[HN Gopher] Energizer, Walmart are sued for conspiring to raise ...
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Energizer, Walmart are sued for conspiring to raise battery prices
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 41 points
Date : 2023-04-29 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| samstave wrote:
| Walmart has already raised prices on juice that I like to buy by
| ~40%
|
| They are profeteering on the current situation.
|
| They need to be cancelled.
|
| When a box of sugar water (juice) goes up for no reason, people
| need to be accountable.
|
| I have a solution, and its weird AI.
|
| I cant explain it now, but imagine you had full transparency to
| your supply chain.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Color Code said Document(tm)
| simoncion wrote:
| > ...imagine you had full transparency to your supply chain.
|
| As a layman, this would be an information deluge that I would
| be utterly unqualified to evaluate... even _if_ I had the time
| required to examine the supply chains for the hundreds (or tens
| of thousands, depending on how you split out the BOMs) of
| separate things I purchase each month.
|
| As a hypothetical exec at Wal-Mart, I almost certainly have the
| power to order potential suppliers to reveal more than enough
| information about _their_ supply chains to satisfy every bit of
| interest I possess.
| samstave wrote:
| DM me
|
| -
|
| I have an idea you can run with, but we need to have a
| discussion... while we are pausing AI on military
| 'applications' - economic opportunities exist in a way...
| simoncion wrote:
| > DM me
|
| No.
|
| > ...we need to have a discussion...
|
| We do not.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Pretty pls DM me? :C=
| simoncion wrote:
| How could I possibly say "no" to a lil shrimp emoji? >:3
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-pr...
|
| Look at those juicy sub 2% profit margins. I am sure the
| employees of tech companies on this forum earning 20%+ profit
| margins will be all ears.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Battery prices are a racket. I was shocked when I saw the price
| of coin cells at a local store: a two pack of coin cell batteries
| cost 7EUR. So instead of the coin cells, I bought an electric
| candle for 1EUR, took out the coin cell, and threw away the
| electric candle.
| spicyjpeg wrote:
| Unfortunately, with the current trend of cheap electronics
| switching away from standard batteries and towards custom-
| sized, permanently soldered-in lithium cells (sometimes without
| the ability to recharge them - _why this is still legal is
| beyond me_ [1]), you won 't be able to keep doing that for
| long.
|
| On the flip side, a lithium cell salvaged from such a device is
| going to be a lot more useful than a single-use coin cell if
| you can solder. There are readily available modules that will
| take any of these batteries and provide a charging port and an
| output with overcurrent and undervoltage protection, ready to
| be wired into anything capable of running on 3.7V [2].
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=PsJMj7FtroY
|
| [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=M88e1r8nvYk
| mox1 wrote:
| Digikey has all of the common coin cells you need, for prices
| that range from USD 0.50 to 3.50, which is to say FAAAR cheaper
| than at Walmart.
|
| It is a name brand too (Panasonic)
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/panasonic-bsg/CR2...
| DaveExeter wrote:
| Ebay is better. You used to be able to get 10 for 0.99 shipped
| from China.
|
| They have gone up 200-300%, but now they ship from USA.
|
| https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cr2032&_sop=15
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I would be wary of counterfeits. I got counterfeit Duracell
| 9V batteries from a well-known online retailer who co-mingles
| inventory. They dropped to about 5.5V after a month of use
| and, on closer inspection, were made of subtly different
| materials.
| cdbyr wrote:
| It's pretty common for there to be a 'minimum advertised price'
| (MAP) where a brand can cut retailers off if they advertise a
| price below it - this is why so many stores will have the exact
| same price on a given product and why you'll sometimes see the
| 'lower price in cart' message.
|
| It sounds like the issue here is that Walmart managed to get
| Energizer to have a higher MAP price, but I'm not sure how much
| more collusion-y that is than MAP prices in general.
| mthoms wrote:
| The article makes a direct reference to "price at checkout"
| though it's not quite clear to me if that wording was
| intentional. If they really mean "price at checkout" then we
| are talking about blatant price fixing that goes beyond MAP and
| is quite serious.
|
| >Walmart rivals allegedly risked higher wholesale prices or
| being cut off by Energizer, the largest U.S. disposable battery
| maker, if they charged less at checkout than Walmart, the
| world's largest retailer.
| cdbyr wrote:
| There are all sorts of games brands/retailers play with these.
| It also wouldn't surprise me at all if Walmart avoided language
| that went as far as collusion, but did make clear they needed a
| certain margin and were willing to pay a higher price.
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(page generated 2023-04-29 23:02 UTC)