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Your argument is quickly drifting away from the actual process described in the document >> 51. Specifically, every morning, RealPage provides participating L

Your argument is quickly drifting away from the actual process described in the document >> 51. Specifically, every morning, RealPage provides participating Lessors with recommended price levels. Lessors typically must communicate to a RealPage “Pricing Advisor” that they have “accept[ed]” or “confirm[ed] the “approved pricing” within a specified time frame. 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 There is nothing remotely normal about someone having the executive decision making authority to authorise a price variation a third party is trying to make to their inventory but not the executive authority to keep prices as they were. Nor is there anything remotely normal about a person seeking approval to retain or change price contacting a third party company's "Pricing Advisor" in the first instance rather than the approver within their own company. If the "Pricing Advisor" didn't have greater ability to resolve this "dispute" than the staff member who has the ability to "approve" a price change but apparently not to hold prices as they are, why would they be contacted? Nobody has argued there isn't some ultimate beneficial owner of a property with the power to tell RealPage to bugger off, they're arguing that as described this resembles a normal chain of authority and consultation of third party experts in roughly the same way an MLM resembles a regular sales team. Now if you want to argue that this is deceptive wording on the part of the firm drafting the lawsuit stitching lots of discrete elements together into the appearance of a single process of questionable legality, I'll agree that may be possible (putting the worst possible spin on things is a class action lawyer's job) but then, some evidence of that would be nice...

vel0city 4y ago
My argument hasn't drifted away from what this process is. Combining the logic here in an easier to follow workflow: Ownership/management chooses to buy RealPage for their property management solution for a building. They decide to configure it and contract out Pricing Advisor services. They've now established the default prices are whatever RealPage suggests it should be. They then hire a lot of leasing agents (or they hire a leasing agency who hires these people). These are front of line sales people. These people are getting the day to day updates on changes to these prices, which are supposedly algorithmically generated. These are the people you'd want to review these prices, because these are the people who are actually dealing with the day to day of trying to sell these units. If these prices that the advisor is suggesting are unreasonable, they should probably push back and make a recommendation to change the price. They're the ones hearing customers argue the prices are overpriced and what not, they're a bit closer to the ground truth of the price in many ways. However, those front line workers probably should not have arbitrary pricing powers. They're just focusing on signing leases, not necessarily broader picture of the building's business. So talking about the approval process (which was the whole point I was originally replying to, not the algorithmic pricing or the whole weird relationship of RP to lessors which I've agreed should be investigated), lets just remove the whole algorithmic side of things. Upper management said units lease for $2/sqft. Front of line leasing agent decides to start signing leases for $1.75/sqft. Should that front of line leasing agent have been able to change the price from what upper management wanted without seeking an approval? Should they have probably given a written reason for going against the established pricing structure upper management chose? So now lets enter back the idea of the algorithmic pricing. Upper management likes this dynamic algorithmic pricing. They say, whatever the algorithm sets, that's the price today. Algorithm says $2/sqft. Front of line leasing agent thinks a more realistic price is $1.75/sqft. Should that front of line leasing agent just be able to arbitrarily decide what the price is without seeking some approval? Ultimately, that review isn't some RP agent; that review is the same manager as before. I think you're conflating the people with pricing authority on the call with the Pricing Advisor and the people who would often be submitting pricing changes for approvals. If they're having to get the pricing change approved by their management, then by definition they didn't have pricing authority. The people with pricing authority are the ones who made the decision to use this whole Pricing Advisor system, and are continuing to allow the Pricing Advisor use their black box to tell them what the price is today. The ones on that call are the ones that can tell RP to bugger off, as by definition they have pricing authority. I do agree the algorithmic pricing is weird, and a lot of markets don't behave this way. I do think there's some bad relationships what with the pricing advisors and the large market presence of RP. These things should be investigated and potentially have judgements against. The fact its literally saying "coordinated algorithmic pricing" is a major red flag there's something bad happening here. The "coordinated" part is the part is the thing that's bad, not that front of line employees need approvals to change prices or even just the basic idea of using algorithms to set prices.

vel0city 4y ago

My argument hasn't drifted away from what this process is. Combining the logic here in an easier to follow workflow: Ownership/management chooses to buy RealPage for their property management solution for a building. They decide to configure it and contract out Pricing Advisor services. They've now established the default prices are whatever RealPage suggests it should be. They then hire a lot of leasing agents (or they hire a leasing agency who hires these people). These are front of line sales people. These people are getting the day to day updates on changes to these prices, which are supposedly algorithmically generated. These are the people you'd want to review these prices, because these are the people who are actually dealing with the day to day of trying to sell these units. If these prices that the advisor is suggesting are unreasonable, they should probably push back and make a recommendation to change the price. They're the ones hearing customers argue the prices are overpriced and what not, they're a bit closer to the ground truth of the price in many ways. However, those front line workers probably should not have arbitrary pricing powers. They're just focusing on signing leases, not necessarily broader picture of the building's business. So talking about the approval process (which was the whole point I was originally replying to, not the algorithmic pricing or the whole weird relationship of RP to lessors which I've agreed should be investigated), lets just remove the whole algorithmic side of things. Upper management said units lease for $2/sqft. Front of line leasing agent decides to start signing leases for $1.75/sqft. Should that front of line leasing agent have been able to change the price from what upper management wanted without seeking an approval? Should they have probably given a written reason for going against the established pricing structure upper management chose? So now lets enter back the idea of the algorithmic pricing. Upper management likes this dynamic algorithmic pricing. They say, whatever the algorithm sets, that's the price today. Algorithm says $2/sqft. Front of line leasing agent thinks a more realistic price is $1.75/sqft. Should that front of line leasing agent just be able to arbitrarily decide what the price is without seeking some approval? Ultimately, that review isn't some RP agent; that review is the same manager as before. I think you're conflating the people with pricing authority on the call with the Pricing Advisor and the people who would often be submitting pricing changes for approvals. If they're having to get the pricing change approved by their management, then by definition they didn't have pricing authority. The people with pricing authority are the ones who made the decision to use this whole Pricing Advisor system, and are continuing to allow the Pricing Advisor use their black box to tell them what the price is today. The ones on that call are the ones that can tell RP to bugger off, as by definition they have pricing authority. I do agree the algorithmic pricing is weird, and a lot of markets don't behave this way. I do think there's some bad relationships what with the pricing advisors and the large market presence of RP. These things should be investigated and potentially have judgements against. The fact its literally saying "coordinated algorithmic pricing" is a major red flag there's something bad happening here. The "coordinated" part is the part is the thing that's bad, not that front of line employees need approvals to change prices or even just the basic idea of using algorithms to set prices.