[HN Gopher] Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store s...
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Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
Author : boffbowsh
Score : 442 points
Date : 2023-09-16 08:16 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mastodon.gamedev.place)
(TXT) w3m dump (mastodon.gamedev.place)
| living_room_pc wrote:
| Had a "oh shit" moment reading the article. I live in Germany,
| and of course buy groceries. The "discount" games seem very
| obvious now. Food expenses have risen very significantly
| recently.
|
| Great article, I hope this gains more traction and or legal
| ramifications for the grocers.
| MandieD wrote:
| REWE and Edeka have trained me to only buy "fancy" (Movenpick,
| Cremissimo) ice cream when it's 1,99 EUR, not "normal" price of
| 3,99, and to prefer whichever is "on sale".
|
| And I detest that decent ice cream only comes in ridiculously-
| shaped thick plastic that's only good for chucking in the Gelbe
| Sack, not in waxed paperboard or at least a sensible container
| to reuse for other things.
| hoc wrote:
| Of course you are supposed to keep and collect those useless
| containers (plus lid) since you "surely will be able to use
| them for something" in the future. For storing screws,
| rubberbands and Kulis that nobody has or keeps anymore... A
| roll of Gelbe Sacke might fit inside.
| quitit wrote:
| One trick I noticed while doing data input for supermarkets (in
| a different market) is that price rises are always advertised
| as promotions.
|
| Say a supermarket has a $1.10 item and they want to increase
| that product to $1.50. They'll up the price to $1.50
| immediately, and add a "40c off" to the ticket. The consumer
| sees "promotion" and assumes it's a discount, when it's
| actually just the same price as usual.
|
| Then ~2 weeks later(depends on average buying frequency) the
| promotion sticker comes off and the product is now at the
| higher price.
|
| Every time you see a promotion ticket, you can cynically assume
| it's a price increase.
| elashri wrote:
| Kroger do this all the time. I don't know about other stores
| but kroger is actively using this tactic aggressively and
| other dark marketing schemes.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Pretty much not for me. I both have a bunch of products
| imported from receipts over the years, and I remember many
| per 100g prices for products I regularly buy. This simply
| does not happen, at least not at the stores I shop for the
| products I buy (note that I don't buy any finished meals or
| processed food outside the occasional salami, so my habits
| are pretty different from most people).
| seszett wrote:
| Same, I track the prices of a few dozens of products across
| the six supermarkets I go to, in France and Belgium (every
| day, automatically) and this has never happened.
| em-bee wrote:
| it's like a warning: last chance to get this item at the old
| price.
| justinclift wrote:
| This exact behaviour was used in Coles supermarkets here in
| Australia, to raise the price of cheese just over a month
| ago.
|
| Noticed it happening at the time, and kept an eye on it.
| matsemann wrote:
| I think that would be illegal in most European countries. It
| has to be a "real" discount. Often means to have been sold at
| the original price advertised for at least a month.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Now in Poland every promotion needs to display lowest price
| for the product in last 30 days l, effectively countering
| this strategy.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Wow, I love Poland now.
| anotherhue wrote:
| That's a whole EU thing I think. We have it in Ireland.
|
| https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-
| treat...
| Culonavirus wrote:
| Indeed it is. Czech Republic too, including e-commerce
| sites.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Poland has still been hit by inflation, though. I have
| taken advantage of having a registered business in order to
| do a lot of my shopping at the wholesaler Makro, where
| prices still lag well behind ordinary supermarkets.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| not relevant to the comment to which you are replying.
| truth in advertising has nothing to do with inflation.
|
| but it's also absurd to suggest that price controls are a
| valid means of addressing inflation
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| It is relevant to the context of this thread in general.
| Even if Polish consumers are spared the trick of raising
| prices through fake discounts as the OP mentioned, they
| still suffer from the same surge in prices that many of
| the European posters here are complaining about. Nowhere
| in my post was I calling for price controls.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| your comment was suggestive of it whether that was your
| intention or not
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Where? In that post I shared my own personal strategy for
| saving money by doing my shopping at a wholesaler instead
| of an ordinary supermarket. No state intervention
| required.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| In precisely the part that you just left out
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| The only part I could have left out is the plain
| statement "Poland has still been hit by inflation,
| though." That doesn't even suggest calling for price
| controls. Yours was a kneejerk reaction.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| In context it is very suggestive. Maybe you are incapable
| of inferences but other people are not, so I decided it
| was best to dispel that idea ahead of time.
| atdrummond wrote:
| It is unreasonable to infer what the original author has
| said he has not implied.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That explains why Good Old Games has that display for games
| that are "on sale". Does Steam honor that requirement?
| janosdebugs wrote:
| I haven't seen one, but changing the base price of the
| game requires support if I remember correctly and there
| is also a 30 day minimum wait time between discounts.
| https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/discounts
| parineum wrote:
| What's your preference, that they just raise the price to
| $1.50 without the discount?
|
| As long as the price doesn't go back to $1.10 after the
| promotion is over, I don't see anything wrong with that.
| quibus wrote:
| Would be great to have the other EU countries added. Great for
| the consumer that is.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| This is a great thread, and it shows the power of smart, tech-
| capable citizens.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> it shows the power of smart, tech-capable citizens_
|
| Consumers in Austria who travel abroad/to Germany often,
| already knew they were getting scammed for a long time now, but
| couldn't prove it and now they can, so the more important
| question is what will come out of it, as the data shows the big
| retailers clearly cooperating on price fixing.
|
| My guess, nothing, as the government regulators who are
| supposed to watch over this, will find nothing wrong, as
| they're already bought and paid for to go work as lobbyists or
| "consultants" for these retailers once their stint in politics
| is over.
|
| Why do I think this? Well, about 6 years ago, the 3 big telecom
| operators in Austria raised the prices together at the exact
| same time, and the government body in charge of overseeing
| these things said they have no proof that the 3 operators
| colluded together for price fixing and it could just be a
| coincidence, case closed.
|
| The country is so corrupt, it's rotten to the core. As a
| consumer and taxpayer you are being legally fleeced form every
| direction with the blessing of the government, but this is
| probably true in many other countries.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Well, about 6 years ago, the 3 big telecom operators in
| Austria raised the prices together at the exact same time,
| and the government body in charge of overseeing these things
| said they have no proof that the 3 operators colluded
| together for price fixing and it could just be a coincidence,
| case closed.
|
| I would love a citation for that.
| consp wrote:
| It's longer ago but they did it in the Netherlands: https:/
| /www.acm.nl/sites/default/files/old_publication/publi...
|
| Years later they couldn't find any direct evidence but
| providers were subsequently only not-guilty if they could
| show long term planning. With a duo- or tripoly it's not
| hard to have fix your prices together. This especially
| happens in the high-entry cost markets like telecom.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Well the person I replied to makes a very specific claim.
| That prices were raised 6 years ago by all operators at
| the same time and that the regulator did not fault them.
| Neither can I find evidence of that price hike, nor can I
| find a statement by the regulator.
| lxgr wrote:
| German-only [1], but Google Translate gets the gist of it
| [2].
|
| [1] https://helpv2.orf.at/stories/1684683/index.html
|
| [2] https://helpv2-orf-
| at.translate.goog/stories/1684683/index.h...
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| If we are talking about that story, that is 12 years ago,
| not 6 and relates to a different fee structure, not
| raising of prices. So while I agree that this is a
| terrible development, I'm not sure that's what we're
| discussing here. More specifically after 2011 there was a
| huge downwards pressure on the market coming from
| increasing competition from virtual operators with
| decreasing prices.
| lxgr wrote:
| > relates to a different fee structure, not raising of
| prices
|
| Are you really arguing that all operators introduced a
| yearly fee of _exactly the same amount_ , and in a very
| short period of time, was somehow perfectly balanced out
| by a drop in monthly rates, and on average nobody ended
| up paying more?
|
| Yes, Austria in general has a very healthy competitive
| market for mobile phone plans, but this particular move
| just looks extremely coordinated.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Are you really arguing that all operators introduced a
| yearly fee of exactly the same amount, and in a very
| short period of time, was somehow perfectly balanced out
| by a drop in monthly rates, and on average nobody ended
| up paying more?
|
| I'm arguing that after 2011 when the first operator
| introduced those fees, the cost of mobile phone plans
| decreased for many years until around 2019. It's also
| that not all operators introduced those fees and not all
| operators did at the same time. The main reason why many
| operators started charging with this fee structure is
| pretty obvious: it makes the monthly cost appear lower
| than it is. It's a form of sanctioned price in-
| transparency.
|
| //EDIT: the main reason for the introduction of that
| Servicepauschale was that for a while internet service
| providers where required to participate in the now
| illegal "Vorratesdatenspeicherung". The pauschale was
| generally understood to cover the cost of the
| infrastructure for it.
| gsich wrote:
| >Consumers in Austria who travel abroad/to Germany often,
| already knew they were getting scammed for a long time now,
| but couldn't prove it and now they can, so the more important
| question is what will come out of it, as the data shows the
| big retailers clearly cooperating on price fixing.
|
| Well they could prove it (ie take the receipt with you), but
| got lame excuses for why is's cheaper in Germany.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Wow it feels as if you are writing about the US. Guess "the
| grass is always greener" and all that.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Consumers in Austria who travel abroad/to Germany often,
| already knew they were getting scammed for a long time now,
| but couldn't prove it and now they can
|
| How was it not blatantly obvious that something is off if the
| exact same product from an Austrian manufacturer (not owned
| an international conglomerate) is consistently 20-30% cheaper
| in a grocery store in Berlin than it is in Vienna, minutes
| away from the factory where it's produced?
|
| I'm honestly surprised that it took the recent inflation for
| people in Austria to get wise to the fact that they've been
| overpaying on groceries for at least a decade.
|
| Especially in the western federal states bordering Germany I
| would have expected people to regularly go grocery shopping
| across the border (although supermarket prices aren't uniform
| within Germany; I have no anecdata about Bavaria, for
| example).
| jsdwarf wrote:
| Its very common for people from Salzburg/Austria to shop in
| the Berchtesgaden region, however with bigger distances
| from the border this doesn't make sense.
|
| Re Austrian products cheaper abroad than in Austria - there
| was the curious case of a beer drink from Gosser, that was
| sold cheaper 700km away from the brewery in Berlin than in
| the town of the brewery itself: https://twitter.com/KernNik
| o/status/1692954540293947408/phot.... Gosser argued they
| wanted to promote the drink in Germany against local
| competition and that this was a temporary price drop.
|
| Again, Germany made a smarter move by developing beer
| powder concentrate
| (https://www.wa.de/verbraucher/bierpulver-klosterbrauerei-
| neu... German). This allows them to remove the 90% water
| share of the beer when exporting it to Asia and still sell
| it as "brewed in Germany".
| parineum wrote:
| > as the data shows the big retailers clearly cooperating on
| price fixing.
|
| The data does not clearly show that at all. It shows the
| expected result of inflation in a competitive market.
|
| When Company A decides that it's time to raise prices on
| Product B due to inflation (maybe their wholesale price went
| up), Company C, being under the same market pressures to
| raise prices, also raises their price but, because they still
| want to be competitive, they don't raise them beyond Company
| A. Reacting to the market isn't collusion, anti-competitive
| or anti-consumer. If you just reverse the direction the
| prices are going, it seems a lot less sinister and it's still
| the exact same inputs/outputs.
|
| The whole thread is made of points like that, especially the
| "asymmetrical information warfare" bit. He's scraping the
| websites for this data, right? Obviously that information is
| available at home. Moreover, the situation has actually
| dramatically improved because of the internet. You can now
| put together a cart on two different websites and go to the
| cheaper store if you'd like. Try doing that twenty years ago.
| I used to have to read the weekly ad to know these things,
| now I can just look online.
|
| The _only_ point that's being made is that Austrian prices
| are a bit higher than other nations and, for some reason, he
| thinks it's because the companies are conspiring in some way
| and not that it's, for some reason, more expensive for those
| companies to operate in Austria. That seems like the obvious
| solution to me since they appear to have a competitive market
| with a few major players.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| If the retail stores are price fixing then why are their
| stock prices down so much this year? Their investors are
| getting savaged. What did they do with all this extra
| cashflow?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| My guess is because in Germany they're taking a loss due to
| actual competition, and making it up in other countries
| like Austria where they rake in higher profits than in
| their home-land.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| So anti-competitive practices are the norm in Austria but
| no one would dare try it in Germany? Truly bizarre
| theory.
| manmal wrote:
| Matter of fact is that crossing the border to Germany
| will make your shopping 30+% cheaper. Make of that what
| you will, but it's the same companies (Rewe, Aldi, Lidl).
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| Literally no possible way Austrian grocery stores are
| pulling in 43% margins. That's more than Apple makes. I
| can't tell if this price fixing talk is the product of
| overactive imaginations or a gigantic lack of
| imagination.
|
| If grocery stores were suddenly capable of 43 percent
| margins there would be absolute pandemonium in the
| markets and stocks would skyrocket. Retailers in every
| industry would be switching to food sales en masse.
| People would be flying food in by aircraft. You see just
| the opposite. Food retailers' stocks are down a lot year-
| to-date.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I never said nobody tried price fixing in Germany, but
| when it comes to consumer pricing in retail, my take is
| that Germany has a bigger market with more competition
| meaning the retailers can stomach increased competition
| and lower margins making it up in sheer volume. Smaller
| countries like Austria have much less competition, less
| volume sales, meaning more space for monopolies to form
| to charge higher prices.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| what happened to the Common Market
| tetris11 wrote:
| In Germany? It gets superceded by more ethnic retailers
| importing cheap produce from their relatively poorer
| origin countries, and offering actual competitive prices
| against the likes of Aldi and Lidl.
|
| I've noticed a surge in Germans going to Turkish/Arabic
| food stores in the last few years.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Common market means that Apple can't charge for iCloud to
| Sweden more expensively (before tax) than what they
| charge to Spain, it doesn't mean that goods made in one
| country of the union can't have way different pricing in
| another based on shipping, VAT, taxes, labor,
| supply/demand, or straight up price gouging.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| I'm talking about laws and enforcement of laws against
| anti-competitive practices like price fixing. Either
| enforcement is wildly different and there's a shitload of
| money to be made by undercutting the Austrian grocery
| cartel or the price fixing theory is just a socialist
| talking point.
| em-bee wrote:
| but in order to do that for groceries you have to open
| shops in austria which makes it much more difficult
| compared to products that can be sold online.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| How hard is it to sell food out of a flower shop? Out of
| a candy store? A toy store? A gift shop? A coffee shop? A
| hardware store? There are retailers all over the country
| that could start selling food in no time flat. Starbucks
| is part of the Austrian grocery cartel too? And there's
| still no evidence that authorities are turning a blind
| eye to price fixing other than 'price go up.'
|
| Ask an Austrian hardware store owner why he doesn't sell
| food when he can supposedly undercut grocery stores and
| still make 5% profit on every item sold. I bet you
| anything he'll say that's bs.
| em-bee wrote:
| i am not sure i understand what your argument is, or what
| you think mine is.
|
| your last sentence suggests that you don't believe that
| anyone can just undercut the big supermarket chains in
| austria. which is what i also don't believe.
|
| but your first sentence is saying something different, so
| that has me confused.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is indeed my question as well. I am Czech. We are
| right next to Germany. Theoretically, this is one huge
| Common Market. In practice, many mass-produced things are
| much more expensive in Czechia than in Germany, including
| food.
|
| I suspect that the language barrier is still real. But
| then again, German-speaking Austria experiences the same
| thing.
|
| I wish we had a common European delivery service, like
| the US has US Post or DHL, with the same cost structure
| across the entire continent. We don't, a package from
| Spain to Czechia is much more expensive than within
| either Spain or Czechia.
|
| A common European delivery service would give foreign
| e-shops a massive competitive edge. Suddenly, it would be
| more efficient to buy cheaper things in Slovenia or
| Bulgaria.
| beebeepka wrote:
| You think villains such as Macron would allow actual
| competition? They fucked half the continent trucking
| companies to enrich their own. So much for unity
| lxgr wrote:
| I wouldn't say "the norm", but Austria is lagging behind
| Germany in the CPI for a reason: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
|
| Government project tenders are often notoriously
| intransparent, as ironically evidenced by the fact that
| the government hasn't been able to stand up a price
| comparison database for months, as also mentioned in TFA.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Stock prices have nothing really to do with the company
| itself. Stock is issued by companies, but the value of a
| stock is proportional to the expected future hype value of
| the stock. Given sufficient hype, more people will buy in
| to it after you buy it, and the unit price of the limited
| stock issue goes up. Stock picking is simply gambling for
| retail investors which have zero say in how a company is
| run.
| ro-_-b wrote:
| I lived in Austria and in Germany and it's 100% true, prices in
| supermarkets are significantly higher in Austria even for
| products produced in Austria.
|
| The reasons IMO are: * less price sensitivity: German people are
| extremely price sensitive, they discuss and compare prices all
| the time. In Austria people care way less about this on average.
| Supermarkets take advantage * higher logistics costs: population
| density in Austria is less than in Germany. Furthermore, many
| supermarkets are located in areas hard to reach like mountain
| areas. Higher logistic costs translate to higher prices * VAT is
| slightly higher in Austria * unqualified labor that works in
| supermarkets and logistics makes slightly more money in Austria
| than in Germany * there indeed is a higher supermarket tensity in
| Austria than in Germany. Supermarkets of the same company appear
| more appealing in Austria than in Germany: nicer presentation of
| food, cleaner, way less people in the line waiting. All this
| makes them more expensive
|
| For all these reasons mentioned above prices are higher. I argue
| it's mostly related to consumer choices. If they would care so
| much about prices and so little about esthetics as in Germany
| then prices would come down. If people would start to walk the
| extra mile for the cheaper supermarket prices would come down.
| qwertox wrote:
| Today at Aldi I saw a pudding [0] which I was about to grab,
| until I saw the price. 1.88EUR for 500ml. My first thought was
| that I'm paying 1.90 for a VPS which gives me a static IPv4, 1
| vCore, 2GB RAM, 20GB SSD and unlimited bandwidth (40 TB
| unthrottled, 100mbit/s throttled). How does this even relate in
| terms of value? I would have expected something below 80ct, but
| some of the prices which products have, have become really
| absurd. It's as if they're just doing a "let's set it to this
| price and see if it sticks".
|
| Even funnier was the fact that they now have Christmas products
| on the shelves, "Wintertraum Lebkuchen". Then again, I read a
| Reddit post some months ago which explained why they're doing
| this (might as well put it there instead of into storage).
|
| [0] https://www.aldi-sued.de/de/p.dr-oetker-kirschgruetze-
| oder-s...
| jpoel wrote:
| Which provider offers such a cheap VPS?
| wholesomepotato wrote:
| If we all lived in tents, cost of living would go down.
|
| It's silly. If you can afford not having to worry only about
| the price, congratulate yourself and enjoy it.
| ro-_-b wrote:
| Also important to note:
|
| Germany is a car country: most ways to work, gym, etc in the
| average German city are done by car. Makes it easy to drive the
| extra mile to the cheapest supermarket.
|
| Austria is much better for using public transport or the bike.
| In this case you won't make the extra way to stop at the
| cheapest grocery. And in the areas in Austria where people use
| cars population density is so low that not a lot of competition
| between supermarkets exists
| kiney wrote:
| Not true. Most people in germany have a supermarket in
| walking distance to their home and the bime infrastructe is
| often critizised but actually good compared to most cou tries
| pantalaimon wrote:
| That depends on whether you live in a big city or not
| fsckboy wrote:
| even if supermarkets are within walking distance, if
| Germans are getting in their cars regularly for other
| reasons, that could change their supermarket shopping
| behavior in favor of more distant store with cheaper
| prices.
| ro-_-b wrote:
| exactly. While living in Germany I had an expensive
| supermarket in walking distance, but I'd almost never go
| there because I used the car to go to work and stopped at
| a cheaper one on the way back. In Austria in the cities
| it's almost impossible to go by car to work because
| parking is incredibly expensive so most people use public
| transport or bikes
| momirlan wrote:
| same is true for Canada vs USA. always more expensive products,
| and less selection in Canada.
| masswerk wrote:
| Nothing of this changed in the last two years, though. So this
| hardly serves an explanation for the current price hikes.
| jsdwarf wrote:
| Fellow Austrian here. Nice price comparison project, but the
| elephant in the room is that grocery store prices in Germany are
| 20-40% lower for the same product. Explanation from the
| supermarket chains are shady at best (more stores per capita
| compared to Germany, they are forced to buy from more expensive
| Austrian distributors etc). I heard similar things from Belgium
| (higher prices than in France)
|
| My point is: we need a Europe-wide price comparison if the
| situation should change.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Austria's real problem is that it's a bad business environment
| with high taxes and tons of regulation. It means that there are
| only a few players in that space that ultimately dominate it.
| Small companies could not even enter that space because the
| regulation does not give them any space to innovate (for
| instance free selection of products, other opening times).
| croes wrote:
| > Austria's real problem is that it's a bad business
| environment with high taxes and tons of regulation.
|
| The same is said about Germany, so that can't be the reason.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Germany has a market 10 times as large and in some ways
| better regulation.
| masswerk wrote:
| We've seen some concentration over the last 30 years or so.
| It hasn't been about regulations, though. In actually, the
| remaining companies first aggressively extended their
| selections of products and lowered prices, only to backtrack
| significantly on both, as the competition was gone, with
| about 2 big conglomerates remaining.
| dustfinger wrote:
| >Austria's real problem is that it's a bad business
| environment with high taxes and tons of regulation.
|
| I feel that Canada has a similar problem.
| xeckr wrote:
| It's obviously not as conducive to business as in the US.
| However, one advantage I can think of is that registering a
| new business in Canada takes only about a day.
| dustfinger wrote:
| I should add that I don't know much about regulations in
| either country. I would love to start a similar
| opensource project for Canada. I am very curious about
| what we might find.
| momirlan wrote:
| we know of the price gouging and all oligopolistic
| behaviour in Canada, but there is no political will to do
| anything. big business and government are buddies.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| Smaller countries (by economy or by population) tend to have
| protectionist rules, otherwise they simply get absorbed by
| their (bigger) neighbouring countries. Historically, those
| protections weren't that much of an issue, but as bigger
| countries continue optimizing their systems at huge scale,
| smaller countries can't keep up (offer the same
| price/quality).
|
| For example in the US, when TikTok became too popular,
| politicians quickly reacted to avoid having a major social
| network that was backed by a foreign country. Legitimately in
| the name of consumer protection, of course, but clearly also
| other interests. Funny how the US very selectively protects
| its consumers.
|
| It's not great for the consumer (less competition/freedom),
| but ultimately it's about protecting local expertise to avoid
| being fully dependant on another region (obviously, sometimes
| this gets abused). Losing local expertise increases the
| brain-drain, since any skilled person will know that they
| won't get many good job options locally.
|
| I live in Quebec/Canada, which has many rules in the name of
| consumer protection, but usually it's really about protecting
| local businesses without going against free trade agreements.
| I'm not a fan of isolationism, but winner-take-all types of
| scenarios, where no one can compete against foreign semi-
| monopolies hurt us in the long term. It's hard to find a good
| balance. An interesting take, in Quebec and in the EU, is
| seeing many laws that only apply above a certain scale.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > For example in the US, when TikTok became too popular,
| politicians quickly reacted to avoid having a major social
| network that was backed by a foreign country. Legitimately
| in the name of consumer protection, of course, but clearly
| also other interests. Funny how the US very selectively
| protects its consumers.
|
| What happened to TikTok in the US?
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Instead of the US three-letter agencies having everyone's
| location, friend groups, bio-metric info, personal
| photos, etc.. via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc..
| ByteDance was getting all the data and sharing with the
| CCP.
|
| So Trump and others tried to ban it or make ByteDance
| sell the app to a US company.
|
| Honestly, I was kind of okay with that. As much as I hate
| western governments spying on us, I hate that fascist and
| communist countries like China, NK, and many places in
| the middle east literally act to ban, imprison or
| 'disappear' millions of it's own people that have tried
| to speak again the party lines.
|
| Maybe one day even the western countries will do this.
| Governments are hands down the leading cause of death in
| the world.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| But as far as I know, nothing changed, and
|
| > politicians quickly reacted to avoid having a major
| social network that was backed by a foreign country.
|
| Politicians did not do anything to change this.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Yeah, since the ban started with one party - the other
| party worked to block it. Eventually it all fizzled out.
|
| It's kind of how politics work in our country since we
| only have two parties.
| paulmd wrote:
| More generally, the EU has problems with market efficiency in
| general. The law allowing mail-order businesses to refuse to
| sell across "state lines" means markets are very atomized and
| dominated by one or two players who, spoiler, don't really
| compete aggressively on pricing.
|
| The idea of Newegg refusing to sell to me because I don't
| live in California is insane from an American perspective but
| that's what the EU has to live with - mindfactory, komplett,
| etc will not ship across state lines. It's a single market in
| name only, as far as distribution and sales. In practice the
| only "single market" is customs and currency, and even then
| there's edge cases.
|
| It is a very weird overall market where you have these strong
| consumer protections but also backed by low competitiveness
| in retail and distribution which leaves margins for supply
| chains to accommodate this.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Austria in particular is really bad here. If you send
| commercially packages into Austria you need to register
| with the recycling system, license packaging and go to a
| notary to declare a proxy for packaging. There is so much
| crazy protectionism going on that the single market is
| effectively no longer free.
| folmar wrote:
| This is similar to other countries unfortunately. And
| don't ask about food product labelling.
| codingcodingboy wrote:
| Well if they refuse you can't really force them, they might
| have legitimate reasons to turn clients away but I agree
| that this is not efficient and since you cited mindfactory
| I add that in Italy in the hardware business there have
| been many popular companies with competitive prices that
| were shut down by authorities for tax evasion.
| momirlan wrote:
| sounds like Canada
| paganel wrote:
| Related, I'm currently in Greece and the price of locally
| produced peaches is higher here than the price of the same
| Greek-produced peaches is in Romania (from where I'm from).
| Noticed it today and it blew my mind, not sure how the people
| of Greece put up with this bs (the price of gasoline is also
| way higher).
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Do they send lower quality peaches to Romania?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I think all peaches sent far away are lower quality than
| nearby peaches since they need to be picked too early to
| account for travel time.
| Permit wrote:
| > Explanation from the supermarket chains are shady at best
|
| Do you suspect there is some other reason? Like, they can get
| away with it in Austria but not Germany? What's a "non-shady"
| explanation in your eyes?
| jsdwarf wrote:
| It is indeed true that we have a lot of supermarkets in
| Austria, which might make logistics more expensive. But
| nobody ever explained why we need so many supermarkets from
| just 3 chains (REWE, Spar, Hofer - everything else is
| neglectedable). My only explanation is that the big 3 want to
| squat every possible spot to keep competition out. The other
| argument from the chains is that they are forced to buy brand
| products from Austrian distributors that are more expensive
| than German ones due to lack of volume (think of making a
| wholesale contract for M&Ms with Mars Germany, not Mars
| Austria). Again shady argument, because they could have sued
| against these practices years ago.
|
| Germany has the luck of being a big country with scale
| effects and healthy grocery store competition.
| etler wrote:
| >I took the thing down in fear of retaliation by the grocery
| chains. My plan: get a big NGO, news outlet or political party to
| host the thing and be a legal shield for the endevour.
|
| Imagine how much good could be done in the world if developers
| could create things for the common good without fear of corporate
| legal retaliation.
| j7ake wrote:
| Lots of comments here saying Germany is 30 percent cheaper than
| Austria.
|
| Isn't living in Vienna much cheaper than living in big cities in
| Germany like Berlin and Munich?
|
| So overall it's still a better deal to live in Vienna than in
| Munich.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Depends. Germany is a lot bigger than just Munich and Berlin.
|
| There are cheaper places in Germany (NRW for example) where you
| can pay rent close or even less than Vienna while still
| benefiting from much cheaper products and let's not forget, the
| higher wages (there's no big tech nor big SW companies in
| Austria so tech wages are depressing).
|
| So you're still better off in Germany, if wage/Col is your
| priority and not the history/culture/vibe and other such non-
| easily quantifiable things.
| whyever wrote:
| Groceries are more expensive, but rent and salaries are lower
| than in Munich.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Rent is expensive in Berlin for sure, but supermarkets are
| still way cheaper than Austria
| boruto wrote:
| A lot better too. Rewe has ton of options and quality food
| compared to billa. But I think the supermarkets in germany
| are better than anywhere else in EU.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I agree that most Rewes are really good. I'm from the UK
| and Rewe is comparable in quality and selection to the
| absolute best supermarkets in the UK like M&S and Waitrose,
| but much cheaper than M&S and more readily available than
| Waitrose.
|
| That said, I've definitely been to a couple of poor quality
| Rewes, though most often this is in rural areas or on the
| outskirts of major cities.
|
| Overall I prefer EDEKA for a few reasons.
|
| Generally I think Germany does well to have a strict two-
| tier system: there are supermarkets, and then there are
| "discounters" (lidl, aldi, penny, netto, etc.) and they are
| very different and have very different aims. The good
| supermarkets feel free to sell whatever they want because
| they are not competing in price with the discounters, since
| most Germans are accustomed to shopping at both lidl and
| Rewe in the same visit. There is also a third tier,
| "Bioladen", which often have really good high quality
| organic food for a reasonable price.
|
| I have to criticise the discounters though, specifically
| lidl and aldi, they do not give you baskets, only carts,
| and one of my local lidls had a policy for a few months of
| not allowing you in the shop unless you had a cart!!
|
| German food shopping is very complex overall, but the
| quality and range of options is impressive.
| fractallyte wrote:
| Ironic, since REWE owns Billa...
| asyx wrote:
| Munich and Berlin (as well as Hamburg and I personally know
| people from Cologne that move away due to rent increasing
| heavily) are really expensive for German standards though.
| They're almost statistical outliers.
| j7ake wrote:
| But I'm comparing the most expensive city in Germany vs
| Austria so it's a fair comparison.
| dom96 wrote:
| It's crazy how many interesting things you can find when scraping
| prices of services and products online (most of the time tricks
| that aim to screw the customer). I think it's time the EU
| legislates that companies provide pricing data via a standardised
| API so that we can all benefit, and so these tricks are deterred.
|
| I've actually built a scraper for Disney World holidays[1] and
| found some interesting hacks to get cheaper deals, for example
| purchasing separate hotel tickets lasting a part of the full
| stay. I plan to make a holiday inflation index out of this
| eventually.
|
| 1 - https://mousetrack.co.uk
| wirthjason wrote:
| Anyone know what the US market (no pun intended) is like? Similar
| games, different ones?
| coldblues wrote:
| In Romania there's a similar site and app
|
| https://monitorulpreturilor.info/
|
| https://www.consiliulconcurentei.ro/en/
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| As an Austrian dev and consumer who has closely followed this
| throughout the year: it's soo frustrating to see how we're ripped
| off for no good reason, but nothing changes and nobody cares.
|
| Hats off to Mario for sticking with the topic and not losing his
| mind over this infuriating madness.
| happytiger wrote:
| They would care of projects like this generated broad awareness
| and organized revolt from consumers.
|
| Companies need adults in the room to keep them from behaving
| badly. This operating under the observation that they behave
| badly when not being watched, so a thesis to be tested more
| than an assertion of fact.
|
| At a minimum they arguably behave worse when there are no
| consequences, hence inflation becoming air cover to raise
| prices when prices weren't being raised before as there was no
| "good reason" for them to go up.
|
| I love this project. "Index data" projects like this seem ripe
| as a category, especially with AI and Ml systems providing
| ready observability on changes and trends.
|
| The question is how to get enough _conclusions_ and salient
| observations that spur people to the social science outrage
| factor levels so that they take action.
|
| Or perhaps we should just accept that companies will use these
| technologies to optimize everything against consumers and not
| deploy them in counterinsurgency resistance-style whitehat
| fashion.
| gsich wrote:
| Mostly because you have no choice.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| not austrian but I live in austria. at first I was like, okay,
| higher inflation post covid like everything else, but now at
| this point where I see prices still rising, it's starting to
| just feel like a blatant cash grab
|
| HOWEVER, i will add - what do people expect when you give
| everyone 500 extra EUR a year via this klima bonus? how is that
| supposed to reduce inflation? my guess is the grocery chains
| are leaning into this
| [deleted]
| piecerough wrote:
| What is this klima bonus?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| https://www.klimabonus.gv.at/en/
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| It's a nice little scheme that incentivizes saving CO2.
|
| There's a CO2 tax on gas and other fossil fuels, part of
| this tax revenue is then, once a year, distributed back to
| taxpayers. The idea is that people who don't consume a lot
| of fossil fuel earn money through this scheme, while those
| who user above average pay more than what they get back.
|
| Of course this is not well communicated from the gov and
| random cash appearing in everyone's account can accelerate
| the already high inflation.
| hathym wrote:
| greed and pursuit of increased profits is a good reason
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Sure, those are the reasons, but I don't believe in Austrian
| exceptionalism.
|
| Really curious what's special about the market here that
| allows companies to exploit the people like this.
| cakemuncher wrote:
| They proved Austria has the problem. They didn't prove it's
| exceptional.
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm not sure how other mastodon servers look, but this one is
| light years ahead of Twitter in terms of readability. I hope
| someone eventually writes a tell-all book about exactly what was
| wrong with that company and its approach to product design.
| timeon wrote:
| This is default Mastodon look I think. But one can use separate
| front-ends as well.
| WinLychee wrote:
| Different incentives. A publically traded corporation with
| thousands of workers trying to grow in perpetuity, has
| different goals than a community project. While the former has
| more resources, the latter is more mission driven.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| curiousgal wrote:
| What's the point of posting in English if the meat of the content
| (the screenshots) is not in English?
| raybb wrote:
| To gather wider attention from people speaking other languages.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| The meat is the text. The screenshots are examples.
|
| And you don't need to understand German to see that in one
| photo it's 1.99EUR for 1L of detergent, and now 1.89EUR for .8L
| of the same detergent.
| vitro wrote:
| I was pondering about an idea for an app that will crowdsource
| prices of items and their development in the time. You know, to
| be aware when there is some product discount, but during the
| discount period, the original price is higher that usual which
| means customer is being mislead.
|
| This practice, although prevalent, is not legal in EU [1]
|
| The app would let you track prices for products in individual
| stores by scanning their EANs. You could see price development
| and website could show stores that use unfair pricing.
|
| Seems doable to me but I may be missing some technical challenges
| that would come with implementing this approach.
|
| [1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-
| treat...
| Void_ wrote:
| I don't know about rest of EU, but here in Slovakia, every
| receipt has a QR code.
|
| You can send that number to API for receipt verification - and
| it returns all line items and prices.
|
| If we could get people to scan the receipts (expense tracking
| for example) we would have massive amount of crowdsourced data.
|
| Wish I had time to pursue this idea!
| folmar wrote:
| This is not the case in most EU.
|
| Also note that it'll also make a even bigger tracking
| mechanism than having a centralised API in the first place.
|
| For example the QR-code bearing receipts from Germany have a
| signed proof of commiting the transaction to HSM, but not the
| details.
|
| Online-capable cash registers in Poland submit only hourly
| statistics centrally.
| vitro wrote:
| Interesting! That would make things way easier.
|
| Another feature that comes to my mind is setting up watches
| for products you are interested in. Especially for people who
| need to watch every expense, this could come very handy.
|
| Yes, time..
| posix86 wrote:
| Shoutout to Switzerland's amazon, Galaxus & Digitec, who show
| price development graphs out of the box
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| CCC(camel camel camel) extension was doing that for amazon
| products and related webpages i believe
|
| In these days that all grocers are going e-store, its only a
| matter of time
| croes wrote:
| Maybe the immense task for such a database isn't technical but to
| get the grocery chains on board.
| MandieD wrote:
| Prices should be _slightly_ higher in Austria, because the VAT
| (Mehrwertsteuer) is 20% for most consumer goods, and 10% for
| food, vs. Germany's 19% and 7%, but not as outlandishly so as
| Mario's data have shown.
|
| For American readers: VAT is included in the shelf price, rather
| than tacked on at the register like sales taxes are in the US.
| Upside: fewer surprises at the register. Downside: it's less
| visible.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Prices should be higher for a variety of reasons and they have
| historically already been higher. It's not just the VAT but
| particularly super market density, lack of competition on the
| market, general cost of doing business in the country.
|
| This is a home made problem for the most part, but there is
| very little appetite to do something about it. Austria in many
| ways is drowning in very expensive regulation, has high
| taxation even for grocery store workers.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Excuse me, but what expensive regulation and high grocery
| store workers' taxation are you talking about that's
| responsible for making prices so much higher than in Germany?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| In Germany while the taxes for a typical full time grocery
| store worker would be higher, Germany has an extraordinary
| amount of "mini jobber" working in grocery stores which
| drives down the cost. Expensive regulation is for instance
| the Ladenzeitgesetz which restricts a retailer to a
| regulated number of hours a week with very little freedom
| to operate the business. Stores need to close before 9, are
| only allowed to open Saturdays until 18:00 and are
| restricted to 72 hours total a week and no Sunday trading.
| Additionally they are subject to very stringent rules and
| requirements that are untypical to grocery stores in the
| rest of the European Union from before they can even open a
| store (Betriebsanlagengenehmigung).
|
| The end result is an incredible expensive market with very
| little competition compared to Germany.
| woodson wrote:
| You're saying there is no equivalent to Ladenzeitgesetz
| in Germany?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| There is, but not nearly as restrictive. Stores can be
| open from at least 6 to 20 any day of the week other than
| Sunday and in most states in Germany, Sunday trading has
| been at least partially permitted.
|
| In Austria you cannot even operate a fully automated
| grocery store (either by vending machines or something
| like Amazon Go) without being afoul of the regulation.
| Timon3 wrote:
| > There is, but not nearly as restrictive. Stores can be
| open from at least 6 to 20 any day of the week other than
| Sunday
|
| I just looked up the corresponding law for Austria, and
| they are allowed to open from 6 to 21 on weekdays, and 6
| to 18 on Saturdays. Doesn't really seem more restrictive?
|
| > and in most states in Germany, Sunday trading has been
| at least partially permitted.
|
| Not really. For each Bundesland there are a couple of
| cities where a few stores can open, but they are a very
| rare exception. Example for tomorrow:
| https://www.kaufsonntag.de/datum-
| termine/september/17-09-202...
|
| And keep in mind that even for those cities it's not all
| stores. I checked Cologne as an example, and there it's
| for example only stores in the district Koln-Lindenthal.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Doesn't really seem more restrictive?
|
| You misread the law. Only for a total of 72 hours. So if
| you were to open from 6 to 21 you couldn't open Saturday
| at all and would have to close early ok Friday.
|
| In practical terms most supermarkets in Austria close at
| around 7pm.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Ah, that is indeed a big difference. Thank you for
| clarifying!
| ahtihn wrote:
| I don't see how restricting opening hours is an
| "expensive" regulation? What about it makes things more
| expensive?
| bowsamic wrote:
| That's really shocking to me. Here in Germany the prices have
| gone up a bit but not hugely, and some things even went down a
| bit...
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Funny how the two most pro-Russian EU countries, Hungary and
| Austria, are the ones suffering the worst inflation despite
| continuing to trade with Russia.
|
| The only parts of the countries doing well are Budapest and
| Vienna that are both controlled by opposition parties.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| Um, Hungary took on huge amounts of debt starting in 2020.
| Forgot to mention that, huh?
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| Cant talk about Hungary but in Austria the reason is the
| incredibly broad and untargeted financial assistance for
| everybody because of the energy crisis and covid.
|
| The reason for this is technical incompetence and cowardice of
| the government. They could not have done something better even
| if they wanted and they fear the voters far too much to let
| some hurt go through the system.
|
| I am no rich antigovernment libertarian but there can be no
| surprise that all those measures
|
| https://www.klimabonus.gv.at/en/
|
| https://land-noe.at/noe/blau-gelber-Strompreisrabatt.html
|
| https://www.bmk.gv.at/themen/energie/energieversorgung/strom...
|
| https://www.arbeiterkammer.at/antiteuerungspaket ....
|
| have some effect on inflation.
| mqus wrote:
| > have some effect on inflation.
|
| But how does this concretely affect supermarkets? They
| presumably didn't raise wages, they didn't have to pay more
| for their wares(at least not at the level they raised their
| prices at, after all they have probably long-term contracts
| at generous oligopoly conditions) and their electricity bill
| is maybe at most 10% of their cost. This is purely extortion.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| Just to reiterate, my electricity bill last year went down
| from 1k to about 650Eur because of some aid or another while
| I am sure some family cant afford basic necessities.
| helpfulContrib wrote:
| Austrian inflation and trade with Russia: please explain how
| this is related?
|
| Is it because corporations are being used to put the squeeze on
| the Austrian people? Sanctions?
|
| Because nobody wants to do trade with Austria?
|
| In which case, there must surely be examples? I'd love to know
| a few.
| codethief wrote:
| Both Hungary and Austria are still buying huge amounts of gas
| from Russia (Austria: 71%, Hungary: 80-85%) and also oil in
| Hungary's case (80%)[0]. Meanwhile, other European countries
| had to look for more expensive alternatives. One of the main
| reasons given for inflation in those countries was the energy
| crisis. What's the reason in Austria & Hungary?
|
| [0]: https://oesterreich.orf.at/stories/3194035/
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungary-agrees-
| optio...
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Pro-Russian right-wing parties in Europe are blaming
| inflation on our sanctions on Russia. If that was the case
| Hungary and Austria would not be the the countries that are
| worst affected by inflation.
| Haemm0r wrote:
| The situation in Austria is fundamentally different than in
| Hungary. In Hungary the government kept prices of energy
| and food down by law for quite some time when everywhere
| else prices where rising. What they see now is the catch-up
| effect after those restrictions fell. I actually do not
| know what is the reason why the Austrian inflation is still
| that high. Energy prices as are like before covid, but food
| prices keep climbing. Maybe because the largest retailers
| Billa and Spar have almost 70% of the total market share
| they can do what they want (with the clients and the
| producers) I guess we also have to wait for one or two
| years that real estate/rent prices start going down for
| real (real estate prices are almost stagnating now, but
| rents are still rising). That may have a real impact on
| inflation.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| The Austrian inflation problem is easily answered: wage
| inflation (collective bargaining agreements), paired with
| high gas costs, paired with many inflation linked
| contracts such as rents. Many of these feed back into the
| inflation basked and just make inflation quite sticky.
| Haemm0r wrote:
| High gas prices are not a thing anymore: It is about EU
| average: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookma
| rk/bef444e2-...
|
| Interesting fact when looking at the data: Many countries
| with a "high" inflation right now have very low gas
| prices.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I cannot judge what "EU average" is. I can only tell you
| that the gas price that a household customer pays today
| is still twice than it was before this crisis and that is
| reflected in wholesale prices if you compare the cost of
| gas in Austria compared to 2020 and earlier.
| helpfulContrib wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense at all. Please explain it
| without generalizations, and maybe give some examples?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I guess what he meant was that big retailers colluded to
| increase prices simultaneously together in lock-step for
| no reason other than greed and profiteering, and simply
| blamed it on the Russo-Ukrainian war as being the reason
| for prices exploding.
| helpfulContrib wrote:
| I believe the OP was referring to Far-right, pro-Russia
| parties getting their 'come-uppance' by the rest of the
| world, but I'd really like to know more details about
| that.
|
| Not that I doubt that big corporations would use the
| Russia excuse whenever/wherever they can - I mean, who
| wouldn't - but I'd just like to see the details that tie
| the inflation to support of Russia a bit more clearly
| laid out.
| oddmiral wrote:
| Pro-Russian wing in EU forbid import of cheap Ukrainian
| food into EU as a kind of sanctions against Ukraine,
| which caused the spike in food prices.
| masswerk wrote:
| First, I wouldn't say that Austria is pro-Russian. Neither
| official politics, nor the majority of the people (with the
| notable exception of the infamous FPO).
|
| Then, it's mostly about infrastructure. While the western
| parts of the country have broad access to renewable energy,
| like hydropower, the eastern parts heavily depend on
| natural gas, with not much of an alternative as far as
| infrastructure goes.
|
| We may also point out the questionable wisdom of EU
| politics, announcing prematurely the exit out of then
| predominant sources of natural gas without having any
| alternatives already secured or even at hand, nor the
| bigger infrastructure being able to handle any routes
| alternative to the established ones at scale, while having
| a deregulated energy market at the same time. With
| predictable outcome... (Talk boldly and carry a small twig,
| as they say.) Some countries are impacted by this more than
| others, with regard to their traditional energy mix and
| local climate. (Countries and regions with a continental
| climate are impacted more than others.)
| mrcode007 wrote:
| I'll help you with your research:
|
| Ex-Austrian minister who danced with Putin at wedding
| lands Russian oil job
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/02/former-
| austria...
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Bruh, that's old news. She now moved to St. Petersburg to
| work for the Russian government and the Russian air-force
| had to fly her ponies in too (because that's what you use
| your airforce for in times of war). It sounds like an
| Onion article but it's real.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/14/karin-
| kneissl-...
| mrcode007 wrote:
| Hilarious
| masswerk wrote:
| Notably, this happened before any of these events, and to
| help you with Austrian history, the entire "family" has
| been since dismissed. (Kneissl is now a blogger in
| Russia, far from Austria or its politics.)
| mrcode007 wrote:
| Russian ties in Austria have been strong for a couple of
| years and they're simply coming to light (mentioning this
| in context of energy trade)
|
| Austrian spymaster warns of Russian ties as far right
| claws back support
|
| https://on.ft.com/45UTDUp
|
| As well in context of security apparatus cooperation
|
| Journalist Who Exposed Russia Spies Flees Vienna on
| Safety Fears
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-02/journa
| lis...
| masswerk wrote:
| This is tied to those days of the coalition of the
| conservative party with the FPO, which terminated on Mai
| 28, 2019 (which is significantly before 2022), with
| strong positions of the FPO in the entire security
| apparatus (including some infights with strongholds of
| the conservative party in these institutions, related
| court cases ongoing). Kneissl left already before this,
| in early June 2019.
|
| The FPO had actually signed a cooperation agreement with
| Putin's party "United Russia" in 2016, which is not to
| terminate before 2026.
|
| Austria and Vienna in particular as a "playground for
| spies" is something entirely different and goes back to
| the days even before the Cold War era. Austria has, like
| many other countries, only laws against espionage which
| is against its own interests. So espionage against an
| other country has been perfectly legal. This also served
| a vital function in the Cold War era, where Austria, also
| after WWII a neutral country and explicitly so as a
| buffer between blocks, played a bridging role and was a
| crucial exchange. However, most of this espionage was
| actually what we would now call open source intelligence
| and it was really more a matter of proximity to the
| places of actual interest.
|
| (On the other hand, the Austrian military intelligence
| has some agreements of cooperation with the NSA and won't
| report to parliament on the matter, while the latter
| still has official oversight. As citizens, we can only
| guess. So, I wouldn't say that this is particularly
| lopsided in favour of any Eastern interests. Moreover,
| Austria installed a law, which fines relaying any Russian
| sources by up to EUR 50,000, rather early on in the
| conflict.)
| yakubin wrote:
| Hungary yes, but Austria doesn't seem to be doing all that bad.
| Eastern Europe is doing much worse.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/225698/monthly-inflation...
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Isn't that the June 2023 inflation numbers? How do they
| include increased natural gas prices doing winter months?
| yakubin wrote:
| They don't. We're far away both from the previous and
| upcoming winter. Are you saying that during winter Austria
| is going to be doing worse than others?
| Haemm0r wrote:
| Don't think so. The storage capacities in Austria are
| rather big compared to other countries. In contrast to
| last year the gas storage facilities are already filled
| to the brim.
|
| Europe wide gas storage information:
| https://agsi.gie.eu/#/
|
| Ownership information for gas stored in for Austria: http
| s://www.e-control.at/gas/gasmarkt/speicher/speicherstaen.
| ..
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I don't understand why people, at least in Vienna, go to
| alternative stores. There are so many small stores with much
| better food prices in Vienna. I guess prices need to rise even
| more until people change their behavior.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Can you share some examples of such stores?
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| If you live in the 2nd district, I can recommend this one
| (also, fruits/vegetables are much better than what is offered
| by the big supermarket chains): https://www.bing.com/maps?osi
| d=16667717-d66d-49b1-ac8c-cc6fb...
| Try1275 wrote:
| Fellow Austrian here. I have send the link to some journalists
| and friends. I wonder how to make this actionable both to force
| politics to act upon this and for the consumer as well.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| [dupe]
| thih9 wrote:
| The title of the original submission is just "Inflation in
| Austria" [1], it did not spark my interest.
|
| This submission caught my eye because of its more descriptive
| title and the mention of scraping.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37530314
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Yeah, that title was very uninspired. Especially that
| probably some don't know where Austria is on the map.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37530314
| dang wrote:
| You're right, of course, but that one got hit by the flamewar
| detector (kind of correctly, unfortunately), which sank the
| thread. There's obviously community interest in this story,
| so I think we'll leave the current thread up and merge the
| comments hither.
|
| As compensation for luu (surely one of the best HN submitters
| of all time) I've put this one in the second-chance pool,
| which will give it a random placement on the front page:
|
| _Birth Order (1999) [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37532299 - Sept 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| If anyone wants to read a long rabbit-hole description of how
| we handle these cases, I wrote one for some reason a couple
| weekends ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37364619
| l0b0 wrote:
| > Then we also got German and Slovenian stores.
|
| Do they mean foreign companies operating in Austria, or separate
| DBs/web sites for other countries? (The forks[1] don't have
| legible names) I'd love to see a New Zealand one, as we have a
| big problem right now with rising cost of living and lots of
| suspicion of shenanigans.
|
| [1] https://github.com/badlogic/heissepreise/forks
| marginallen wrote:
| You are hinting towards the bigger issue here. Yes, this guy
| has looked through the crack in the matrix, but the fact that
| inflation is impacting prices all over the western world
| directly and elsewhere indirectly has nothing to do with
| pricing shenanigans of the oligopolies.
|
| These are issues that not even perfectly regulated and
| perfectly competitive markets could change, if that were even
| possible. These are systemic monetary, political, governmental
| issues.
|
| I hate to break it to people, we are currently only in a lull
| where some may feel localized price increase pressure relief,
| but that is just a temporary condition.
|
| The things that have been done, especially over the last
| several years, cannot be done without suffering the inevitable
| consequences, regardless of how much one did not consider them
| or wants to believe that they are starting to grip.
|
| Unfortunately for people this is only the beginning of this
| roller coaster; and most here and in the subject mastodon
| thread are part of a social strata that is only affected in
| limited degrees. There are people who worked all their lives
| with a promise of a pension, only to find out that they get
| half of what some "refugee" and "immigrant" gets that hates
| them and is violating their indigenous society and culture.
| They have something like $/EUR1500/month and see their cost of
| living going up a compounded ~30% over five years while the
| government/pension masters keep promising an eventual 2%
| pension/retirement/social security increase.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Violating how, by drawing breath in some sacred precinct?
| zwarag wrote:
| He added foreign stores that sell the partially sell the same
| things. Sometimes these stores also sell Austrian products
| which are cheaper in those countries than they are in Austria.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Most famously, Red Bull, which is made in Austria but it's
| actually cheaper after it gets shipped to Germany than in the
| country it's made in. Insane. Austrians are being flogged.
| Germany feels like the only EU country with some sane
| competition in the retail sector.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Red Bull is not made in Austria, at least not necessarily.
| The European company is headquartered there, but its
| business model is largely just owning the IP. The filling
| of Red Bull cans is outsourced to Rauch, which produces at
| least some of the product in Switzerland.
| Haemm0r wrote:
| The swiss-made Red Bull is exclusively for non-EU
| markets. It is a customs/cheap water/nearby headquarters
| thing. A lot of Red Bull is made in Austria too.
| barrkel wrote:
| Famously cheap Switzerland.
|
| I get the feeling that the same tricks are being played
| in Switzerland. Coop and Migros feel a lot like a
| duopoly, and discounts also cyclical. Not unusual to see
| 40% discount on outrageously overpriced detergents, for
| example.
|
| I do most of my shopping in Germany.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| In Switzerland such pricing tricks would be somewhat
| expected since it's not an EU member meaning it's
| isolated and less impacted by the free market pressures
| and competition from the union.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| It's also a difference in mentality. Germans just want
| cheap stuff.
|
| Swiss restaurants also feel overpriced. But I've never
| been to a bad Swiss restaurant.
| a_bonobo wrote:
| The website has a 'Mueller' and a 'Mueller DE', I assume the
| first one is Mueller in Austria.
|
| I've looked into doing something similar for Colesworths in AUS
| but they make scraping their websites very hard on purpose [1].
| OP was lucky that they got the anonymous since-2017 price dump!
| I can't find anything similar for ANZ.
|
| Pricehipster has some histories going back to 2021 for Coles
| alone: https://pricehipster.com/?stores=BkG5opaa
|
| Interestingly, the cheap toast at Coles almost doubled in price
| since 2021. That fits with my general observations here: the
| general cheap staples got way more expensive, the expensive
| stuff stayed similar.
| https://pricehipster.com/product/Gwzex_LRGY2ueMAelqR-xg~BkG5...
|
| [1] see https://pricehipster.com/woolworths-hostile for example
| great_psy wrote:
| What are the legal ramifications grocery stores can realistically
| get into ?
|
| Are there any examples of stores getting in trouble in the past?
| Did it actually solve anything ? Obviously the stores are not
| scared of any ramifications.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What if grocery stores operate on very, very low profit
| margins, on the order of low single digit percentages, and
| hence if their vendors (including employees) increase prices,
| then they also have to increase prices (or else they go out of
| business), and that is why multiple grocery store businesses
| increase prices at the same time (because Nestle/Mondelez/etc
| are increasing prices for all of their buyers at the same
| time).
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37534333
| lostlastacc wrote:
| Only part i don't agree with is don't visit Austria. I had such a
| nice time there this summer, cant wait to go back.
|
| And everything is so cheap compared to Swedish grocery stores ..
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> And everything is so cheap compared to Swedish grocery
| stores .._
|
| Because wages are also much lower. I know some devs who bumped
| their wages considerably moving from Austria to Goteborg while
| also getting better QoL.
| ahoka wrote:
| I have checked a few things and everything other than milk and
| butter was more expensive in Austria (meat, flour, carrots). Do
| you have an example of what else is cheaper?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| If it's like the UK, there is so much "shrinkflation" (reduction
| in product size [and cheapening of ingredients]) that prices
| comparison is going to need per gram pricing. Identical looking
| packs now have extra air gaps: inflated chocolate bar wrappers,
| ice-cream cones with a 1cm gap below the lid, butter cartons have
| a recessed base, packages that formerly had straight sides now
| taper, etc. ... lots of these "tricks" already existed but
| they're being used more and more.
|
| All the supermarkets have full inventory databases, they could
| send you an updated price list of every product every five
| minutes at basically no cost. This smacks of a legislature
| don't/won't seek advice from experts. It's a start I suppose.
| switch007 wrote:
| > that prices comparison is going to need per gram pricing
|
| Not entirely sure what you mean here, but we do have per gram
| pricing requirements (expressed in PS/KG).
|
| EDIT: oh you mean that shrinkflation is so bad that PS/gram
| will make more sense. Hah yeah
|
| The trouble is that grocers have figured out that if you fool
| the population in to using a 'loyalty' card, you can make
| everything a 'promotional price' and avoid the per-unit
| labelling requirements. They just show the PS/KG price of the
| higher price. So now consumers can't easily compare. [0]
|
| All of this can be avoided by just shopping at e.g. Aldi and
| Lidl, but I would not be surprised if even they succumb to the
| temptation of a loyalty-card-only pricing very soon. (Though
| they too have partaken in shrinkflation)
|
| [0] An example https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-
| GB/products/296117381 . "PS3.00 / PS10.71/kg", but clubcard
| price is PS2.00
| consp wrote:
| > The trouble is that grocers have figured out that if you
| fool the population in to using a 'loyalty' card, you can
| make everything a 'promotional price' and avoid the per-unit
| labelling requirements. They just show the PS/KG price of the
| higher price. So now consumers can't easily compare. [0]
|
| That is illegal in the Netherlands: You must advertise with
| the normal price. You can display the "promotional price" but
| it cannot be your main price. What they usually try is adding
| a "25% off with card" option next to it or with a second
| price card. You however CAN NOT be denied the discount in any
| way even if you do not subscribe! This is less easy to do
| online but offline the shop will have to give you the
| discount. There is one exception: b2b.
|
| I complained about this when a liquor chain (gall & gall)
| started using their "card holder" prices as the regular
| prices on the cards and displayed the regular ones almost
| invisible (black text on blue background ...). They refused
| to provide the discount price to non card holders. Complained
| to the regulatory institution and got back to me that they
| were already looking into it. No fine was charged but the
| practice stopped after a few weeks.
|
| edit: on a more HN note; if you use the apps for the discount
| of the stores they usually have an agree notice which
| includes, among other things, you can be tracked in the shop
| with the app. Never be logged in to those while in the shop
| (or ever).
| joquarky wrote:
| It seems like we have all of the tools necessary to take a
| picture of a segment of store shelf and have the price data
| extracted from the photo, associated with the item itself,
| cross referenced, etc, and then show you an overlay with the
| best deals highlighted.
| bombcar wrote:
| Just make a law that says that _all returns_ have to be paid
| out at the PS /KG listed.
| highwaylights wrote:
| In the UK the supermarkets (I assume they have to by law) quote
| the weight of contents of a single unit of product (which is
| supposed to be total weight - packaging weight), so you could
| analyse this quite rapidly.
| gsich wrote:
| I have seen this in Germany/Austria too, maybe it's EU wide.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The key point for me was the quote about asymetric information
| warfare, where it was impossible to know what the price of
| anything was until you were at the checkout. This used to be
| common on durable goods, professional services, and and big
| ticket items, but data science in retail has got it down to the
| micro level.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Governments should mandate published prices for all goods sold in
| supermarkets, it would be good for competition and almost trivial
| for the companies to publish CSV files with barcode, price, start
| and end dates.
|
| Of course doing do would be disastrous for the supermarkets, so I
| can imagine they would fight and lobby politicians vigorously.
| dublinben wrote:
| Supermarkets seem like an undeserving target for this scrutiny.
| Profit margins for grocery stores are only 1-3%, so they're
| hardly engaging in price gouging. The average U.S. household
| spends less than 10% of its monthly budget on groceries and
| other food.[0] This number is half of what it was in the middle
| of the 20th Century, and probably lower than any time in
| history.[1]
|
| [0] https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-budget#food
|
| [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-
| waves/2020/november/average-s...
| consp wrote:
| This is true but housing cost has risen significantly (in
| percentage of spendable income) over time so there is an
| offset to play with here. You cannot take those basic costs
| alone.
| stefan_ wrote:
| This is what people keep repeating about ISPs - "look, they
| don't make any money!"
|
| Yes, yes, you can offer a terrible service, stifle
| competition, ripoff customers and not make any money - all at
| the same time! Such is life in the local maximum.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| They're also most likely to indulge in pricing shenanigans,
| as the article illustrates. It's not so much scrutiny as
| price transparency.
|
| But I think it should apply to all larger retailers.
| noirbot wrote:
| This seems like an odd thing to state with such certainty. I'm
| not sure I see how it would be good for competition either -
| having worked for a grocery store before, management was
| generally aware of competitor's prices, at least at a "we send
| someone to every other competitor every few weeks to check
| prices on major important stuff". We were very open internally
| that we had the prices of a few items pegged to always be
| cheaper than any price Walmart had for them.
|
| As stated other places in the thread, most grocery stores are
| super low margin overall. Especially on basic food items.
| Things like canned goods, basic cuts of meat, eggs, milk and
| the like were often sold at cost or even at a loss. Things that
| we actually had good margins on were mostly products where we
| had vertical integrations or special contracts with farms or
| factories - we were matching our competitors' prices, but at a
| better margin because we'd worked out how to pay less for the
| raw goods.
|
| With all that in mind, I highly doubt how "disastrous" it would
| be to have a public price database. Sure, you could probably
| shave your pennies by spreading your shopping over 4-5
| different stores because they're each slightly cheaper than
| each other, but you'd almost assuredly spend more in time and
| transportation costs to do that than you'd save.
|
| What _would_ cause the stores to lobby against it is that many
| stores, especially now, change prices on things pretty often.
| The CSV you imagine publishing to a government site is
| something that, as I recall, takes something like 5 hours to
| generate every night due to the vast variety of products across
| the company, and the fact that different stores in different
| areas may be pricing products differently or offering different
| coupons, or simply not stock the product at all. There is no
| one price per barcode universally across the company, so the
| outputted pricing list ends up being gigabytes of data.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Is there not a EU-level research service that does this? I
| would be surprised if there is not something like the USDA's
| Economic Research Service, that has price data on virtually
| everything you can eat, going back 50 years.
| [deleted]
| jonatron wrote:
| Here's monthly CSV's from the UK Office for National
| Statistics:
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/data...
| Doesn't have barcodes though.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| That seems like a pretty significant limitation. Bulk entity
| matching is an art form outside of the scope of many. To
| enable meaningful comparisons, as many identifiers as
| possible need to be included.
| atourgates wrote:
| > Of course doing do would be disastrous for the supermarkets
|
| I'm not sure this would be true, at least in the United States.
|
| WalMart used to have a tool where you could scan your receipt
| in their app, they'd compare prices to competitors and if they
| found a lower price, you'd get a rebate.
|
| It wasn't that popular or successful.
|
| Can't find much info online, but here's an old discussion on
| Reddit:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/2x9ajh/walmart_app_...
| SenAnder wrote:
| And this is why scraping is under technical and legal attack. To
| maintain their panopticon, where they see all, while you get only
| a pinhole view of, in this case, the economy.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Scraping is huge business for people who don't have your best
| interests in mind, too. There are many businesses built on the
| idea of gathering as much of people's data as they can find in
| the public internet and selling it to anyone willing to pay.
|
| Contrary to what many people thing, Facebook, Google, and other
| companies _do not_ sell your data! They are ad companies that
| use their private data to target ads, but they aren't selling
| it to 3rd parties likely many people have been led to believe.
| This has created a market opening for nefarious companies to
| scrape these websites, compile the data, and sell it to
| everyone from police to governments to spammers.
|
| I'm not saying there's a right answer to regulation, but it's
| incorrect to say that scrapers are always the good actors
| championing the public's best interests.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Facebook, Google, and other companies do not sell your data!
|
| this does not excuse the pervasive tracking that occurs by
| "we collect for internal purposes only" vs "we sell to
| anyone". an invasion of privacy is still an invasion of
| privacy whether they do it for their own fetish purposes or
| distributing it to the public.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Scraping is huge business for people who don't have your
| best interests in mind, too._
|
| I liked how the thread observed that competitor supermarkets
| were rapidly converging prices on adjustments.
|
| And assumed this meant collusion.
|
| Why collude when you can just hire grey-market high frequency
| scrapers to detect your competitors' repricing and trigger
| your own?
| SenAnder wrote:
| Looking at supermarket (or any) prices, publicly posted,
| in-store or online, is not remotely grey market.
| gdulli wrote:
| They absolutely do sell your data, they just launder it
| through various ad tech obfuscations to achieve a veneer of
| anonymization.
| SenAnder wrote:
| And cameras are used by stalkers as well. But when a prolific
| photographer, growing rich off their trade, tries to control
| what others are allowed to photograph, I won't assume they're
| doing it out of concern for my well-being.
|
| I don't want Google or Facebook to have my data either, yet
| they've done their best to gather everyone's with various
| trackers, not just data posted voluntarily to their
| platforms. They don't have to sell it - _they_ are the threat
| too.
| derelicta wrote:
| Truly shows how Free Markets are the most efficient
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| If food and housing gets too expensive, then sorry mate,
| nothing we can do about it, that's just how the free market(tm)
| works, try working harder.
|
| But when labor gets too expensive pushing wages up, then it's
| no longer the free market, but it's a "labor shortage"
| catastrophe all over the media and we have to shed tears about
| the poor business owners wo can't afford a second Porsche, so
| immigration gets turbocharged until wages come down to their
| desired levels that businesses can agree is "fair".
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| have you ever tried building a house? it's one of the least
| free markets there is. the quickest way to get arrested is to
| buy cheap land and start putting up houses willy nilly
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> have you ever tried building a house? it's one of the
| least free markets there is._
|
| The "free market" in the context of housing was meant in a
| satirical way hence the TM symbol. Of course that market is
| 100% fixed by design but we get parroted the story where
| it's 100% "free" as if the government has no control over
| the levers that wholly impact it's pricing (zoning and
| building regulations, immigration, interest rates, banking
| and loan duration regulations, banning overseas investors,
| banning AirBnBs, property taxes, etc)
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| well, there are genuinely dumb people out there who think
| that housing is a market failure. like homebuilders are
| unwilling to take necessary risks or something. and they
| definitely don't mean the risk of going to prison (100%)
| midasuni wrote:
| Certainly in the U.K. house builders sit on masses of
| land but don't develop it for fear of lowering sold
| prices. If building a house costs PS100k Better to sell 5
| at 400k each year for 10 years than sell 50 at 250k
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jan/31/britain-
| land-...
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| That's not a failure to take necessary risk or a problem
| of a too-short time horizon. Quite the opposite. And it
| is certainly not a tragedy of the commons situation.
|
| At least not until you factor in government. What
| landowners and land speculators clearly don't fear is
| huge swaths of land suddenly becoming available for
| building. Or sharply increasing interest rates. Or mass
| deportations.
|
| A market failure is more like how a CEO is often
| incentivized to maximize the stock price in the short run
| at the expense of the long-term health of the company.
| That is how his compensation is structured.
| living_room_pc wrote:
| Not only that, have you ever tried understanding building
| code in order to construct a "legal" residence? Sometimes
| it is regulated to the point where I could not build a
| house unless it had the right angle and shade of red
| terracotta roofing tiles.
| dazc wrote:
| House builders in the UK can employ independent, non
| Govt, inspectors to ensure they are building to
| regulations (our equiv of your building code). You can
| imagine how well that works since these inspectors only
| have one client.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| apparently you have to hire a city building inspector to
| watch you work and then he doesn't show up
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6x3hMObEVc
| scrollaway wrote:
| I dunno, sounds more like a problem with the news you read.
| Here, inflation and the price of groceries makes the front
| page on a very regular basis.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Then when wages do come down and questions get put to
| politicians and the central bankers about the lack of wage
| growth they shrug their shoulders and act confused like it's
| some unsolvable math problem.
| midasuni wrote:
| The beauty of housing going up is the "work hard" in tears
| wages which then increased the price of housing.
|
| The land owners take all the extra work and laugh all the way
| to the bank.
|
| Of course if people collectively decided to work half as hard
| there would be less money for housing and then prices would
| come down. Workers wouldn't lose out.
| nayuki wrote:
| Yup, this is why we need to implement a land value tax (not
| property tax!) and loosen zoning restrictions.
| helpfulContrib wrote:
| A majority of the food brands in Austria lead directly back to
| Nestle ..
| beebeepka wrote:
| It's almost the same here in Bulgaria. Been doing my best to
| avoid their products but they managed to buy a ton local
| companies over the years.
| jiofj wrote:
| That's nice if we forget about the ECB printing money like
| there's no tomorrow.
| dangerwill wrote:
| Capitalism can't fail it can only be failed
| lxgr wrote:
| That could be an explanation if the entire Eurozone were
| affected uniformly by inflation. It's not, though, and
| Austria is seeing the highest levels.
|
| A big contribution to this is the government's policy of
| heavily subsidizing various costs: Energy, rent, even
| groceries were subsidized via various vouchers and payments
| for a while, and now there's even discussions of "capping
| interest rates" - of course inflation won't go down if the
| purchasing power remains inflated!
|
| Note that I'm not concluding that this is necessarily a bad
| development: It might just be an effective way of
| redistribution - but only time will tell, and personally I'm
| glad to not be part of the experiment.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Which explains why inflation in countires like Belgium,
| Spain, Denmark, Luxembourg are all under 2.5% as they
| famously don't use the Euro.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Denmark, yes, but the others use the euro.
| manmal wrote:
| I think GP was being sarcastic.
| MandieD wrote:
| The DKK is loosely coupled with the Euro:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark_and_the_euro
| [deleted]
| jiofj wrote:
| As someone in Spain: those numbers are absolutely fake.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| (That's the point they're trying to make btw)
| midasuni wrote:
| I obe it when something doesn't fit a narrative so it's
| decried as "fake news"
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What are the profit margins for Austrian retailers?
|
| In the US, all the retailers earn razor thin profit margins
| (except Home Depot/Lowes), indicating if prices were lower, the
| businesses would fail, or at best become charities.
|
| Edit: for the one Austrian retailer I could find numbers for,
| they are not pretty. Not sure how the retailer can lower prices
| without going out of business if they already have sub 1%
| profit margins.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37534333
| lxgr wrote:
| We're talking about grocery stores here, not just general
| retailers. I have a really hard time believing that US
| grocery stores are operating on razor-thin margins here,
| given how extremely expensive groceries are (when adjusting
| for income, other cost of living etc.) compared to e.g.
| Germany.
|
| One problem of the Austrian grocery store market is that
| there's just way too many branches per capita (compared to
| the otherwise pretty similar market of Germany again), which
| brings down margins.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is all public information. Plus, logically, it is a low
| barrier to entry business with zero moat. There are lots of
| sellers willing to sell for barely above cost.
|
| These are the two biggest grocery only retailers in the US:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-
| m...
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ACI/albertsons/pr
| o...
|
| This is the single biggest grocery retailer in the US, but
| not solely grocery:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-
| pr...
|
| Costco obviously moves a ton of groceries.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/COST/costco/profi
| t...
|
| Target now sells a wide range of groceries in all of its
| stores too:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TGT/target/net-
| pro...
| [deleted]
| j7ake wrote:
| To check price of items in Austria, the website is here:
|
| https://heisse-preise.io/
|
| Browsing around, the prices look very reasonable and inexpensive
| to me.
|
| For example, 500 g bag of peanuts is 4.59 euros, the price has
| fluctuated between 3.39 to 5.59 euros over the years.
|
| Peanuts name is "Kelly's Erdnusse gerostet & gesalzen"
| bowsamic wrote:
| Where do you live where that is reasonable?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| PS2.70 GBP per kg in Tesco (mid-range national supermarket).
| That would be EUR1.57 for 500g roasted salted peanuts.
| timeon wrote:
| > heisse-preise
|
| I remember that show.
| the-dude wrote:
| That is ridiculous expensive for peanuts.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| On the US west coast, I just bought 1,816 grams (4 pounds) of
| raw peanuts for $8.00.
|
| Edit: if the comparison is dry salted peanuts, then Walmart
| sells Planters brand for ~$3.50 per 500 grams.
| the-dude wrote:
| NL: house brand supermarket : e1,80/500g ( or less ),
| roasted salted.
| rcbdev wrote:
| My friends on the west coast earn around ~5-7x times what I
| earn as a SWE in Vienna.
| j7ake wrote:
| But the fact people stay in Vienna means they are paying
| people fairly there.
| em-bee wrote:
| most people are just not ready to move away from their
| home/family. and even most of those that are would only
| move to a country where they speak the same language.
| that means germany or switzerland. and there it means
| places where they can find a job, which tends to be the
| larger more expensive cities.
|
| so despite the cost of living, it is really hard to find
| other cities that offer the same quality of life at less
| cost.
|
| in short, moving within europe, while possible is not as
| easy as moving within the US. and moving outside the EU
| is even more difficult, so very few do it.
|
| also, vienna has massive growth in the last decade, but i
| think most of those people come from places that are even
| worse.
| jefftk wrote:
| In Boston I see basically the same: dry roasted peanuts at
| $3.49 for a pound, cheaper if you buy more at once.
| martopix wrote:
| There is no point comparing across countries
| the-dude wrote:
| Why not?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Commodities are routinely compared worldwide, and peanuts
| could be considered commodities. They are certainly
| closer to commodities than to services etc., even when
| packaged for the individual customer in fancy wrapping.
|
| I would understand your argument if you were talking
| about services.
| opportune wrote:
| The US produces the 5th most peanuts of all the countries
| in the world (interestingly, Sudan makes more). It may be
| a commodity but it's a local one that doesn't have to be
| internationally shipped or be taxed via tariffs. Also, in
| the US we don't have VAT and apply sales tax post-hoc, so
| comparing store prices is really skewed by that.
| spotplay wrote:
| I don't think that point stands for peanuts. I can get a
| 500g bag of peanuts right now for 2.7 Euros and most
| likely the reason for that is the cost of living around
| here.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| I'm Austrian. This is insanely expensive.
| living_room_pc wrote:
| You have to keep prices in relation to salary and other CoL
| expenses. Europe in general has lower salaries than the US,
| this is true of Germany and especially Austria. For me 4.59 for
| erdnussen is too high for my kart.
| midasuni wrote:
| "asymmetric information warfare"
|
| I think that's a great term in explaining how "the free market"
| doesn't work.
| marginallen wrote:
| Asymmetric information warfare is the method of abuse for all
| systems; "free market" that is nothing like it, "democracy"
| that is not the self-interested will of the majority, and also
| the false solution to "free market" and the "saving democracy"
| that are pushed by the oligopoly ruling class system in a false
| guise of social justice or "wokeness" and claims of saving fake
| democracy.
| isodev wrote:
| What?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> "asymmetric information warfare"_
|
| That's also a powerful tool for wage suppression and it's been
| used for decades to constantly low-ball workers.
|
| Thank god in the last decade we saw a lot more transparency
| online through user provided open source salary data, which
| helps even out this asymmetry a bit and have workers demand
| their market value and hope to not get massively low-balled
| like before.
|
| _> I think that's a great term in explaining how "the free
| market" doesn't work._
|
| It only works for those who set the prices as they can collude
| on price/wage fixing whereas workers and consumers can't
| organize in similar fashions.
| [deleted]
| ahoka wrote:
| When there's asymmetric information, then it cannot be a free
| market by definition.
| [deleted]
| carapace wrote:
| The "free" in "free market" refers in part to free flow of
| information. Surfacing information about prices is kind of the
| point of a market. It's a mechanism that assigns prices
| "automatically" (as contrasted with central planning, etc.)
|
| I don't know much about economics but I know, or think I know,
| that much.)
| ahoka wrote:
| More generically, free from economic rent.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It has also been shown that much of the population prefers
| buying something for $x if the price tag claims it has been
| discounted rather than $x without the claim of a discount.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Assuming an efficient market, price strongly correlates to
| (some measure of) value. Now if I over you something that's
| worth $5, or alternatively something that's worth $10 but
| that for a short you can purchase for just $5, which item do
| you choose?
|
| Of course ideally you would properly evaluate how much the
| item is worth, in utility, quality, longevity, social status,
| resale value, ethical production, etc. But that's difficult
| (often on purpose). The seller knows what the item is worth,
| you have to guess, or just use price as a weak proxy.
|
| So in a sense, people preferring discounted items is an
| effect of asymmetric information
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Now if I over you something that's worth $5, or
| alternatively something that's worth $10 but that for a
| short you can purchase for just $5, which item do you
| choose?
|
| I have no reason to assume that simply because you tell me
| something may have sold for $10 in the past, that it has
| any bearing on the relative utility per dollar of that item
| in the present.
|
| I only look at the price I would be able to buy at, and
| search a few other retailers on my phone, and determine if
| it is an acceptable price.
|
| People prefer discounted items because of ego. They like to
| feel like THEY got a deal.
| the-dude wrote:
| Potatos ( in or outside supermarket, large bags ) have literally
| doubled in price YoY in NL.
|
| I get 5kg instead of 10kg for the same price. Same month, last
| year.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I'm still shocked after moving to Germany how much more
| expensive potatoes are here than in the UK.
|
| British loose potatoes are 70p per kg from Sainsburys. I'm sure
| you could get them cheaper elsewhere.
|
| Here in Germany the absolute cheapest is like 1.40 euro per kg,
| much more common 2.50 (!!)
|
| The wage is a little higher so I have adjusted somewhat, also
| the quality is arguably slightly better, but still...
|
| There are only two things that are significantly cheaper in
| Germany than in the UK: alcohol (especially beer and wine), and
| tobacco
| mthoms wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's still happening but... there was a potato
| shortage during the pandemic. At least here in North America.
| It had to do with a disease affecting the crops IIRC.
| the-dude wrote:
| What I understood from actual farmer : fuel and fertilizer.
| tasogare wrote:
| [dead]
| de6u99er wrote:
| I wish paying with the phone would not only transfer how much we
| paid where. I'd like to get more details like single item prices.
| This would enable us to track prices ourselves.
| rolisz wrote:
| If you have loyalty/coupon apps for the store, sometimes they
| also give you digital receipts you can download. One day I will
| automate downloading the receipts and OCR-ing the items .
| Fervicus wrote:
| Someone needs to make something like this for Canada.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| This was a really interesting read! I find it so tiresome trying
| to evaluate food prices and optimize grocery shopping to optimize
| [time and money spent], and a large data set like this could make
| it much easier. Is anyone aware of a similar price analysis for
| the United States?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Another way to go about it is to check the profit margins of
| your sellers. In the US, all the big companies are publicly
| listed, so as long as you shop at
| Costco/Walmart/Target/Kroger/Albertsons/etc, you know you will
| not be paying more than a couple percent above what it costs
| the retailer to sell to you.
|
| Obviously, individual items within the store have different
| margins, but almost all unprepared / expiring foods will be at
| the lowest margins.
|
| Winco/Aldi/Lidl are other grocery businesses where it is known
| the markup is extremely minimal.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| [flagged]
| asutekku wrote:
| There's inflation and then there's "inflation as an excuse to
| raise prices more than the inflation"
| midasuni wrote:
| Supermarkets are colluding to increase prices as all companies
| are wont to do. There isn't enough competition to act as
| downward pressure on prices.
|
| This isn't a monetary thing that YouTube says - the goods a few
| miles away in Germany aren't seeing this, despite being in the
| same currency and no difficulty transporting them. In a free
| market a competitor would buy from the same supplier the german
| supermarket does, undercut the competition and force all prices
| for.
|
| However that doesn't work because consumers in Austria don't
| realise how they are being ripped off, because while the large
| corporation has all the data to manipulate and extract maximum
| revenue from each consumers the consumer lacks the data to do
| the opposite.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| so naturally the stock prices for these grocery chains should
| be skyrocketing. please show the stock prices for these
| companies or I will know fairly definitively that you are
| just doing stream of consciousness outsider art
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| REWE seems like the only publicly listed grocery retailer
| in Austria:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REWE_Group
|
| 2022 numbers:
|
| https://www.rewe-group.com/en/press-and-
| media/newsroom/press...
|
| > combined net profit fell by 33.4 per cent, from 755.6
| million euros to 503.5 million euros.
|
| > Total revenue up 10.4 per cent, or 8 billion euros, to
| 84.8 billion euros
|
| So 2022 profit margin of 0.5B/84.8B = 0.5%.
|
| 2021 profit margin was 0.75B/76.5B = 1%
|
| That is spectacularly low, even Walmart manages > 1%.
|
| Everyone else seems private so their financials are
| probably not available:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in
| _...
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| wow, Metro AG's stock is doing horribly this year. but
| they're supposedly raking in tons of cash from Austria?
|
| EDIT: SPAR Group, Inc. is doing very badly as well. I
| think this theory is highly suspect
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| If they're doing so poorly, why are they giving such
| steep discounts in Germany and not charging Austrian
| prices to bump up their margins? Are they stupid to leave
| so much money on the table?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| There is significantly higher competition in Germany than
| in Austria when it comes to supermarkets. Grocery chains
| might very well want to push up the prices more to
| restore margins but might find it hard to do so.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| The obvious answer is that they are not giving steep
| discounts in any country. Almost certainly their gross
| margins are between zero and three percent in both
| countries.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> However that doesn't work because consumers in Austria
| don't realise how they are being ripped off_
|
| Oh, they have known for a long time they were being ripped
| off but didn't have the proof. There's nothing they can do
| about it because the corrupt politicians claim it's just the
| free market and can't intervine with the market pricing
| otherwise it would be communism, and Austrian consumers who
| don't live close to Germany have no other options for
| shopping than the local monopoly.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is there any evidence that Austrian supermarket owners have
| long reaped outsize profit margins?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| There is evidence that the prices they charge in Austria
| are often significantly higher than in Germany, meaning
| higher profits per sale, at the expense of the consumer
| who's wages are lower than those in Germany, so it's a
| double whammy.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > There is evidence that the prices they charge in
| Austria are often significantly higher than in Germany
|
| The cost of doing business in Austria is significantly
| higher for supermarkets. On the one hand because Austria
| has many more supermarkets to begin with per chain,
| secondly because of the high cost of labor in the
| country. Comparing countries that way is not trivial.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Where exactly is this extra higher cost you're talking
| about?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37536203
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the US, many times you cannot compare prices between
| cities much less states due to differences in land price
| and costs of city and state taxes/regulations such as
| minimum wages.
|
| Surely, Austria and Germany, as two different countries,
| have at least a few big differences in tax systems/labor
| laws/local laws/etc that can affect cost of goods sold?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| The retailers have been questioned regularly why they
| overcharge in Austria compared to Germany, and they never
| cited extra wages(lower than Germany FYI), business or
| tax overhead as the reason, but rather beat it around the
| bush saying "we're only charging what the market will
| bare and this is what the Austrian market bares",
| basically admitting they're screwing you and getting away
| with it, especially that they often sell stuff made in
| Austria cheaper in Germany.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| That does not reflect actual reality. Retailers have
| answered plenty times why they are charging higher prices
| in Austria compared to Germany and the arguments are hard
| to ignore (higher cost of doing business, higher taxes,
| higher density of super markets, more rural delivery
| requirements etc.).
|
| Specifically on that point:
|
| > extra wages(lower than Germany FYI)
|
| That is incorrect, the cost of an employee in the grocery
| space per hours worked is still higher in Austria than
| Germany, quite meaningfully so.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Which higher taxes? Which is higher cost of doing
| business?
|
| Please be specific, otherwise it's just parroting the
| fake corporate propaganda of the supermarket chains.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37536203
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I guess that is technically the truth. As a business
| owner, I also charge the most I think my customer's were
| able and willing to pay.
|
| But in all cases I am familiar with
| (US/Canada/UK/Germany), there are sufficient competing
| grocery retailers that the price most customers are
| willing to pay is only a couple percentage points higher
| than the cost of goods sold.
| quibus wrote:
| Would be nice to have this for all EU countries.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| This already exists to some degree in the form of the HICP [0].
| One of the categories in the index is food and they have a neat
| little tool where you can compare countries [1].
|
| It doesn't cover every single product on shelves though, just a
| pre-selected set of products that's compared across all
| countries.
|
| There's a myriad of datasets being collected and published by
| Eurostat.
|
| [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/hicp/information-data [1]
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/website/economy/food-pri...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Stop and Stop / Peapod has _very_ aggressive bot detection
| (probably to prevent just this) so I doubt this would work; I
| tend to trip it "by accident" just browsing the site and get
| completely locked out until I clear my cookies.
| poorbutdebtfree wrote:
| If rampant inflation is what it takes to go full blown socialism
| ("you'll own nothing and you'll like it") then so be it.
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(page generated 2023-09-16 23:00 UTC)