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Comment by buu700 | Hacker News Reader

Technology may play a role. Reaching for a smartphone is easier than recalling a fact from memory. Who remembers phone numbers anymore?

I wouldn't guess that memory is the issue so much as less exposure to this type of information in the first place. We no longer aimlessly browse stores checking everything out; now we just search for specific items, buy them, and move on.

I can probably recall the prices of things I've actually purchased about as well as past generations, but anything beyond that is basically a wild guess.

As someone who's been keto for just about my entire adult life, the humor of "I mean it's one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?"[1] was almost lost on me.

1: https://youtu.be/Nl_Qyk9DSUw

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I think you hit the nail on the head.

Price is right products are paid placements that link into existing advertising campaigns. It wasn't random trivia -- the folks who watched the show and signed up to play the game watched TV! People knew what a 1986 Ford Festiva cost because... they saw the ads on TV. There was a sort of democracy of experience where we all saw the same ads.

Now, advertising is hyper-focused. I don't see ads for a set of pots and pans. I get ads for baseball gloves and Yubikey. My father in law gets ads for conservative political nonsense.

My mother-in-law gave both of her kids these mop things that she was really excited about, and she was surprised when we didn't understand what the big deal was. Turns out she had been seeing ads for them on Facebook for months, and assumed we had two. It was a very enlightening experience for all of us: she got an introduction to targeted advertising, and we realized that not everyone understands how today's advertising market works.

less exposure to this type of information in the first place

Or perhaps just as significantly: this information is now constantly in flux. No longer are prices set by hand. Everything (at Amazon and Walmart, at least) is priced by computers that are constantly trying to determine the ideal price that maximize profits. So who could “know” the price of anything if the number is always changing?

Moreover, the price of a things seems less determined by the cost to manufacture + some markup, supply/demand, or even a general sense of value.

Store brand vs name brand being a reasonable example. The exact same product with two different names on it - two different prices by pretty wide margins in some cases. Heck even the same can of (product) at two different stores can very by quite a bit.

The cost of a piece of tech a wild from one to another while the guts are basically the same. Then consider that the physical item is being sold at-cost or close to it, but real revenue for the company is based on subscriptions or data + ads.

How could anyone look at a kitchen appliance and guess what the price is today? It seems every toaster is made in the same factory, slap a different brand sticker on it, enable an extra button (or disable it on a generic version), and boom that $20 toaster is $150.

Also, everything is always on sale. MSRP is a seemingly meaningless number in the face of endless rolling sales.

a brand isn’t meaningless, tho. the brand defines the entity that a relationship is with. for example, a name brand toaster is safer because there’s a company that manages safety recalls.

It's funny how often I see price changes on Amazon go to ending in .88, which is a dead giveaway that they're matching Wal-Mart's current price.

>Everything (at Amazon and Walmart, at least) is priced by computers that are constantly trying to determine the ideal price that maximize profits.

Do you have a source on this available? I ask due to some second hand retail experience with Wal-Mart specifically, that their pricing contracts lean heavily on pre-determined price points (under $20, etc).

Shop two Walmarts in the same city, may times you'll find the same products with different prices on 'less common' items between the stores.

It's not just that—the prices on The Price Is Right are MSRP. Even if you can remember the price you paid for that exact box of macaroni and cheese at the store, chances are, you didn't pay MSRP.

These days, more and more stores have (often fairly arbitrary) discounts, which wasn't the case when TPIR was in its early heyday.

Yep, the rise of white-label products, discount stores, and the increase in selection have really changed this. Retail has wildly changed in the US in the past 30 years.

When I was a kid, Kraft Mac and Cheese was basically the only product of its type on the shelf. Now, I can count on basically any grocery store having a dozen or more varieties of the same thing.

https://carolynahyankee.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/mac-n-ch...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/grocery-stores-carry-40000...

True, but most stores continue to show MSRP right next to the sale price, since it helps motivate customers to make a purchase knowing they are getting it for less.

I probably have a pretty good idea generally of what things cost even though I don't really watch broadcast television. But I don't disagree with the basic point. All the Facebook employees getting the VPN endpoint blacklisted because they're all ordering from DoorDash because they don't have food at home and don't cook... I'm sure many of them have no idea what a dozen eggs cost and why should they?

This actually became a minor issue in a 1992 presidential debate [1] when GHW Bush had no idea what a gallon of milk cost. But, again, why would he?

ADDED: Eggs are probably not the best example because if you ever eat eggs at a diner or whatever, that sort of gives you an upper bound on the cost. But pick random staples like flour and it gets harder to reason about the cost.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17826509

>Eggs are probably not the best example because if you ever eat eggs at a diner or whatever, that sort of gives you an upper bound on the cost

I don't know, I think eggs actually work well. The price of eggs can vary pretty wildly. One store near me sells eggs starting at $3.99 for half a dozen white ones, up to like $8.99 for a dozen free range organic ones and a bunch of prices in between for various quality eggs. Another store sells them starting at like $2.50 for a half dozen white ones and up to $5.99 for the free range organic ones, with all the prices in between being different to the first store. Then, there's the eggs you can buy at the weekly farmer's market, and near daily craft and other fairs where the prices vary drastically from one person's eggs to another. There's also at least 10 or more places between most of the communities here where people sell eggs from their home.

Diner eggs can vary pretty wildly in price too. You can get some pretty high quality eggs from cheap places and some really lousy expensive powdered scrambled eggs. You have no real idea the actual value to cost with diner eggs.

ETA: Prices are in Canadian dollars.

Sorry for the aside, but are those prices in USD? Those seem like very expensive eggs.

I am used to paying less than. 10 USD for an egg.

Those do seem high though $0.10 seems a bit low. I think a dozen store-brand large eggs are around $2 where I live. (White are a bit cheaper than brown.)

Canadian dollars. Sorry. Should have made that more clear.

In Seattle you can get a dozen for $1.99.

Aldi and Walmart eggs will sometimes be under a dollar. They seem to compete on staple goods like eggs and milk to get customers in and buying higher margin products.

https://www.businessinsider.com/r-exclusive-wal-mart-launche...

Downtown Edmonton here, I can get a dozen for around ~4-5 bucks for "free run", and free range are around ~$7 CAD.

I agree. I can recall the historical prices of staple groceries almost immediately, because I buy them every week and base my dinners around what is on sale.

When it comes to durable goods, I have no clue anymore. Put a 65" TV and I'd bomb it...somewhere between $400 and $1500?

Yep, and in my case since I buy groceries on Amazon and don't purchase foods that don't fit my macros, I'd have an even harder time. e.g. I couldn't tell you offhand with certainty how much bread or any particular brand of cereal costs.

My wife and I regularly watch The Price is Right, and I'm frequently amazes at how broad the spectrum is for prices of televisions. That set includes outdoor televisions at $3k+

> Put a 65" TV and I'd bomb it...somewhere between $400 and $1500?

that's actually not bad. I researched TVs recently, and an entry level 65" does cost about $400, while $1500 is upper mid-range. of course, it can be double that or more for a really good 65" oled.

if I had to price a specific model, I'd be in trouble.

Doesn't help when every box store has a slightly different model number with a slightly different price

somewhere between $400 and $1500

Both! I see anywhere from $549 to $2200 on Amazon right now.

Durable items introduce enough randomness into games like The Price is Right, but laziness on the part of the producers (e.g. using the same 65" TV every show) negates it. Keen players that study for the show used to know what a Ford Escort cost as well as every add-on package. Then they would ask the host which packages are installed.

My wife and I watch Price is Right... our favorites when they describe the car is the paint and fabric protection. Also, a few weeks ago, they had one of the Canam trikes - it had reverse!

That depends on the tech. An egg's an egg, but you can get anyhing from 2012's top-of-the-line 65" for $400-$500, to an 8K OLED with a subwoofer built into the back or an attached sound bar or whatever for 5 figures.

Another piece of the puzzle is they describe consumer electronics in very generic terms. So the real answer is "it depends". A while back I saw an iMac on the show. I had been looking at that exact model and new all the various price points it could be, but they didn't give enough information to narrow it down at all. It was just "an Apple computer" and then the detailed description labled it "an iMac".

> Who remembers phone numbers anymore?

I do.. Most of those I remember are from the 80s and 90s though :D

But I do remember the phone number of my closest family still. I also remember my bank account numbers which is something many find strange!

> Most of those I remember are from the 80s and 90s though :D

So do I. Weird. The thing is, I have trouble remembering my own cell number, because I never dial it.

I remember speed of light (299792458 m/s) but no birthdays or anniversaries of family or friends. No need to ask why I suck at relationships.

Yo- put them on your calendar repeating yearly! That way you never have to remember and you also never forget.

If I knew which day to set the notification, I wouldn't need the notification.

My wife didn't remember my number until I drilled her on it a bunch a couple years ago (and was surprised to learn that I had committed hers to memory).

Now if she ever gets her phone stolen she doesn't need to find a public library or borrow a laptop to contact me

I realized last week that I've gotten so used to not checking prices that I put a $70 bottle of melatonin in my amazon shopping cart without noticing. This particular brand is a regular purchase for me and it's always been about $7, so I didn't consider even looking at the price.

I'm sure that that's the goal as far as the seller is concerned - hope that buyers don't notice and purchase it. Yet another amazon scam

I find it's a general problem with "household" goods on Amazon--and one reason the Dash buttons were mostly ill-conceived. You can get prices that are Walmart-competitive (which is basically my benchmark for paper towels and the like). But it varies all over the map and you absolutely have to pay attention. Which, in my case with a Walmart nearby, means that it's not worth the trouble.

What happens if you do this via Alexa, does it just auto-order whatever it finds to whatever price it wants or does one have some control over it?

I don't have any of these assistants in my house for obvious reasons but this seems like the perfect way to scam someone.

I think even more so when it's something you've bought before. "Alexa, buy more XYZ". I don't use assistants either (for I suspect the same reasons as you), but I assume Alexa would simply repurchase the same item you bought last time, regardless of price. In OP's case, that'd be a 10x markup.

I would never buy supplements off Amazon - if they're trying to get you to accidentally buy melatonin for 10x the regular price, then they're probably also trying to get you to buy counterfeit melatonin for 1x the regular price.

I buy all my supplements on Amazon (Subscribe & Save), but only brands I've validated against https://labdoor.com.

Does that protect you from counterfeit products that duplicate the branding?

No, and that's a good point. I've lost a lot of faith in Amazon since it turned out that their Apple chargers were counterfeit (or were actually Apple but from a different country with different safety standards, or something).

I've definitely gotten counterfeit Advantage flea medication from Amazon. A) It didn't work, and B) the cats had no reaction to applying it (usually they hate it because it burns a little on the skin). Packaging was about perfect, and the applicators were filled with water. Now I only buy it from the local pet store, where I can make the safe assumption they're sourcing the stuff responsibly.

Wow, that's pretty bad. Guess I should also switch to another source sooner rather than later.

Nowadays bananas can go for 120.000$ so there is that...

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