A new book by Lindsay Owens
The End of a Fair Price – and What That Means for Your Wallet
Available now
If companies aren't planning on using your personal data to set individual prices, why are they filing patents to do exactly that? 🤔
Watch @owenslindsay1 on @CNNThisMorning break down how companies can change prices in a nanosecond based on your personal information.
Yesterday, @Walmart released a letter addressed to our President & CEO @owenslindsay1 pushing back on our characterizations of Walmart's pricing practices.
Our response? The proof is at the patent office.
If Walmart is so indignant that it won't use the tech it has patented, it doesn't need to wait for patents to lapse. It should file a statutory disclaimer for active patents & abandon pending applications immediately.
If you don't plan to use the tech, relinquish the IP rights.
Thanks for sharing our work @RonanFarrow!
We call it the “Annoyance Economy” – what we pay in time, fees, and irritation to navigate our daily lives – and it costs Americans at least $165 billion a year.
Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation requiring large businesses to try to connect you with a human within 15 minutes of asking, or schedule a callback—taking effect in 2027.
It's part of a wave of state measures targeting the administrative and financial
No matter how many letters @walmart writes, customers have every reason to worry they might be getting ripped off.
Their pricing patent applications speak louder than words: Walmart is building the tech they’d need to set personalized prices.
@danbartlett6 @owenslindsay1 You have a dynamic pricing patent that has a defined use for modify prices based on individuals. Saying your not going to us it to screw customers is like having a patent on a gun and promising that it won’t shoot bullets. Your customers aren’t as stupid as you think they are.
I think Walmart customers can make their own decisions. Do you trust a PR campaign from corporate execs meant to clean up a mess, or do you trust hundreds of patents that show where a company is investing time, money, and expertise?
Deployed or not, I don’t think any retailer should be developing tech that can use your Apple Watch or Omnipod to monitor your heart rate and blood sugar levels in the freezer aisle to see what your favorite ice cream flavor is.
For decades, an organized effort has reshaped the federal judiciary around a particular vision of economic power.
The result: weaker worker protections, less competition, & less tools to hold corporations accountable.
From @WeDemandJustice & @Groundwork https://demandjustice.org/oligarchy/
Some Democrats worry investigating corporate America will look like retribution. That's bad policy and bad politics. Congress has hauled in corrupt CEOs since Teapot Dome.
@Groundwork Senior Fellow and investigations veteran Molly Claflin in @MSNOWNews:
You can believe @walmart's letter "promising" not to use deceptive pricing practices, or you can believe the patent applications they've filed to do just that.
Walmart might not be telling you what they're up to, but they have been telling the US Patent & Trademark Office.
And here it is. @Walmart, I'm ready to talk.
I love that Walmart states emphatically that they price products not people, then tries to explain away a patent that literally says "if a customer has tuna fish, they may be offered a different price on mayonnaise." Go @owenslindsay1
Don’t take our word for it: Walmart has spilled all the details to the US Patent and Trademark office.
Receipts here:
Some of the most insidious tech developments include:
- The ability to weigh your car in the parking lot to determine how much you bought or read your license plate to see where your car is registered, and thus, how far you drove to a Walmart store
- A “Karen-o-meter” to decide
If you think Flock is bad, just wait until you see what data Walmart has figured out how to collect and exploit.
We found evidence that Walmart has developed technology that can:
- Deanonymize cell phone data to track customers well outside of stores
- Use customers’ heart rate
