Yes, it's most likely they saw some kind of sales meeting, but collusion also happens often. I watched a documentary not long ago about how smart they are about it now. For groceries the major chains just all report each product's price to the same company which then tells them how much they can mark up their products without being undercut. Is it illegal, almost assuredly yes. Is there anybody enforcing this anymore? No.
Lol. When I was a kid I worked at a gas station. My job was to arrive before the station opemed, drive around the neighborhood, and make a note of the gas price at our competitors.
We then informed corporate of the numbers, and someone would quickly is how to price the gas that day.
I thought it was about keeping the price competitive. No, I was told, it’s the exact opposite.
We would gladly sell the gas at cost, if not less, because the real money came from coffee and other merch.
But the state had a minimum mark up law. We had to charge the customers more.
The idea was to protect small gas stations from corporate chains, but gas is a commodity. Everyone pays about the same.
I later found out that the reason I was reason I was recording the competitors prices was to make sure they were following the minimum markup laws, so we could sue them if they werent.
They were probably having you do this so that they could price the gas as high as possible while still in line with the neighborhood going price. Why sell at 200 while the best next price nearby is 260? Sell at 250.
> They were worried about suing and being sued. In the place and time, gas stations simply did not make money off gas.
> They made money by selling coffee, which costs less than a cent, for five bucks.
True. That's no reason to "leave money on the table" as they may have seen it, and being substantially cheaper than the alternative, when they could have been barely cheaper and attracting the same amount of people.
