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Can anyone shed some light on whether using a service like this may be a legal concern? I recently read that at least in the EU dynamic/personalized pricing can
by starbugs 7y ago
Can anyone shed some light on whether using a service like this may be a legal concern? I recently read that at least in the EU dynamic/personalized pricing can be illegal if it discriminates groups based on certain criteria.
- kevsim 7y agoIANAL but have worked a lot with GDPR. If the pricing is based on, for example, user browsing habits then that would constitute usage of personal data. At a minimum this would force the company to disclose that this kind of processing is going on in a clear way to users (if the company claims it has a legitimate interest to do so). The other case would be that explicit consent would be needed and I guess no one would be consenting to that. With the upcoming ePrivacy regulations I suspect many of these legitimate interest cases will also become illegal.
- zwaps 7y agoYes, this is what economists simply call price discrimination and for any normal business it is definitly illegal. This is a grey zone now, but it will be decided that either it is illegal now, or it will be made illegal eventually. So I'd be careful with this kind of stuff.
- perl4ever 7y agoIt's pervasive, and nobody's made an effective case that it's illegal outside of basing it on protected classes of people. For instance, you can detect whether someone browsing your website on their phone is in your physical store and if so, show them the same higher prices that are in the store. But if someone is not in your store, you can show them lower prices to compete online. I've noticed retailers doing this. At least sometimes, they try to defuse it by matching the lower price if a customer notices the game.