[HN Gopher] The behavioral cost of personalized pricing
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The behavioral cost of personalized pricing
Author : bobbiechen
Score : 18 points
Date : 2026-01-25 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (digitalseams.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (digitalseams.com)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| New job: poor person personal shopper. Someone with a "poor"
| profile follows you around the store so you can use their quoted
| prices instead of your own. Or travel agents that only book
| flights for you using early-2000s flip phones, shielding clients
| from the iPhone premium price.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| Might be a good idea to get a cheap secondary Android phone to
| avoid having to pay the iPhone ecommerce/digital tax that
| companies like Uber will upcharge you for.
| footy wrote:
| aside from everything else this seems ripe for abuse of people
| with cognitive disabilities
| noitpmeder wrote:
| I wish it were easier to have ephemeral interactions with
| companies. Why do I need a tracked and maintained user profile
| for things like Uber? Shouldnt it be possible to only interact
| for the single transaction, ending as soon as I leave the car.
|
| I imagine trying to continuously cycle accounts will run into
| various blocks, e.g. you can't sign up using your
| email/phone/credit-card because it is already linked to an
| existing account.
|
| I hate the way the world is going. As the article states, Uber
| can probably classify my exact spending habits to maximize a
| price I'm willing to pay for. But id much rather them have to
| treat me as a new soul every time, and hopefully along those
| lines have to fight a bit harder to get my business.
| amelius wrote:
| On the other hand, if you're an Uber driver it is nice to know
| the person getting into your car was rated positively (not a
| dangerous individual, smelling of alcohol, etc.)
|
| But I have actually no idea if drivers can say "no" based on
| ratings.
|
| In general I would agree with you.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| I'd rather have those smelling of alcohol be passengers than
| drivers.
| mschild wrote:
| This is why I refuse/back out of eshops that require accounts.
| Has the unintended upside that I often think twice about buying
| something and often dont. If I really need something though,
| ill create an account with a filler email, receive my product,
| and then make a really tedious (for the company) GDPR request
| because sometimes I like to be petty. Then I delete my account.
| If I need something from that store again, I will repeat that
| process.
| cortesoft wrote:
| There was an article about targeted advertising a number of years
| that really changed my perspective on it called, "Targeted
| Advertising Considered Harmful": https://zgp.org/targeted-
| advertising-considered-harmful/
|
| The basic idea is that the real value in advertising is as a
| signaling mechanism, and targeted advertising removes most of
| that signal.
|
| I feel like personalized pricing has some of the same issues, in
| that it erodes consumer trust and makes it more and more
| difficult for consumers to confidently spend their money in the
| market. I am not sure how we fix the problem, though, because it
| is a collective action problem; any individual company will need
| to use personalized pricing to compete, but that behavior will
| hurt the economy as a whole.
|
| I don't know the solution to this problem.
| rjtavares wrote:
| Why isn't making it illegal a solution?
| wisty wrote:
| There's bqsically IMO two types of ads - marketing and sales.
|
| Marketing ads are signalling, brand recognition, etc. You want
| the cool earbuds that everyone knows. You want to buy them from
| a big, reputable company with good r&d.
|
| Sales is simpler - click on the ad and buy the product. It
| tends to be a bit sleasier - sales doesn't care as long as it
| makes a sale.
|
| There's often a bit of tension between sales and marketing. A
| 50% ooff exploding offer can be good for sales in the short
| term, but can make the brand look cheap.
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(page generated 2026-01-25 23:00 UTC)