Tiered pricing is EVERYWHERE now. In supermarkets, if you don’t have their app/loyalty card you have to pay higher prices. They frame it as a “discount” or “savings” for having the app, but clearly it’s just a punishment for not giving them your info and allowing them to track/advertise at you.
In restaurants/fast food places, you get “discounts” (i.e. regular prices) via the app/email list, and if you don’t have the app or give them your email address you don’t get the discount (read: you have to pay higher prices). And of course they can “tailor” personalised “deals” directly at you based on your past behaviour to optimise how much money they get out of you.
I just looked at a hotel and they’re advertising a “discount” if you give them your email address (read: a higher price if you don’t allow them to advertise at you).
I absolutely hate this behaviour. I know exactly why it’s there: some people are willing to pay more for convenience/no ads, and some are willing to go to more effort / put up with ads for a lower price. Either way they get more money out of you: the logical conclusion of capitalism and chasing higher profits.
It feels like this should be illegal. It feels like a cousin of price gouging, which is already illegal. Ofc it never will be outlawed in america - idk how much this happens across the pond though - but I hope one day this could be outlawed in europe.
It depends.
Tiers based on age, disability, or ability to pay (e.g. child/senior tickets, lower prices for people who might not be able to fully enjoy an activity due to a disability, low-income people getting cheaper bus fares, etc) are all generally okay, because they expand access, tend to make things more affordable for those who actually need it, but don’t cause massive unjust increases in pricing for others.
Personalized pricing however should be illegal in most cases. (e.g. you order McDonald’s through the app and they charge you an extra $0.10 on every item compared to the in-store menu just because you got your paycheck recently.)
As for all the discount/reward/loyalty programs, I’d say it depends. If my small local grocery store gives me coupons in their email newsletter, that’s fine. Hell, even if larger chains do it, if the discounts are on a specific selection of items, and are probably designed to get you to spend money on stuff you otherwise wouldn’t have purchased, it doesn’t really matter to me if I can get them or not by giving my email, and isn’t that unfair.
If your rewards app is akin to a punch card like the one at my local ice cream place where if you buy 10 scoops, you get another one free, that’s also fine. It’s just a way to keep track of how loyal you are to the business so they know when you’re allowed a little bonus, and they benefit from you coming back to them instead of another place, because you’re betting on that free scoop.
If a place prices everything higher than they would normally do it should they not have an app, then requires you giving up sensitive personal details to lower it back down to a reasonable rate, that’s unfair, and should be banned.
If the place prices items down just a little lower than they would normally price items even if they didn’t have an app/newsletter, because apps/newsletters are generally just a good way to keep customers around and increase sales, that’s fine by me. (e.g. if my local grocery store just sends me an email saying “hey, we now have X item in stock” and it interests me, they’re gonna get a sale they otherwise would not have gotten had I not been signed up to their newsletter, and that offsets a small discount on everything else I buy there)