Netflix Testing Add-On Payment for People Who Share Accounts Outside Their Households

[dysamoria]

You said it is actually quite hard to pick another store, etc. I asked for an example of how that’s hard. You didn’t provide an example. That’s fine. Your lack of desire to support your claim doesn’t put the onus on me to support it for you.

I figured that part was self-evident when I said "all the stores in my area..." I didn't think it was important to list specific food items, just the scenario.

 

[deeddawg]

I figured that part was self-evident when I said "all the stores in my area..." I didn't think it was important to list specific food items, just the scenario.

I can't speak for @Deguello but as one who's not noticed such an occurrence, I'm genuinely curious as to examples of "all the stores in my region decide to replace a brand I like with their own version of it, I have no choice but to buy theirs" occuring. Since you say it happens constantly, could you give a couple examples?

 

[Deguello]

I figured that part was self-evident when I said "all the stores in my area..." I didn't think it was important to list specific food items, just the scenario.

“This thing happened” isn’t an example.

Frankly, the claim that “all the stores” — all the Walmarts, Albertsons, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, or whatever grocery stores you have in your area — all stopped selling something and replaced with their own brand doesn’t pass the smell test.

 

[dysamoria]

I can't speak for @Deguello but as one who's not noticed such an occurrence, I'm genuinely curious as to examples of "all the stores in my region decide to replace a brand I like with their own version of it, I have no choice but to buy theirs" occuring. Since you say it happens constantly, could you give a couple examples?

I haven’t been keeping a list of things, so this will rely on my random recall, which has never been great for “on the spot thinking”...

I can’t remember the brand name right now, but there was a can of refried black beans with lime juice that I really liked, and bought regularly at Giant. It easily beat the others, hands down. It disappeared as soon as Giant started stocking their own branded variety of black bean refried beans (without lime juice). It was either Giant brand or Nature’s Promise, their naturals branding).

I can’t find it at Wegman’s (who also have their own branded items displacing product I would rather buy).

Both grocery chains have some unique own-branded stuff, which I like, but when they displace OTHER brands, often of basic products, and often not like-for-like, it’s just plain irritating. It’s also anticompetitive.

I switched to Amy’s, rather than buy the store brand. Amy’s products are good. Their refried black beans still aren’t as good as the one I was originally buying again, no lime juice, so I buy lime juice to add to it myself). But guess what brand is being crowded out right now at the stores I go to? Amy’s soups have specifically been hard to find over the last couple of months. Haven’t been able to buy black bean soup in months. I haven’t checked for their refried beans.

Giant used to carry Chung’s frozen foods spring rolls. Then they were suddenly no longer available the day Giant started selling their own inferior variety of spring rolls (it’s almost all breading). The same problem happened at Wegman’s (related: the Chung’s meatless eggrolls disappeared when Wegman’s started selling their own egg rolls).

The last store in my area marked on Chung’s product-finder website was Weis, and I made separate trips there JUST for that product, for months... until they stopped stocking them. The product-finder page at Chung’s still lists that specific location of Weis. The customer service people at Weis told me they have no say in the info the product-finder claims... but, hey, they DO have a choice to stock it or not! But corporate has decided not to stock it, so now I can’t buy these in my region at all. I haven’t been to every possible grocery store but the product-finder says Weis is the only one in 20+ miles.

As soon as Wegman’s started selling their own branded variety of mock meats, the availability of Gardein products took a nose dive, and Wegman’s used to be the store with the better selection. Giant had been decreasing their selection for years (certain stores are better than others; my town has the worst one). They all started with a decent selection.

I don’t have interest in most Morning Star products, but the meatless section consists of 80% Morning Star products; the other 20% are a tiny selections from other brands (I’ve seen these brands’ websites; they have way more than the stores in my region stock).

Giant keeps printing me coupons for Quorn vegan Chick’n patties, but haven’t stocked them at my local store in months (in this one case, I haven’t checked the other two Giant stores, because I can get them at Wegman’s).

My preference for milk is Silk Vanilla Unsweetened soy-milk. It used to be available at all four of the stores I regularly shopped at. Then Giant decided to replace it with their own soy-milk, which is sweetened. Wegman’s did the same, but still sometimes stocked the unsweetened non-vanilla variety (close enough)... but lately I can’t even find that.

Within the last year, there’d apparently been a problem with soy crop yields (or so I read, when I went searching online to find out why soy-milk had dried up at grocery stores), so that complicates matters (unless it’s some anticompetitive tactic by Blue Diamond pushing their almond milk; almonds are a water-heavy crop, which is a poor choice in a state with drought issues, such as California where they manufacture!!)...

...but this is a recent issue and does not explain why both stores have replaced unsweetened Silk with their own varieties years before, which aren’t unsweetened! I don’t WANT sugar in my milks! There’s too goddamned much sugar in everything to begin with. Adding sweetened milk to cereal is like eating a bowl of sugar (and as such, I can only find about three cereals without piles of sugar in them, and one has just recently vanished as of my discovery of its existence).

I’m not diabetic, I just don’t want all that sugar. The USA has a major sugar problem. I can’t choose diabetic products because they’re usually full of artificial sweeteners or Stevia (which I hate).

Which reminds me: The only root beer that doesn’t have phosphoric acid and/or artificial flavoring in it seems to be Virgil’s. Great stuff. Could get it at two of the four stores I went to. It was an occasional splurge or treat, though, because even though it’s not as bad as Coke, Pepsi, et al, that’s still a lot of sugar. Then suddenly both stores dropped it, only occasionally offering a “sugar free” variety, which is disgusting (I don’t hate on diabetics; I hate on the sweeteners their products use when diabetic products displace the products I want). Occasionally I see it, but it’s always out of stock when I actively go looking for it. Yet, the junky brands are always there.

This kind of thing (specialist dietary products replacing other varieties) has happened before: Cherry Brook (?) has a vegan brownie mix which is really good. Wegman’s was carrying it, which is the only reason I knew of it. Nobody else had it. Then suddenly Wegman’s replaced that one with a gluten-free variety (same manufacturer), which kinda sucks (dense and too much sugar). No more vegan brownies for me unless I come up with my own scratch recipe.

This happens a lot: a perfectly acceptable vegan product is displaced by a non-vegan or just plain inferior gluten-free version of the same food. I don’t mind gluten-free stuff existing (if not for the gluten-free section, I’d never have known about “Mary’s Gone Crackers” “Super Seed” “Everything” crackers, which are fantastic... except now nobody carries the “Everything” variety that got my interest in the first place).

I really do mind when my preferred product is canceled in order to stock a gluten-free or diabetic version. Like, I’m apparently a marginalized customer who’s being further marginalized by serving a larger marginalized group of people. The irony.

There’s a taco filling seasoning that used to be made by “Seeds of Change”. My GF and I really liked it. The problem: we could barely find it anywhere (though there are about five versions of Old El Paso and Ortega, each). When she did find it, it was ridiculously expensive. Sometimes she found it for sale on Amazon (probably an overstock). She once found it at a dollar store (likely someone else’s overstock).

As of a week(?) ago, she told me a Seeds of Change customer service rep indicated the company discontinued it because “it wasn’t selling well”. Uh, how could it sell well if no stores were stocking it, and, when it occasionally appeared, it cost a stupid price?

This one may be either the manufacturer’s or the grocery stores’ fault. I can’t be sure. Seeds of Change’s rice packets aren’t overly expensive, and are at most stores I’ve been to lately, so I’m thinking the grocery stores are the issue.

Several of the items I’ve had vanish on me are dry goods, which last a long time on shelves. The only reason to dump some of these items is because they want to use that space to sell something that moves FASTER. That’s the race to the bottom. Sick of it. Laissez-faire capitalism and the constant pursuit of perpetual growth utterly destroys diversity in every way. Consumers have to work at finding something other than one or two brands of anything, and often can’t even do that.

All of the “mainstream” brands are owned by a couple companies. It’s egregiously anticompetitive. Occasionally the tech industry consolidation will piss off tech people (like the recent happily abandoned plan for NVidia to buy ARM), but this is happening everywhere and most people are too busy with their lives to pay attention to how their consumer “choices” are being controlled by mega-corporations.

I sometimes clear an entire shelf of the products I like when I get them, if I can afford to (I’m in poverty, so that’s rare these days), knowing they might disappear. Doesn’t matter; I’m only one person... but the products I buy are stocked in tiny amounts to begin with!

That canned black bean refried beans with lime I mentioned above? It was one row, of maybe eight cans, amongst five different varieties of Old El Paso and Ortega, which usually have row after row of the same exact product using up shelf space. If they overstock one brand, who’s going to try another that’s often out of stock?

I go to these stores several times per month. I see how they’re stocked (and not restocked). There’s no justification to claim the product goes bad on shelves because there’s hardly any of it to begin with.

I could go on and on... but this is a long-ass posting, I’m getting angry (and hungry!) thinking about products these stores have dropped, and probably nobody cares.

I anticipate being marginalized for being vegan, or not wanting tons of sugar in my products, not wanting artificial flavoring, for preferring soy-milk over dairy milk (I changed to Silk about 8 years before I went vegan)... whatever.

I know how it is: marginalize and move the goal posts once the challenged person gives examples that back up their claim. It’s the same treatment I get with tech people when talking about tech problems (“it’s just you” and “I don’t have that problem” posts pop up every time someone comes looking for help with clearly broken tech).

Computers are an absolute pile of trash and it’s maddening how conditioned people are to ignore what’s right in front of our faces on a regular basis: the computer industry is a disaster of endless failures, held aloft by special pleading and coercion... and that’s laissez-faire capitalism overall, which is why I’m talking about my frustration with grocery shopping on a thread about Netflix (and the media industry’s IP rights BS).

 

[dysamoria]

“This thing happened” isn’t an example.

Frankly, the claim that “all the stores” — all the Walmarts, Albertsons, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, or whatever grocery stores you have in your area — all stopped selling something and replaced with their own brand doesn’t pass the smell test.

I don’t shop at Walmart. Absolutely refuse. Walmart destroys smaller businesses. That’s their whole thing. They’ve destroyed entire economies of small towns by throwing corporate money at undercutting local businesses, then, when the local businesses are gone, sometimes Walmart pulls out of the town because corporate doesn’t like the profit margins.

No. Screw Walmart. For that and so many other reasons.

I’ve never seen an Albertson’s. I think there’s an Aldi. I should check it out.

We have no Trader Joe’s in my region. I have to drive about an hour to get to the closest one. I LOVE some of their completely unique products, and I’ve asked them repeatedly to expand to my area. But no, not an option.

There are mostly Giants around here, two Wegman’s, a couple Shoprights and “Fresh Market” (both of which had terrible product selections last I checked them).

There are two Targets. They don’t have the products either. I’ve checked.

Whole Foods is hit or miss, and is a little outside my grocery shopping range. I will go there when my GF is visiting. But again, I’ve not seen any of the items there that the other stores stopped carrying. They have a lot of their own branded stuff. Some of it is fine, but it’s pushing out non-Whole Foods branded product and it’s usually not a like-for-like replacement.

Your “smell test” is based on your own experiences, your assumptions, and a desire to win an argument that you started because of not believing there’s anything wrong with this so-called “free market”. Your “smell test” is not based on the reality of my experiences, in my region. Maybe you could spend a minute thinking about how your experiences may differ from mine and that this doesn’t mean mine are false or a lie, or whatever.

Also, why should anyone have to shop at four+ different grocery stores on grocery day? I already do two, sometimes three, going far afield while doing so. These stores greatly overstock a couple brands, and progressively dump smaller brands’ products in order to stock the store’s own so-called equivalent products.

It’s anticompetitive, and it is corporations dictating the market for us; not customers making choices in a “free market”.

I said before: it’s nice for you that the stuff you want is available to you. But that doesn’t mean your experience is the rule.

 

[dysamoria]

That map of brands owned by ten companies... the same is true for grocery store companies.

There are two Giants that aren’t the same company as far as customer service and whatnot are concerned, but are the same logo, same name, and are owned by Netherlands company called Ahold Delhaize.

Trader Joe’s, I just found out, is owned by the same people that own Aldi. Ha.

Here, go find out about who owns your grocery chains:

Who Owns Your Grocery Store? — Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants

A comprehensive and up-to-date listing of the parent companies behind the most recognizable grocery store banners in the U.S. and Canada.

grocerystory.coop

This consolidation absolutely affects what’s available to us as customers.

 

[deeddawg]

I haven’t been keeping a list of things, so this will rely on my random recall, which has never been great for “on the spot thinking”...

I can’t remember the brand name right now, but there was a can of refried black beans with lime juice that I really liked, and bought regularly at Giant. It easily beat the others, hands down. It disappeared as soon as Giant started stocking their own branded variety of black bean refried beans (without lime juice). It was either Giant brand or Nature’s Promise, their naturals branding).

I can’t find it at Wegman’s (who also have their own branded items displacing product I would rather buy).

Both grocery chains have some unique own-branded stuff, which I like, but when they displace OTHER brands, often of basic products, and often not like-for-like, it’s just plain irritating. It’s also anticompetitive.

I switched to Amy’s, rather than buy the store brand. Amy’s products are good. Their refried black beans still aren’t as good as the one I was originally buying again, no lime juice, so I buy lime juice to add to it myself). But guess what brand is being crowded out right now at the stores I go to? Amy’s soups have specifically been hard to find over the last couple of months. Haven’t been able to buy black bean soup in months. I haven’t checked for their refried beans.

Giant used to carry Chung’s frozen foods spring rolls. Then they were suddenly no longer available the day Giant started selling their own inferior variety of spring rolls (it’s almost all breading). The same problem happened at Wegman’s (related: the Chung’s meatless eggrolls disappeared when Wegman’s started selling their own egg rolls).

The last store in my area marked on Chung’s product-finder website was Weis, and I made separate trips there JUST for that product, for months... until they stopped stocking them. The product-finder page at Chung’s still lists that specific location of Weis. The customer service people at Weis told me they have no say in the info the product-finder claims... but, hey, they DO have a choice to stock it or not! But corporate has decided not to stock it, so now I can’t buy these in my region at all. I haven’t been to every possible grocery store but the product-finder says Weis is the only one in 20+ miles.

As soon as Wegman’s started selling their own branded variety of mock meats, the availability of Gardein products took a nose dive, and Wegman’s used to be the store with the better selection. Giant had been decreasing their selection for years (certain stores are better than others; my town has the worst one). They all started with a decent selection.

I don’t have interest in most Morning Star products, but the meatless section consists of 80% Morning Star products; the other 20% are a tiny selections from other brands (I’ve seen these brands’ websites; they have way more than the stores in my region stock).

Giant keeps printing me coupons for Quorn vegan Chick’n patties, but haven’t stocked them at my local store in months (in this one case, I haven’t checked the other two Giant stores, because I can get them at Wegman’s).

My preference for milk is Silk Vanilla Unsweetened soy-milk. It used to be available at all four of the stores I regularly shopped at. Then Giant decided to replace it with their own soy-milk, which is sweetened. Wegman’s did the same, but still sometimes stocked the unsweetened non-vanilla variety (close enough)... but lately I can’t even find that.

Within the last year, there’d apparently been a problem with soy crop yields (or so I read, when I went searching online to find out why soy-milk had dried up at grocery stores), so that complicates matters (unless it’s some anticompetitive tactic by Blue Diamond pushing their almond milk; almonds are a water-heavy crop, which is a poor choice in a state with drought issues, such as California where they manufacture!!)...

...but this is a recent issue and does not explain why both stores have replaced unsweetened Silk with their own varieties years before, which aren’t unsweetened! I don’t WANT sugar in my milks! There’s too goddamned much sugar in everything to begin with. Adding sweetened milk to cereal is like eating a bowl of sugar (and as such, I can only find about three cereals without piles of sugar in them, and one has just recently vanished as of my discovery of its existence).

I’m not diabetic, I just don’t want all that sugar. The USA has a major sugar problem. I can’t choose diabetic products because they’re usually full of artificial sweeteners or Stevia (which I hate).

Which reminds me: The only root beer that doesn’t have phosphoric acid and/or artificial flavoring in it seems to be Virgil’s. Great stuff. Could get it at two of the four stores I went to. It was an occasional splurge or treat, though, because even though it’s not as bad as Coke, Pepsi, et al, that’s still a lot of sugar. Then suddenly both stores dropped it, only occasionally offering a “sugar free” variety, which is disgusting (I don’t hate on diabetics; I hate on the sweeteners their products use when diabetic products displace the products I want). Occasionally I see it, but it’s always out of stock when I actively go looking for it. Yet, the junky brands are always there.

This kind of thing (specialist dietary products replacing other varieties) has happened before: Cherry Brook (?) has a vegan brownie mix which is really good. Wegman’s was carrying it, which is the only reason I knew of it. Nobody else had it. Then suddenly Wegman’s replaced that one with a gluten-free variety (same manufacturer), which kinda sucks (dense and too much sugar). No more vegan brownies for me unless I come up with my own scratch recipe.

This happens a lot: a perfectly acceptable vegan product is displaced by a non-vegan or just plain inferior gluten-free version of the same food. I don’t mind gluten-free stuff existing (if not for the gluten-free section, I’d never have known about “Mary’s Gone Crackers” “Super Seed” “Everything” crackers, which are fantastic... except now nobody carries the “Everything” variety that got my interest in the first place).

I really do mind when my preferred product is canceled in order to stock a gluten-free or diabetic version. Like, I’m apparently a marginalized customer who’s being further marginalized by serving a larger marginalized group of people. The irony.

There’s a taco filling seasoning that used to be made by “Seeds of Change”. My GF and I really liked it. The problem: we could barely find it anywhere (though there are about five versions of Old El Paso and Ortega, each). When she did find it, it was ridiculously expensive. Sometimes she found it for sale on Amazon (probably an overstock). She once found it at a dollar store (likely someone else’s overstock).

As of a week(?) ago, she told me a Seeds of Change customer service rep indicated the company discontinued it because “it wasn’t selling well”. Uh, how could it sell well if no stores were stocking it, and, when it occasionally appeared, it cost a stupid price?

This one may be either the manufacturer’s or the grocery stores’ fault. I can’t be sure. Seeds of Change’s rice packets aren’t overly expensive, and are at most stores I’ve been to lately, so I’m thinking the grocery stores are the issue.

Several of the items I’ve had vanish on me are dry goods, which last a long time on shelves. The only reason to dump some of these items is because they want to use that space to sell something that moves FASTER. That’s the race to the bottom. Sick of it. Laissez-faire capitalism and the constant pursuit of perpetual growth utterly destroys diversity in every way. Consumers have to work at finding something other than one or two brands of anything, and often can’t even do that.

All of the “mainstream” brands are owned by a couple companies. It’s egregiously anticompetitive. Occasionally the tech industry consolidation will piss off tech people (like the recent happily abandoned plan for NVidia to buy ARM), but this is happening everywhere and most people are too busy with their lives to pay attention to how their consumer “choices” are being controlled by mega-corporations.

View attachment 1979881

I sometimes clear an entire shelf of the products I like when I get them, if I can afford to (I’m in poverty, so that’s rare these days), knowing they might disappear. Doesn’t matter; I’m only one person... but the products I buy are stocked in tiny amounts to begin with!

That canned black bean refried beans with lime I mentioned above? It was one row, of maybe eight cans, amongst five different varieties of Old El Paso and Ortega, which usually have row after row of the same exact product using up shelf space. If they overstock one brand, who’s going to try another that’s often out of stock?

I go to these stores several times per month. I see how they’re stocked (and not restocked). There’s no justification to claim the product goes bad on shelves because there’s hardly any of it to begin with.

I could go on and on... but this is a long-ass posting, I’m getting angry (and hungry!) thinking about products these stores have dropped, and probably nobody cares.

I've not been near a Wegmans in twenty years, and am unfamiliar with the other stores you mention.

I shop at Publix, Sprouts, Trader Joe's, Lidl, a family-owned IGA store, and sometimes Kroger.

While I've seen products go away, they've either been available at other stores or they were something carried by only one store and didn't have a replacement product offered.

Interesting that your examples are largely in a market segment I completely ignore. I'm an omnivore that largely cooks from base ingredients and doesn't buy much in the way of preprepared/convenience foods. I don't buy soy/nut milks, gluten-free versions of stuff, meat-look-alike products, etc. I also don't buy much in the way of sweets, whether cereals or desserts or snacks.

I suspect much of what you see is related to the relatively small market presence of the products you focus on. Maybe there's some conspiracy amongst retailers. Or maybe manufacturers abandon a region if they're not getting enough sales to justify shipping / distribution of that product within the region.

I anticipate being marginalized for being vegan, or not wanting tons of sugar in my products, not wanting artificial flavoring, for preferring soy-milk over dairy milk (I changed to Silk about 8 years before I went vegan)... whatever.

Alternately... you're a member of a pretty small market segment, one which often tends to shop at places other than large grocery chains. Whole foods or local coop natural groceries would be the usual places I'd look for the foods you describe.

I know how it is: marginalize and move the goal posts once the challenged person gives examples that back up their claim. It’s the same treatment I get with tech people when talking about tech problems (“it’s just you” and “I don’t have that problem” posts pop up every time someone comes looking for help with clearly broken tech).

... and with that sort of self-victimistic attitude we're done here. Good day.

 

[Deguello]

I don’t shop at Walmart. Absolutely refuse. Walmart destroys smaller businesses. That’s their whole thing. They’ve destroyed entire economies of small towns by throwing corporate money at undercutting local businesses, then, when the local businesses are gone, sometimes Walmart pulls out of the town because corporate doesn’t like the profit margins.

No. Screw Walmart. For that and so many other reasons.

I’ve never seen an Albertson’s. I think there’s an Aldi. I should check it out.

We have no Trader Joe’s in my region. I have to drive about an hour to get to the closest one. I LOVE some of their completely unique products, and I’ve asked them repeatedly to expand to my area. But no, not an option.

There are mostly Giants around here, two Wegman’s, a couple Shoprights and “Fresh Market” (both of which had terrible product selections last I checked them).

There are two Targets. They don’t have the products either. I’ve checked.

Whole Foods is hit or miss, and is a little outside my grocery shopping range. I will go there when my GF is visiting. But again, I’ve not seen any of the items there that the other stores stopped carrying. They have a lot of their own branded stuff. Some of it is fine, but it’s pushing out non-Whole Foods branded product and it’s usually not a like-for-like replacement.

Your “smell test” is based on your own experiences, your assumptions, and a desire to win an argument that you started because of not believing there’s anything wrong with this so-called “free market”. Your “smell test” is not based on the reality of my experiences, in my region. Maybe you could spend a minute thinking about how your experiences may differ from mine and that this doesn’t mean mine are false or a lie, or whatever.

Also, why should anyone have to shop at four+ different grocery stores on grocery day? I already do two, sometimes three, going far afield while doing so. These stores greatly overstock a couple brands, and progressively dump smaller brands’ products in order to stock the store’s own so-called equivalent products.

It’s anticompetitive, and it is corporations dictating the market for us; not customers making choices in a “free market”.

I said before: it’s nice for you that the stuff you want is available to you. But that doesn’t mean your experience is the rule.

Eleven paragraphs. Zero examples. Take the L.

 

[dysamoria]

... and with that sort of self-victimistic attitude we're done here. Good day.

?

 

[dysamoria]

Eleven paragraphs. Zero examples. Take the L.

To where did you move the goal post?

Or is your reading comprehension just that poor?

 

[rmariboe]

What if your kids are in college dorms?

Then they’re not part of your household; they have their own ??‍♂️