The Scanner Price Accuracy Code is a Canadian retail voluntary practice managed by the Retail Council of Canada and endorsed by the Competition Bureau. It was introduced in June 2002 as Canadian retailers were in the midst of updating their point-of-sale systems with barcode readers to “foster consumer confidence” with the new systems.
Full disclosure: I didn’t just learn about this today. I did just learn that it didn’t exist until 2002 which seems pretty late to start using barcodes.
Anyway, I have noticed a lot of stores have dropped out of the program or are bending the rules about what a posted price actually means (like if the price tag is on the shelf under the thing instead of actually on the thing). Sure, none of this is legally required — but still — don’t let them take this from you.
It’s one of the things I actually enjoy about getting older. I didn’t see it coming but you end up getting this long view and it helps color in a lot of gray areas.
It can also be profoundly frustrating because there is knowledge that I have gained and lost forever because it can’t be found on the internet, ever again.
Like when Microsoft executives did not want to extend pocket Windows to mobile devices because they literally stated that smartphones will never happen, and nobody will use them; That embedded Windows CE in hardware was the future. We all see where that went, and Apple ate their lunch followed behind by Google with Android, released as a strategic buffer against Apple’s future dominance.
I can’t prove any of this to anybody, but I was a game developer, and an early adopter of handheld devices on top of everything else. I hacked my own frighin’ drivers together for an unsupported wifi card, and hex edited windows 2003 and released a torrent, which let people install it on older Dell devices.
Nobody will ever know these nuances but me, and maybe some other gray beards who are also interested in a specific slice of knowledge as I was… because you can’t find this information.
Good and bad.