Walmart experimenting with unique UPCs

[mattob]

Originally Posted by wormraper

I use the my blu-ray.com app to categorize all my movies and use the wonderful barcode scanner to do so. I decided to recently add in a handful I had gotten from walmart into the system and they all threw back an error. I manually checked all the UPCS and realized they were different than the upc listed on the site... I had also got a copy of "Jupiter Ascending" for a friend from amazon and then had my copy from walmart as well. the versions were identical, but the UPCs were different. the one from amazon was congruent with the listing that this site and dvdempire and other hosting sites had + the press release from warner. the walmart version had a different upc.. and this isn't just some sticker put over the case or slip, it was an actual printed UPC that looked in all ways identical to the normal version except for the number. tonight I had to grab some groceries so I checked on several movies., I noticed they all had weird ending cents on the price tag. normally walmart does $xx.88 or $xx.96 for their price tags, but all of these have bizarre ones like $xx.43 and $xx.87 ... every single one that had those price tags (which was pretty much anything new) carried a different UPC .. I asked my the electronics cashier who knows me coming and going about it and he said that walmart is bargaining with the studios to have unique UPCS for all new movies from now on. it gives them the ability to deny price matches as well as make sure no one can return a movie from another store to them. all affected movies ..the regular UPC version doesn't even show up in their system, only the modified walmart only UPCs will show up


well, plus it has the annoying problem of creating discrepancies in the database when you try to use the barcode scanner. just thought I'd give everyone a heads up. affected titles include pretty much everything from the last few weeks, including "Jupiter", "Kingsman", American Sniper, Focus, P. Almanac etc.

Yes, this is not surprising at all. they probably do this in the music end cap too (it's really not aisles any more). I can see Best Buy, Target and Amazon doing it too.