"Warehouse pricing" and grease pencils

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krogerclerk
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Re: "Warehouse pricing" and grease pencils

Post by krogerclerk »

Grease pencils to mark prices didn't last very long at most of the warehouse style stores of the 70's, as intentional and unintentional errant price marking plagued the system. Most warehouse stores were early to adopt scanning that survived into the next decade, a move that alleviated the labor saving practice of pricing while eliminating the inherent problems of allowing the shoppers to price his/her own products.
TheQuestioner
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Re: "Warehouse pricing" and grease pencils

Post by TheQuestioner »

It's funny to imagine that once, checkers had to look at each and every item and key in the prices. I grew up going to Giant for the most part, and their electronic systems were implemented before I left pre-school, so "price guns" and stickers on individual items were something I rarely saw in grocery stores.

I remember Dart Drug used the price gun/sticker method for years after it was phased out of other DC area retailers. I think the Hafts were too cheap to want to upgrade their run-down chain's infrastructure. I'm pretty sure Trak Auto and Crown books used UPCs for pricing.

Though the efficiencies are well worth it regarding electronic pricing, the concerns mentioned by consumer advocates in the article were and are still valid. It's true that there are often discrepancies, sometimes big ones, between prices on the shelf and prices in the computer. 90% or customers are either not conscientious enough or too distracted and busy to worry about double-checking at the register, so those "errors" slip through. My mother believe Giant purposely did this, at least with sale items that wouldn't ring up at sale price. She got so fed up that she went mostly to Shoppers after a while. I am not sure if it was a conspiracy, as my family knew Izzy Cohen and he has always some across as a straight dealer to me, but I wouldn't put it past Ahold...
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tesg
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Re: "Warehouse pricing" and grease pencils

Post by tesg »

If you REALLY wanted to see something impressive, you should have tried shopping at Aldi before they got scanners (and we're talking mid 1990's here).

No pencils, and no price tags. The clerks had every price memorized.

Sure they're a smaller store with a smaller selection, but it never failed to impress me.
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