The United States Supreme Court has taken on a case involving the legality of minimum pricing agreements. A small retailer in Texas cut prices on womens’ fashion accessories in response to similar discounting by competitors. The manufacturer threatened to cut … Read More
laws and regulations
Drug Pricing Changes Possible
It’s been a tough stretch for Big Pharma, which is getting a pricing beating from cheaper generic alternatives. Merck is offering big discounts on AIDS drug Efavirenz in Thailand, as Thailand considers producing generic versions of the patented medicine via … Read More
Oracle to Pay $98M Pricing Fine
Oracle agreed to pay a $98.5M fine, resulting from overcharging on government contracts by Oracle’s PeopleSoft subsidiary. (The overcharging took place before Oracle acquired PeopleSoft .) The government is always supposed to get the “best price”, but in some cases, … Read More
Samsung Exec Gets Jail Time for Price Fixing
A former vice president of marketing for the U.S. division of Samsung will do jail time and pay a fine after a plea deal in a long-running price-fixing case in the semiconductor industry. While setting prices in a smoky backroom … Read More
Sneaky Price Increase Runs Afoul of FCC
For years, the Federal Communications Commission has levied a “Universal Service Fee” on phone lines, a small tax on everyone’s bill, every month, to subsidize rural phone lines. The FCC recently decided that these fees would not apply to high … Read More
Hacker Quadruples Car Wash Price
With motives unknown, a hacker apparently managed to change the price of a car wash at a Salt Lake City gas station from $2 to $8. The owners are offerring to reimburse the dozen or so customers who paid the … Read More
Virgin, BA Tussle as Price Fixing Probe Eyes Airline Fuel Charges
According to the Daily Mail, the current price-fixing probe into fuel surcharges on lucrative transatlantic routes started on a tip from Virgin Airlines, who alerted authorities about attempts by British Airways to bring them into a illegal pricing agreement. BA … Read More
Senator Aims to End Fractional Gas Pricing
Minnesota state Senator Dick Day has had it with gas stations charging fractions of a penny for gas. If he gets his way and abolishes fractional pricing, stations will round up to the nearest penny, perhaps costing drivers an extra … Read More
Spitzer Sets Sights on Digital Music
New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer has begun a “preliminary investigation” into whether record labels are colluding to set prices for digital music downloads. I don’t know whether this is based on any evidence, or just Spitzer seeing smoke, assuming … Read More
Teen Swaps Barcodes to Buy iPod for $4.99
According to this story in the Denver Post, a 19-year-old college freshman used barcode printing software to print barcodes for cheap products which he then swapped with the barcodes on expensive products. He was caught because he returned to the … Read More