to do without. I've got too much shut already anyway. Also, fuck McDonalds too.
They collectively slowly raised prices until they felt too much tension on the line and are backing back down a little now that they know they’re getting the most they possibly can out of everyone.
Boycott
Fuck off big corpos. Blaming inflation for price gouging all of us so you can go buy a yacht.
This basically screams deflation if they lower their prices. Think how much influence they have.
Call it what it is: PRICE GOUGING
toilet paper under $1 a roll when?
They all collude together to fix prices.
Who'd of thunk? You mean raising the price of stuff for no reason except to increase profits causes blowback? I'm shocked!
Costco never engaged in this.
The new prices will still be inflated from what they should be. They will just sit back and count the billions they made over the last two years of rampant price increases to make themselves feel better.
Yes cut it back to 30% more than what they were charging before they bumped it up 50% and hear us all collectively exhale in relief and praise our masters.
Jack prices by dollars and drop it a dime
They’re going to have to cut shit in half. I can’t go to the grocery store without spending at least $30. It’s insanity. I do not know how other people survive.
For real. Got a small turkey sandwich from the deli, 2 small (single serving) bag of chips, a small prepacked salad and a thing of celery and carrot sticks on my way to work today for lunch and it cost $25. That shit should have cost $15 max. It’s mind blowing.
Suddenly corporations don't like "market adjustments" lol
Corporate pigs, are playing you
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for real tho Im thankful for their greed lol, im eating healthier then I ever have. going to buy a dr pepper at the register and seeing it cost almost 4 dollars is a quick way to remind me that I have water in my truck.
I'm actually a bit thankful. They used COVID to teach me that almost everything I used to want to buy is unnecessary and I'm saving so much just using the stuff I already have and if there's something I really do need I've learned to find it used for less than half price.
Honestly, just start stealing things, people
Whoops!
Sell the damn case doors and free the scented candles, Walmart.
# Corporate Price Gouging 
They haven't realized a damn thing. If anything, they're just dialing in the exact high prices we're willing to tolerate.
I don't fucking care about retailers lowering prices on shit no one needs it's the fucking grocery stores that need to cut the shit
It's a scam
So we're getting that money back right? Right?
The old "pay people to publish articles saying we have learned our lesson" play? Bold move. Let's see how it works out.
Bag of chips still cost $6
~~Mistake~~ ~~Greed~~ **Criminal levels of price gouging going back decades, stealing the vast majority of American wealth and concentrating it in the hands of an elite few who are above the rules of the system and the laws of the land.** FTFY
Mistake? How is making billions extra money a mistake?
the issue with amazon isn't just the price, it's the flood of dropshippers posting cheap chinese products on the site. unless you know exactly what you want, amazon has become more like a dollar store where you can find only stuff of questionable quality for ridiculous prices
THEY ARENT SLASHING ANYTHING BACK! They will drop prices for like two weeks, and then blam, back to price gouging.
I stopped using Target two years ago. I deleted Amazon two months ago. Walmart still gets me occasionally, but yeah.
Too little, too late. All 3 are last resorts.
And all it took was the government looking at other monopolies like Ticketmaster. I think it has nothing to do with sales and everything to do with not looking like the next best target after. This is what should have been happening for better part of last 30 years but didn’t
... So we're gonna get an apology from every economist that was adamant it wasn't corporate greed but somehow a barely over 1k stimulus check from 4 years ago, right?
Still not buying anything from them. ....I'm not buying anything at all.
So the executives that got rich from the price hikes jumped ship, huh?
Publix out there still like, fuck you
They spelled "price gouging" wrong
Time for shrinkflation.
Amazon needs to stop trying to sell me shit form bullshit "small companies" based in China. I'll spend the extra bucks to buy American. Other places should feel the same about buying from their country. Mostly, if I buy a shit product, at least I'm supporting people within my borders. If I buy a shit product from a shit Chinese company, I might as well burn my money.
It wasn’t a mistake. They played it for all it was worth and now they have to cut back to “only” overcharging instead of gouging.
I am yet too see any price cuts. All I keep seeing are headlines of price cuts. I am sticking to Aldi