I’m going to wager that the plan was never to raise prices at busy times, it was always to use dynamic pricing to put things on sale and bundle stuff. Hear me out…
This is how dynamic pricing is often used in retail. The sales and bundles dupe you into buying more shit, and that raises your order total.
Wendy’s is not Uber or Lyft. There are MANY options that people have for lunch. If they just raise prices at peak times, people will eat elsewhere.
Nah, I think they were really going to try and introduce surge pricing until they saw how intense the backlash was, then decided to try and walk it back.
Maybe you are right, but I have a tough time giving these giant companies the benefit of doubt when it’s already been shown there was price gouging across the board in the middle of a pandemic.
What evidence are you basing your conclusion on?
The very long, very well established history of corporations fucking people over for more profit every time they thought they might be able to get away with it. Did you forget or are you just asking in bad faith?
So why get pissed at Wendy’s in particular?
Being suspicious of corporations is great, but it does seem like a lot of people to take any announcement by a big company, interpret it in the least charitable way possible (even if it doesn’t make sense), and then get mad based on the interpretation they came up with.
If people were really against variable prices as a concept, they’d already be boycott every business with a happy hour, but they’re not. They’re just assuming Wendy’s plans to dramatically raise prices and was dumb enough to draw attention to it. And really, even without an announcement, raising prices beyond the rate of inflation doesn’t make sense, because if they’re remotely competent, they’re already charging as much as people are willing to pay. Wendy’s has every reason to believe that just arbitrarily raising prices faster then the industry as a whole will hurt their bottom line.
