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Comment by mitchdoogle | Hacker News Reader

I know right? It's just as logical to frame this as reduced pricing at off-peak times, but I guess that's not so sensational.

Nevermind that many people would be happy to pay a little bit extra to avoid waiting during peak times.

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you would think the companies rolling these out would have that level of sense from the get go. turns out, they didn’t, and described it in the sensational way.

“dynamic pricing and daypart offerings.”

that’s the ceo of wendys - not the media. sure, they tried to awkwardly correct the optics.

there may be upsides, but to act like this is purely media sensationalism is to sound quite a bit like jumping too far in the other direction. the why isn’t terribly important. just like the ceo, the optics are off.

The optics are price being more reflective of supply and demand. Doesn’t more accurate pricing ensure more optimal allocation of resources? I don’t see why that would be a bad thing.

The optics to the average person are "I'm getting ripped off right after prices already went up way too much with inflation". What you're talking about is the reality.

The optics to the average person that "I'm getting a bargain right after prices already went up way too much due to inflation".

If they called it something along the lines of an off hours discount that's what the optics would be. Clearly the fact that people are talking about this in a generally negative way shows that they aren't seeing it as getting a bargain.

> Clearly the fact that people are talking about this in a generally negative way shows that they aren't seeing it as getting a bargain.

That's because the same companies who have been jacking up prices for no reason sure as hell aren't looking to do us any favors now. They'll use this to extract as much money from us as they can think they can get away and if we complain about their prices they will blame us for not rearranging our lives to match their random schedules.

I guess that is true. To me, I think people in the service business, especially back of house in restaurants, have long been getting shafted in terms of pay and quality of life having to work evenings, nights, and weekends for low pay.

So prices going up means they must be getting increased pay (because the restaurant business is so low profit margin).

> So prices going up means they must be getting increased pay

sorry, is this sarcasm?

edit: to clarify, there must be assumptions to see price hikes as benefitting the bottom. even to view meager increases as improvement is disingenuous if what goes down is a fraction of what goes up.

you’re confusing optics with facts.

the most objective statement of fact can result in absolutely horrible optics.

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