Monday, June 27, 2005

Neat Idea not sure how i like it

It's called Dynamic Pricing. Here is a nice CNN page on the subject. The Idea is a great one if say the system is designed to shoot you a better price on product x,y,or z then another site does. However the system could think you are a chump and make you pay a higher price.

In early June, the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania released a new study, "Open to Exploitation," which addressed online price discrimination among other subjects.

The study revealed that nearly two-thirds of adult Internet users surveyed believed incorrectly that it was illegal for online retailers to charge different people different prices. It also noted that two-thirds of people surveyed said they believed online travel sites are required by law to offer the lowest airline prices possible to all customers.

Not only did the survey participants think price customization was illegal, they also strongly believed it ought to be. According to the study, 87 percent of people surveyed strongly objected to the practice of online stores charging people different prices for the same products based on information collected about their shopping habits.

The report was based on results from a telephone poll, conducted in February and early March, of 1,500 adults who said they had used the Internet within the past 30 days. The margin of sampling error was described as plus or minus 2.51 percentage points.


I am sure their may be some law here about this. Heck this probably violates some civil rights code.

I think this needs to get regulated, and you don't often hear me say something needs it... well this does. this system is just to open for abuse of the customers at the expense of the buisness and that doesn't do anyone any good.

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