4 ms·

But, according to the filing, there is a person called a "RealPage Pricing Advisor" who is typically the only party in the loop with the ability to settle the d

• vel0city 4y ago
  > Lessor's employees with pricing responsibility Nowhere in here did it say these people needing to submit the approvals had pricing responsibility. Even if you did have people manually create the prices you'd probably still require your front line leasing agents to submit approvals for listed prices. In this case, those with the pricing responsibility configured their tool to use the algorithmic pricing to automatically set the price instead of manually setting the prices, and deviating from that automatic price requires approval. > who is typically the only party in the loop with the ability to settle the disagreement This is not true as well. If the person does have pricing responsibility, they can just set the price to whatever. If they don't, it gets set to approvals for whoever does, which would probably be someone in that employee's management chain. And by management I mean the leasing company or management company or ownership. Not RealPage. > Similarly, that store manager at Walmart you mentioned should have to seek approval from the same advisor that does prices for K-mart and Target Once again, this isn't requiring approval from the RealPage Pricing Advsior. Nowhere does this article actually state the approval has to come from RealPage or that RealPage actually has the power to block price changes. This is requiring approval from whoever at the property actually has pricing responsibility, whoever that may be. Chances are it isn't the front of line leasing agent though.
  • notahacker 4y ago
    > Nowhere in here did it say these people needing to submit the approvals had pricing responsibility. It's right there in the text of the lawsuit: >> ...If Lessors wish to diverge from the “approved pricing” they must submit reasoning for doing so and await approval. RealPage encourages participating Lessors to have daily calls between the Lessors’ employees with pricing responsibility and the RealPage Pricing Advisor. >> 52. If there is a disagreement between the participating Lessor and the RealPage Pricing Advisor, the dispute is often elevated to the Lessor’s management for resolution, and specific reasons justifying a departure from RealPage’s pricing level are usually required. But RealPage emphasizes the need for discipline among participating Lessors and urges them that for its coordinated algorithmic pricing to be the most successful in increasing rents, participating Lessors must adopt RealPage’s pricing at least 80% of the time Now you can reasonably dispute whether the Lessor employee carrying out day to day responsibilities actually has pricing responsibility if they're unable to vary prices by themselves, but what is not normal is that the higher pricing authority which usually doesn't need an approval process appears to sit with employees of what is notionally a third party software vendor for a lot of notionally competing landlords [nb I edited my previous post slightly whilst you were replying. Slight change of phrasing but I don't think it materially affects your reply]
    • vel0city 4y ago
      > Now you can reasonably dispute whether the Lessor employee carrying out day to day responsibilities actually has pricing responsibility I do dispute it, because it even suggests later that "the dispute is often elevated to the Lessor’s management for resolution". It implies some percentage of these disputes don't bother getting elevated, probably because that user actually did have pricing authority and could just change the price. Most users of the system would not have this permission. Just like most employees at the checkout counter can't change the price without approval. Do I agree this market is a bit strange for having these algorithmically generated prices? Sure. Should it be investigated for potentially illegal business practices? Sure. Is requiring a manager approval for changing the price from what those with pricing authority originally set it to, even if that price is essentially "auto", strange? No.