I always suspect there’s a reason behind a missing price label on a shelf, so I waved a half-gallon of milk under a nearby price scanner:
If you’re thinking that white rectangle doesn’t look like a price, you’re right:
A 10 digit Phone number?
I’m don’t know what a “PPC number” is, although the UPC on the milk carton seems perfectly normal:
Admittedly, the number starts with a zero and has 12 digits, so it’s definitely not what the price scanner wants. On the other paw, why is a price scanner not looking for a UPC?
The placard below the display is amusing:
Gray’s variant of Hanlon’s Razor: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”
No, I neither asked why the scanners didn’t work nor made a phone call, as I’m old enough to know better.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
11 responses to “Price Scanner FAIL: Plausible Deniability”
to be fair that leading zero is “this is a normal retail upc” and most scanners drop it before the host system gets the input (and thus it starts with 4 as far as the computer knows). On PPC I got nothin.
(and has 11 digits). Entering a phone number is the standard way of locating a “loyalty” account without the physical card (which can change pricing).
Which means anybody without a card can’t do price checks. Maybe I should make that phone call …
no, you can scan a upc which is (after suppressing the invisible zero) is an 11 digit number starting with 4, or you can scan your loyalty card (and then presumably find out your loyalty price).
I walked up to it, didn’t see anything amiss, waved the milk, and got the error message, so …
I’m certain it’ll be different on the next milk run!
At ShopRite, PPC is the Price Plus Card that is used for their customer loyalty program. Providing your PPC or phone number is used so you can add digital coupons to your card for use at checkout.
At the Kingston store, they have a sign saying adding digital coupons is what the scanner is used for. I’ve never tried to use it to check a price, but maybe it can do that, too.
The bar code on my card looks like a standard 12 digit UPC code. When I enter the number manually, it wants only the first 11 digits and rejects it if I enter all 12 digits.
[smacks forehead] Of course!
It used to be I’d just walk up to a scanner, wave the thing, and see the price. Now I must identify myself every time before waving the thing to see the price, even when the price doesn’t change based on my identity.
It’s so easy to grow accustomed to ubiquitous surveillance …
Thanks for the explanation!
Probably there is an option back at the main screen to bypass the PPC scan
Entirely possible, but that’d be a distinct UI downgrade from the previous version / scanner.
Bonus points for mounting the scanner where those of us with bifocal / progressive lenses must look at the ceiling to see the display before finding + reading the instructions.
Double bonus for putting the instructions in medium gray 6 point type on a light gray background. :grin:
Interesting, I scanned the barcode with a scanner app on my iPhone, it read it correctly, so then I asked Google what it corresponded to and it came up with “lactose free milk 2%” from shoprite. BTW I am in Melbourne Australia.
There’s just no way to keep secrets these days! :grin: