Even if you round up to 17 cents per ounce that’s still only $5.44 for 32 ounces. Doing the math backwards they’re charging a bit over 21 cents an ounce.
Edit: doing a bit more math they’ve inflated the cost a bit under 25%. At first I was thinking maybe they’re including taxes in the price or something (not that anywhere in the US regularly does that and certainly not Walmart), but I’m not aware of anywhere that has a 25% sales tax so it can’t be that. This is just straight up fraud/false advertising.
The math on that does seem to line up rather perfectly but that raises the question of if the ounces on the label are wrong or someone copied the wrong line item when filling in the per ounce price (not that they should be doing that manually, it should be derived automatically from the price and weight). I suppose they also could have copied the wrong weight as well so the label says 32 oz, but the item is listed in their DB as a 40 oz product.
Why isn’t it automatically calculated. It’s 2026. Surely we have metadata for products on lock by now. If the tag has the volume and the price, it has all the information it needs.
Having worked on POS software, I can guarantee you we do not have “metadata for products on lock”.
Manufacturers will sometimes reuse the same UPC even though the packaging is fairly different. The UPC doesn’t contain the price, size, or any size – it is just a convenient look up for whatever POS the retailer uses, and for systems targeting independent retailers, that might be maintained mostly manually, though some warehousing associations might provide an importable list.
In large retailers sometimes the smart tags are controlled using a system that doesn’t even deal with UPCs, just images / webpages, shelf locations, and schedules.
Yeah, and I realize that. It’s absurd that our capitalist society boasts about big data and technology and Roll Backs and Saving and all sorts of other things that might make you believe they care about such a fundamental part of it all.
I name drop the current year because as they years go on, it’s ever more absurd that something like this isn’t perfect yet.
Not just profit but lack of a central authority to enforce it. Standards are great when everyone follows them, but establishing standards is an absolute nightmare. Even the humble UPC is surprisingly sketchy when you dig into it and it’s amazing every manufacturer managed to mostly follows the standard. Now for extra fun, UPCs are deprecated and everyone is supposed to be swapping to QR codes instead. I can’t wait to see what a complete and utter clusterfuck that’s going to turn into.
I got curious and looked it up. I couldn’t find anywhere in the US that taxes sugary cereal only drinks, and even if they did the highest rate I found was 2 cents per ounce (tangent, it’s completely idiotic that they tax by weight instead of taxing by sugar content) which is significantly less than the markup in this case. It was a good theory, but unfortunately it doesn’t check out.
Even if you round up to 17 cents per ounce that’s still only $5.44 for 32 ounces. Doing the math backwards they’re charging a bit over 21 cents an ounce.
Edit: doing a bit more math they’ve inflated the cost a bit under 25%. At first I was thinking maybe they’re including taxes in the price or something (not that anywhere in the US regularly does that and certainly not Walmart), but I’m not aware of anywhere that has a 25% sales tax so it can’t be that. This is just straight up fraud/false advertising.
My guess is they’re incorrectly basing it on the 40oz size (which does exist). Buyer beware!
The math on that does seem to line up rather perfectly but that raises the question of if the ounces on the label are wrong or someone copied the wrong line item when filling in the per ounce price (not that they should be doing that manually, it should be derived automatically from the price and weight). I suppose they also could have copied the wrong weight as well so the label says 32 oz, but the item is listed in their DB as a 40 oz product.
Why isn’t it automatically calculated. It’s 2026. Surely we have metadata for products on lock by now. If the tag has the volume and the price, it has all the information it needs.
Having worked on POS software, I can guarantee you we do not have “metadata for products on lock”.
Manufacturers will sometimes reuse the same UPC even though the packaging is fairly different. The UPC doesn’t contain the price, size, or any size – it is just a convenient look up for whatever POS the retailer uses, and for systems targeting independent retailers, that might be maintained mostly manually, though some warehousing associations might provide an importable list.
In large retailers sometimes the smart tags are controlled using a system that doesn’t even deal with UPCs, just images / webpages, shelf locations, and schedules.
Buyer beware, indeed.
Yeah, and I realize that. It’s absurd that our capitalist society boasts about big data and technology and Roll Backs and Saving and all sorts of other things that might make you believe they care about such a fundamental part of it all.
I name drop the current year because as they years go on, it’s ever more absurd that something like this isn’t perfect yet.
But profit motive is why it isn’t perfect yet.
Not just profit but lack of a central authority to enforce it. Standards are great when everyone follows them, but establishing standards is an absolute nightmare. Even the humble UPC is surprisingly sketchy when you dig into it and it’s amazing every manufacturer managed to mostly follows the standard. Now for extra fun, UPCs are deprecated and everyone is supposed to be swapping to QR codes instead. I can’t wait to see what a complete and utter clusterfuck that’s going to turn into.
It’s probably 32oz with 8oz free!
I know pop has the sugar tax on it now? Does cereal?
I got curious and looked it up. I couldn’t find anywhere in the US that taxes sugary cereal only drinks, and even if they did the highest rate I found was 2 cents per ounce (tangent, it’s completely idiotic that they tax by weight instead of taxing by sugar content) which is significantly less than the markup in this case. It was a good theory, but unfortunately it doesn’t check out.