We Go Detective On Surveillance Pricing

0:00Speaker 1:High Scrollers is produced on gadigul Land.

0:02Speaker 2:We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this country. An Elder's past and present.

0:07Speaker 1:Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. Bring it down, Adelaide.

0:16Speaker 3:What's going on in Adelaide?

0:17Speaker 4:Well, we are pre recording this episode a week prior, but when this episode drops yesterday, our Fate Adelaide pop up store will have opened.

0:30Speaker 3:Wow.

0:32Speaker 1:Rats, thanks?

0:33Speaker 2:And so what's the tea? What's happening? What are the details?

0:36Speaker 4:So I won't go into it too much because I'm sure by this point, if you are invested enough in Fate and you live in Adelaide, you'd probably already know everything. But we're doing our first ever pop up store. But when you think pop up, how long do you think it's for?

0:51Speaker 3:Ah, like two to three days?

0:53Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're doing it for three months.

0:55Speaker 3:Oh wow, Yeah, I didn't know that.

0:57Speaker 4:It's as like a long pop up, which I'm so excited about. And we're going to Adelaide. As everyone knows, we almost opened at Adelaide' store like two years ago and it all fell through and then we've been looking ever since, and then we were kind of like changed gears. When it comes to our retail stores, I'm done with opening permanent stores because we've all seen the fucking retail climate at the moment and we're seeing everyone shut down, left, right, and center.

1:23Speaker 1:So it is way too scary for me to commit.

1:25Speaker 4:To five year leases, you know what I mean, especially when all of our current stores are well into their leases. And so we've been looking into doing pop ups. And yeah, when people think of pop up, they think like weekend pop up, two days, three days max. But we are wanting to do long term pop ups, and so we're starting with Adelaide. I'm very excited about it. And you want to know something different that we're doing with this one. When we see stores open, like recently, did you see the Kakiva active wear store opening. Yes, And traditionally, when we've done every other fate store opening, you do a big grand opening day, you build hype and like, I get it, I love it. Like that's why we've always done it. We've had claw.

2:06Speaker 1:Machines, DJ's.

2:07Speaker 4:You know, first twenty customers get a goodie bag valued at XYZ, and you want to create that hype and excitement all that for a store opening, which again I saw the girl that owns Kakiva getting slammed saying like, you know, why.

2:22Speaker 1:Would people dine up for that shit?

2:24Speaker 4:It's just active where and again, if you own a business as if you're not going to go all out to try and make some noise about it, ye, your fuckers.

2:32Speaker 2:Anyway, Tiffanny is bad.

2:34Speaker 1:Tiffanny is here to stay, I hope.

2:37Speaker 4:So anyway, even though that's the way that we have always done our Fate store openings, we're doing things differently this time, and the response to it has been great. Now, at the time of recording, we're obviously not open, but the way that we're doing it, Matt is we are doing it essentially with.

2:55Speaker 1:Appointments oh the whole time. Well, initially it was for the opening weekend.

3:02Speaker 4:We're opening on a Thursday, because you don't want to open on a Saturday because that's too chaotic. We thought, okay, from the Thursday to the Sunday, let's open up bookings or sessions. So they're one hour sessions, and then we've capped at it seventeen people per hour. That's with like a we're allowing for two no shows because whenever you make like whenever as a business. When you open up free bookings, people just not show up. And we're doing it so that there is no long queue outside the store and so that people don't have to line up for hours inside for the change room, because we want it to be like a nicer experience for people rather than waiting around for hours.

3:41Speaker 1:Do you know what I mean?

3:41Speaker 4:Because if you go to a store opening, you get there at nine when it opens, you might not get in till midday. And I'm just like, I'm not vibing that anymore, nothing wrong with it.

3:50Speaker 1:But we opened it up.

3:53Speaker 4:For those Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday the first weekend, and we posted it in our Fate Society group only, and they sold out like immediately.

4:03Speaker 1:So then we've.

4:03Speaker 4:Extended the sessions into the next week and we're just going to keep doing the sessions for as long as we feel is necessary until it chills down because it's much easier to manage.

4:14Speaker 2:And no one's waiting there for eight hours trying to get in. And then you can also stock.

4:21Speaker 4:Yeah, if you come at if you book at two pm, you know you come at too when you get straight in.

4:25Speaker 1:That makes so much more sense to me.

4:28Speaker 4:So anyway, I'm in Adelaide right now as this episode's going live, and hopefully it's gone well. And if this goes well for the three months, then hopefully we'll be able to do all the other cities that we are yet to go to. Nice and I quite like Adelaide. You did your live show there. How do you like Adelaide?

4:46Speaker 2:I like Adelaide. Not much to say about Adelaide.

4:49Speaker 4:I haven't had time to do stufft It kind of gives Melbourne vibes to me, like when you're in the city. But when aj and I went down there last it was absolutely bucketing raining sideways, so we didn't get to do anything either.

5:02Speaker 1:She couldn't even walk outside.

5:04Speaker 2:And a lot of Adelaide's very much like like a lot of the good stuff in Adelaide, at least in my opinion, and from what I've heard is more so. It's very like if you went to Newcastle, but you do day trips to the Hunter Valley. Yeah, outdoors, you've got to go what is it, Barossa Valley? Is that the South Australia one. Yeah, So it's like you might go to Adelaide, but I know that when I've posted, like I mean Adelaide things to do. People are like, go for a day trip out to the Barossa Valley.

5:29Speaker 3:I'm the too hard, but.

5:32Speaker 2:So maybe with a bit more time there, if you do get a day off, which rarely happens for you, you could go out to a winery or something like that. That nice, Yes by myself, Well there you go. Everyone go to Fate Adelaide. Got three months to get there.

5:46Speaker 4:Yeah, and the sessions, I believe at this time of recording is still a thing. But as soon as it like quietens down, then it would.

5:53Speaker 1:Just be like open as normal. But we just don't want queues and lines nice. We want peace, nice.

6:01Speaker 2:Peace era.

6:02Speaker 3:I love it.

6:11Speaker 2:Well, this may not bring you any peace, I'm sorry to say, because I have a conspiracy theory and a task for all three of us gay Jay included today get on Mike because we're gonna have all three of us investigate something. Now, you all seem to love the Fish is Shark debate that we did, even though it divided the Internet and everyone hated me for it, and we got so many nasty comments from people who don't listen to the podcast. And look, at the end of the day, it's still got a lot of views, a lot of engagement, a lot of news articles, and a lot of new listeners to the podcast. So we love that for us. But what I determined was people love an investigation, and I thought we could investigate something today because I saw a video from a man named Chris the Producer. He's username on TikTok is Chris the Producer twenty one. He's got thirty six k followers, so relatively small creator, but this video got five point seven million views, and I don't know if you've seen it, but basically he found out about this thing called surveillance pricing, which allegedly happens on apps like Uber Eats and Uber and

7:22Speaker 2:door Dash and whatever it may be. And basically, surveillance pricing surveils how you act when you sign up to these apps. You obviously have to give your data over and you know it says that thing that's like allow this app to track your activity in other apps or whatever it may be. So basically what surveillance pricing does is it surveils how you act across your life on all your other apps, which then determines how much these places charge you depending on your lifestyle. So I'm assumed if you're someone who doesn't spend much money, then it may give you a cheaper price, and if you're someone who spends a lot of money, or depending how you spend your money, it may give you a different price.

8:11Speaker 2:Now he is I believe, American, and so he along with his I believe mum and brother, he called them and said, open up your Uber app. We're going to book the exact same trip at the exact same time from the exact same place to the exact same other place, and I want to know how much it's going to cost you. And then he did the same on things like door Dash and a few other American companies, like I think there's one called Instacart. We don't have that here, but you know, to that extent. So I thought today, what we're going to do here is we're going to see whether we experience surveillance pricing. And I want all three of us to first of all, go to our Uber app. Please.

8:51Speaker 1:Are we going to book ourselves a trip to Fate Newcastle?

8:54Speaker 2:Yes? From here right now?

8:56Speaker 3:Okay, that's a pretty short true and we're going.

8:58Speaker 1:To see fifteen minutes from here?

9:00Speaker 3:Oh kay?

9:00Speaker 1:Yeah, So we're going a regular Uber Yes, and we'll.

9:04Speaker 2:Put in actually Newie studio. So we go from the same place and we're all and don't where, don't say you go studio.

9:12Speaker 3:Yeah, I've got the address of the actual place for it.

9:15Speaker 1:And if you search Newye studio come up to.

9:16Speaker 2:Yeah, and don't say and say fate Newcastle.

9:20Speaker 4:And then also, can I just say, it's so cool that we can type in fate and it literally comes up with them.

9:25Speaker 1:Okay, So don't I've clicked that.

9:28Speaker 3:Yeah?

9:29Speaker 1:Gathering options?

9:30Speaker 2:Yeah, you gathering options as well, I've got them. Okay, great, So just give me just standard uber x price for you, Brittany.

9:36Speaker 1:Twenty five dollars and seven cents.

9:38Speaker 2:Oh, okay, I got exactly the same.

9:39Speaker 3:I've got exactly the same. Okay, good to know.

9:42Speaker 2:What about we look at some of the other ones, like, for example, Comfort, how much is a comfort for you?

9:46Speaker 1:Twenty nine fifty three?

9:48Speaker 2:I'm twenty nine forty five.

9:50Speaker 3:I'm twenty nine to fifty three. Okay, interesting, let's go and.

9:54Speaker 1:Uber x L please thirty nine twenty four.

9:58Speaker 2:Thirty nine eighty four.

10:00Speaker 3:I don't think I have Excel.

10:02Speaker 1:It's the second one in the list for me.

10:04Speaker 2:It's the fourth one in the list.

10:05Speaker 3:For me, I don't have Excel.

10:08Speaker 1:Maybe it's because we're both searching it that it's not.

10:10Speaker 2:So there's only two excels in Newcastle.

10:13Speaker 1:So the order that minds I got it?

10:16Speaker 3:How much thirty nine to twenty four?

10:18Speaker 2:Okay is me? So now I want you to go back. So there's a few cents different on a couple of them. Let's just put that down to maybe I requested a couple of seconds after or whatever. So to get rid of that, we'll go back to what we're planning our ride for and we're going to up the top instead of pick up now, we're going to reserve a ride for later. Yeah okay, And we're going to still do from New Studio to Fake News Castle, and we're going to choose a time.

10:45Speaker 1:I want you to choose, have an option for me to choose.

10:49Speaker 2:Click done, Yeah, pick up later.

10:52Speaker 1:It doesn't like where do I go next?

10:54Speaker 3:Oh?

10:54Speaker 2:Yeah?

10:55Speaker 3:When you select the address, you're going to oppress it again.

10:58Speaker 2:So now I want you to choose this Saturday, yeah, and I want you to do five pm, So seventeen o'clock.

11:07Speaker 1:Oh, because it's in twenty four, No, mine's not in twenty four hours.

11:10Speaker 2:Mine is.

11:10Speaker 3:That's weird.

11:11Speaker 2:So five pm then.

11:12Speaker 1:Five pm on Saturday the fifteenth.

11:15Speaker 2:Yeah, continue, continue, everybody say continue, And let me know what an.

11:19Speaker 1:Uber x costs thirty four thirteen.

11:21Speaker 3:Okay, got the same, I have the same, Okay, uber xl.

11:25Speaker 1:Forty nine thirteen.

11:27Speaker 2:Same same, Okay. Interesting. Let's go to uber eats now, okay, and we'll just look at like I don't really want to do something like a gyg or a subway because I think they should be pretty standard. But I want to get something that So we're going to have to put our address in as here at New Eat Studio, and I'm just going to look for something that's nearby that's like more of a small business. And we won't mention the small business.

11:56Speaker 1:We just say that is a house.

11:59Speaker 2:Yeah, I just said that. Yeah, let's go with if you can see you've got it, You've got that one. Okay, So let's just click into that and let's just I'm just going to read some things out and you just see that it's that it's the same. Currently, I have a deal for free with a fifty dollars purchase. It's a garlic bread for ten dollars normally, don't see that it's free with a fifty dollars part.

12:21Speaker 1:Yes, I see that.

12:22Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got that. Yep, yep, Calamari is this is in entrees.

12:27Speaker 3:We're adding that. No, no, no, no, oh yeah, let's do that.

12:31Speaker 2:Don't add that, but let's add up a Let's add up a car and see what it comes to. Calamari fretty twenty dollars. Yep. Same, let's add one of those. Yep.

12:40Speaker 1:One second.

12:43Speaker 2:Cart. Let's scroll down to salad.

12:46Speaker 3:You got to choose a size.

12:49Speaker 1:Yep, what salad?

12:50Speaker 2:Go see ise a salad? Add one of those, and let's scroll all the way down to risotto and do the mushroom and truffle, which is twenty seven dollars.

13:01Speaker 3:Yep.

13:02Speaker 2:Me, actually, god, now you should have the free garlic bread unlocked. Yeap, yeah, I'm gonna claim that claim. Do you claim that on what was that last one? The rosotto, mushroom and something, Risotto and truffle? Yeah, yeah, And then we'll go view cart. Yep, it should say eighty six o three down to seventy five oh four? No, what's your say?

13:23Speaker 1:Sixty seven dollars?

13:24Speaker 2:Show me, show me, your menu, your order. Yeah, you've got exactly the same klamari, caesar salad, mushroom and truffle, garlic bread seventy seven down to sixty seven. I have eighty six o three down to seventy five oh four.

13:38Speaker 1:But mine says saving ten dollars ninety nine with Uber one promotion.

13:42Speaker 2:Mine says exactly the same thing.

13:43Speaker 4:But my wait, so, Mike, kalamari is twenty yeapes a salad twenty yep, mushroom risotto twenty seven.

13:50Speaker 1:Yeah, garlic bread free.

13:52Speaker 2:So why does mine say eighty six oh three, Because even if the garlic bread wasn't free, that's only seventy seven. But it says eighty six three.

14:00Speaker 1:Mine's sixty seven dollars.

14:02Speaker 2:Mine seventy five dollars.

14:04Speaker 3:Go to check out mine to sixty seven.

14:06Speaker 2:Go to check out.

14:08Speaker 1:Mine's now so I'm getting the delivery. Look at this down the bottom. So my order subtotal is sixty seven? Is yours the same?

14:19Speaker 3:Yes?

14:19Speaker 4:Then my delivery fee was three dollars forty eight, strikeed out, it's now two dollars forty nine.

14:26Speaker 2:My delivery fee was ninety nine cents striked out to zero.

14:30Speaker 3:I have no delivery fee.

14:31Speaker 2:Hell then service fee.

14:34Speaker 1:Eight dollars and four cents.

14:35Speaker 3:Same, yep, same, Your should be saying because it's ten percent of the or something. Oh, my delivery free is ninety nine cents. Sorry guys can't read.

14:42Speaker 2:Oh yours is ninety nine cents. But you don't pay for Uber one I'm guessing no, yeah, we do, but you still had a higher delivery fee.

14:48Speaker 1:So my total is seventy seven dollars fifty three.

14:50Speaker 2:Mine seventy five oh four.

14:51Speaker 3:Mine's seventy five oh four.

14:53Speaker 2:So you're paying more because you spend we know you spend more on Uber eats.

14:58Speaker 4:This is wild that businesses. It's like dynamic pricing, right, It's like tickets how ticket sales can be dynamic pricing.

15:06Speaker 3:Except they're targeting you specifically.

15:08Speaker 1:Now, which is what dynamic price.

15:10Speaker 2:So I think so with the video that I watched from that guy, obviously he's American, they probably have different laws to us in Australia, and I'm sure that the a Triple C probably has something in place so that because my thing today was to be like, is this happening in Australia. And even though we've determined that the ubers were off by a couple cents. We could probably put the variables in that. Maybe we didn't all click it at the same time, and as we saw, we got two excels. But gay J didn't have an excel at all. You didn't end up having an xcel G you did, Oh you did in the aenird I just can't use it, okay, just an idiot, But you are you having a three to ninety nine? Was it delivery fee?

15:50Speaker 1:It was three forty eight and then striped out to two forty nine.

15:54Speaker 2:Whereas my delivery fee was ninety nine cents down to zero and his was ninety nine cents because he doesn't have Uber one.

16:00Speaker 4:But why is mine and yours different by that much when we're putting in the exact same order to the same place.

16:06Speaker 2:So how much is your priority? Where does it say that up the top where it says standard delivery?

16:13Speaker 1:What's the prom dollars forty nine?

16:16Speaker 2:Is it currently clicked for two dollars forty nine?

16:18Speaker 1:Yeah?

16:18Speaker 2:Okay, So so it's automatically chosen priority for you, which now take it to normal standard?

16:26Speaker 3:Yeah?

16:26Speaker 4:Is what.

16:28Speaker 1:Ninety nine cents struck down to nothing?

16:30Speaker 2:Okay? So you obviously had priority selected for you, which I don't which I'm assuming it's just off.

16:36Speaker 1:Your behavior because you've only ever get priority I know.

16:39Speaker 2:So it's like done that automatically. Okay, so strike that out. It's all the same price then, oh okay, because you were seventy five oh four. Yep, I was seventy five or four and now you're going to be seventy five oh four. Yes, okay. So basically the experiment has determined that surveillance pricing from what we've just seen, isn't happening in Australia.

17:00Speaker 1:So we've just done all that for Nazi.

17:02Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's what I wanted to determine.

17:12Speaker 1:That's been a good experiment, and he's.

17:13Speaker 3:Been a good experiment. Don't you think America maybe should have done that with flights though? Oh yeah, flights. Let's bok a fly.

17:21Speaker 2:Okay, let's book a flight. Let's bok a fly.

17:22Speaker 1:So how long is this episode?

17:23Speaker 3:That's fine?

17:24Speaker 2:I want to do a team American people all we love from this surely and again let us know in the comments, where will we book a flight?

17:32Speaker 3:Do you want to go through?

17:33Speaker 2:Do you'll have skyscanner or just want to do it on the internet can do Skyscanner. I don't have the app a webjet oh yeah, okay was that a website? Webjet?

17:44Speaker 1:That's the only place I booked flights through.

17:48Speaker 2:Okay, where are we going from Sydney to somewhere international? Obviously India? India?

17:56Speaker 1:What are we doing? A one way? Do it one way?

17:58Speaker 3:Now, let's go to America because they have it there so their airlines might true.

18:03Speaker 4:So click one way up the top first leaving from Sydney. Okay, yet one way going to lax International.

18:13Speaker 1:Yeah, what day are we going this? Saturday?

18:15Speaker 3:Yeah?

18:16Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, met accidentally books it.

18:19Speaker 2:Okay, one out old economy, so in.

18:23Speaker 1:That in that little calendar.

18:25Speaker 4:Yeah, the price it's showing at the moment is six hundred and seventy three same same click done and then search flights.

18:34Speaker 1:We really do everything on this podcast. You never know what you're going to get with scrollers.

18:40Speaker 2:I was kind of hoping for an exclusive, like I was hoping that it would be surveillance pricing and then we could have blown everyone's minds. But unfortunately, I think we have too many advertising it and laws and stuff here in Australia to let that happen.

18:53Speaker 1:We could just lie. I'm inter lying on the internet these days, that's how it works.

19:00Speaker 2:So yeah, three cheapest, Yeah, then six hundred and seventy four, then six eighty one.

19:06Speaker 4:They want to know what, that's actually kind of cheap considering when I went to Adelaide it costs that much.

19:12Speaker 2:No, my flights from Perth to Adelaide. Perth to Adelaide are eleven hundred dollars one.

19:18Speaker 1:Way for me and AJ to go to Adelaide in back it was over two grand.

19:21Speaker 3:Yeah. Wait, six hundred and seventy three dollars to LA's crazy cheap.

19:26Speaker 2:No one's going. Yeah, there's no plane.

19:29Speaker 3:There's no plane.

19:31Speaker 2:No one's going. No one's going to America. So they're slinging it for cheap, and the flights are like a row to yourself at this point. Wow, no one wants to go. Yeah, six seventy three is diabolically cheap. It's pre COVID better better, yeah, yeah, better than pre COVID. And it's so tempting, but I can't bring myself to go.

19:56Speaker 3:Anyway.

19:57Speaker 2:Here's I'm just gonna play just so you can get the con text, because we determined it doesn't happen here. But apparently this is what's happening in America.

20:05Speaker 5:A couple months ago, I found out about this thing called surveillance pricing, where these companies and more charge you a different price, and me a different price, and everybody a different price based on who they think you are. It's like price tags are dead now. And I wanted to put it to the test. So I called my brother, my mom, and my best friend.

20:25Speaker 2:Go to Target and buy spam. Okay, how much is it?

20:29Speaker 5:Four to ninety nine? My price is four fifty nine, has both in. We're going to order the exact same ride scheduled for tomorrow at noon from where we do it, from Target Field to the airport. Here's my prices, thirty six ninety four for the hubers, mine's fifty two. That is a thirty percent difference in price.

20:55Speaker 2:And for what no difference.

20:58Speaker 5:Let's book the exact same hotel on the exact same night. What's the next Lakinta Hotel Denver?

21:06Speaker 1:Okay?

21:07Speaker 5:One fifty one hundred and twenty two dollars.

21:11Speaker 2:Yeah, my price is eighty four dollars. Well, and you got to remember just quickly that that's forty bucks Americans. That's about eighty bucks Australian difference, So.

21:23Speaker 3:Yeah, it kind of sucks.

21:24Speaker 5:Seventy six percent of people say that they don't want surveillance pricing. I don't know who the twenty four percent are. But how much does spam.

21:34Speaker 3:Cost for you? Oh? I didn't know.

21:36Speaker 2:We asked that question at the end. I wonder if anyone actually commented no, No one's no one's commenting.

21:45Speaker 4:No.

21:45Speaker 2:No one's really answered that question at the end. But it's at the end of the video. People have a one second attention span these days. But there you go. That's allegedly happening in America. But I think we've determined here, we've gotten to the bottom of it. We have it's not well, it's well, we haven't been able to determine that it's happening here. But scrollers, if you do notice, or you want to make this a fun little Friday Nights games night with your friends tonight, maybe you can all get your uber apps out and see if you have any difference in price and keep us updated because I'm sure someone will find a discrepancy somewhere and someone's paying more for spam than someone else. Hey, can I just quickly before we wrap this up because I learned this when I worked at McDonald's. Different McDonald's different prices.

22:26Speaker 2:Don't know if everyone knows I knew that, But it depends on socioeconomic location. So if you go to McDonald's in one suburb, it might be five point fifty five for a happy meal cheeburger happy meal. If you go to the next suburb over five minutes down the road, it might be five dollars twenty for a happy meal. It all depends on a lot of things, but it depends mainly on socioeconomic So obviously, in richer suburbs the prices will be higher, and in poorer suburbs the prices will be lower. But it also depends on the spending habits of a restaurant. So, for example, at our restaurant, happy meals were very very popular, which meant that they were and I'm sorry I can't remember, but it either meant that they were cheaper because we sold more of them, or it meant they were more expensive because they knew that they were a high, highly wanted item on the menu.

23:17Speaker 4:That they would be cheaper because it's in such high demand, you're making more, it's.

23:22Speaker 2:More profitable, so then if the one ten minutes down the road is hardly doing any happy meals, then they might have a higher price. So next time you're and that probably goes for a lot of fast food joints, so next time you're in drive through, and then if you go to a different store, just see if the price is a different the more you know anyway, We'll see you next Tuesday.