You know that flicker. That weird, slightly bluish glow coming off the shelf where a plain old paper price tag used to be. You’re standing in the cereal aisle, squinting at a tiny digital screen, and something feels off. It’s not just the price — though that might bother you too. It’s that the grocery store you’ve been shopping at for years suddenly feels a little less familiar. And you’re not the only one who’s noticed.
Digital price tags are spreading fast
Safeway is the latest grocery chain to roll out digital price tags on its shelves. These are small electronic screens that replace the old paper and plastic labels you’re used to seeing under every product. The idea is simple: stores can update prices instantly without sending an employee down every aisle with a label gun. Walmart has been pushing these too, with executives saying they’d appear in 2,300 stores by 2026.
Sounds efficient, right? The stores certainly think so. But customers have a very different take.
Why are shoppers so upset about a price tag?
The backlash has been intense. One commenter online wrote, “I see these tags in a store I’m walking TF out.” Others have called the labels confusing, especially for older shoppers or anyone who struggles with the small print on those little screens. Paper tags were big, obvious, easy to read. These digital ones? Not always.
But the bigger fear isn’t readability — it’s what the technology makes possible. If a store can change a price in seconds, what’s stopping them from raising it during peak hours? That’s called dynamic pricing, and it’s already something people deal with in rideshare apps. The worry is that grocery stores could start doing the same thing. One shopper put it bluntly: “That’s how they implement surge pricing.” Whether or not that fear is justified, it’s clearly what’s driving a lot of the anger.
Dynamic pricing already has a messy history
This isn’t a brand-new concern. Back in 2024, Wendy’s CEO mentioned the chain would test dynamic pricing with digital menu boards, and the internet lost its mind. Wendy’s quickly backtracked, saying the idea was “misconstrued” and that they’d never raise prices when demand is highest. The damage was done though. People remembered.
So when shoppers see those same digital screens popping up at their local Safeway or Walmart, the association is immediate. Fair or not, the technology carries baggage. Some defenders point out that digital tags just make an existing job easier — updating prices that would change anyway due to supply costs. That’s a reasonable argument. But it doesn’t erase the trust problem.
It’s not just price tags — Costco keeps making people mad too
Grocery frustrations are boiling over in all directions right now. Costco has made a series of changes that have loyal members fuming. One of the biggest? Starting in mid-2025, only Executive members can shop during the early-access hour before stores open to everyone else. Gold Star and Business members — who already pay for the privilege of shopping there — got shut out.
For people who relied on those quieter early hours to avoid crowds, it felt like a slap. Sam’s Club, by comparison, lets regular members shop starting at 9 a.m. and Plus members at 8 a.m. Some angry Costco shoppers have said publicly they’re considering the switch.
Don’t even get people started on the muffins
If you want to see Costco shoppers truly spiral, bring up the bakery muffins. In 2025, Costco made a string of changes: no more mix-and-match flavors, smaller muffins, different textures, and a new aftertaste that people can’t stand. The old muffins were moist, big, and came in variety packs. The new ones are drier, go bad faster without refrigeration, and — here’s the kicker — the 24-packs actually cost more even though the muffins got smaller.
Classic shrinkflation. Pay more, get less. Costco says the new recipe uses whole ingredients and fewer preservatives, which is technically healthier. But try telling that to someone who just wanted their usual blueberry muffin and got a crumbly, weird-tasting substitute instead. Sometimes people don’t want healthier. They want the thing they liked.
What happened to the rotisserie chicken packaging?
Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken is practically an institution. People plan entire meals around it. So when the company switched from the hard plastic clamshell container to a floppy bag in 2024, customers noticed immediately. The idea was to reduce plastic waste, which sounds great on paper.
In practice? Chicken juice everywhere. The bags leak in carts, on checkout belts, and especially in car trunks. Some cashiers started putting the bagged chickens inside extra plastic bags from the meat department just to contain the mess — which kind of defeats the purpose of using less plastic. You also can’t carve the chicken in the bag like you could with the old clamshell. And ironically, the new bags aren’t even recyclable. So less plastic, more problems, and no recycling upside. That’s a tough sell.
Standing tables in the food court — really?
Here’s one that seems almost deliberately hostile to customers. Costco has been replacing the sit-down tables in its food courts with tall standing tables. If you’ve just spent an hour walking on concrete floors, the last thing you want is to stand while eating your $1.50 hot dog.
It’s especially bad for kids, elderly shoppers, people in wheelchairs, and — honestly — anyone who’s just tired. Some locations only swapped out half the seating, but the remaining chairs fill up fast. Families have literally resorted to sitting on the floor. Others just take their food to the car, which kind of kills the whole food court experience. Whatever Costco’s reasoning — discouraging lingering, saving space — the result is that a lot of people feel unwelcome.
Kirkland diapers aren’t what they used to be
This one might be the most painful for young parents. When Kimberly-Clark — the company behind Huggies — stopped making Kirkland diapers in 2025, Costco had to switch to a new manufacturer called First Quality. The quality difference was noticeable almost immediately.
Parents reported the new diapers were thinner, less absorbent, had a chemical smell, and used elastic bands instead of velcro fasteners. Blowouts, leaks within 30 minutes, skin irritation — the complaints piled up on social media. Plenty of families who specifically had Costco memberships for the cheap diapers ended up switching to Huggies or other brands, paying more. A newborn goes through about 12 diapers a day. That adds up fast when your go-to brand falls apart.
Is Walmart getting unfair pricing advantages?
Beyond individual store changes, there’s a bigger structural issue brewing. An advocacy group called More Perfect Union recently released a video — now with over a million YouTube views — highlighting a lawsuit the FTC filed against PepsiCo. The claim? PepsiCo allegedly gave Walmart lower prices than other retailers, and even pressured Food Lion to raise its prices on Pepsi products so Walmart could keep charging less.
The Trump administration dismissed the suit in May 2025, but the recently unsealed details have given it new life in the public conversation. PepsiCo generated 14% of its total net revenue through Walmart in 2025 — losing that relationship would be devastating. The case was built around the Robinson-Patman Act, a Depression-era law meant to stop suppliers from playing favorites with big retailers. Several U.S. senators have since asked the FTC and the DOJ to crack down on these kinds of pricing practices that hurt smaller grocery chains.
Even the toilet paper isn’t safe
Rounding out the frustrations, Costco’s Kirkland toilet paper — once considered one of the best reasons to own a membership — has slowly gotten worse. Customers say it’s thinner, tears easily, leaves behind lint, creates “clouds of white dust,” and doesn’t dissolve well in water. That last part is a real problem. Plumbers have reportedly found football-sized wads of the stuff clogging septic tanks.
At around $0.70 a roll, it’s cheap. But if it leads to a plumber visit, that savings evaporates pretty quickly. Some people on Reddit have tested the paper in glasses of water and watched it just clump together instead of breaking down. So you’re saving money on toilet paper and potentially spending hundreds on pipe repair. Not exactly a bargain.
Membership checks at the door didn’t go over well either
Costco also started requiring shoppers to show their membership cards at the entrance — something that wasn’t always enforced. Long-time members were genuinely offended. Some took it personally, as if they were being accused of sneaking in. Costco employees have shared stories online of customers having full meltdowns over it. The reality is simpler: the store is just checking that everyone inside is a paying member. But when you’ve been walking in unchecked for years, it feels like a sudden shift in how you’re being treated.
So here we are — back in that aisle, squinting at a glowing little screen where a sticker used to be. The stores are changing fast: new tags, new rules, new packaging, new table heights, new diaper brands. Some of these shifts are about efficiency. Some are about cutting costs. A few are arguably about making things better. But for most shoppers walking through those automatic doors, it doesn’t feel like progress. It just feels like one more thing they didn’t ask for.
