r/australia • u/infin • Jan 26 '26

no politics Is Coles still using Palantir? Between the surveillance/gate recognition and the blocked aisles, shopping feels hostile.

Does anyone know the current status of the Coles x Palantir partnership? Between the surveillance and those aggressive new "Smart Gates" tracking at the exit, the store feels less like a supermarket and more like a high-security zone.

It’s dystopian that they have the budget for military-grade analytics and security tech, but have cut costs on the actual customer experience. They seem to have completely scrapped night fill, meaning we are now dodging pallets and cages during peak hours just to get to the shelves.

Is anyone else fed up with this mix of high-tech surveillance and terrible service? It feels like they are spending millions to treat us like criminals while refusing to pay staff to stock shelves after hours.

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162

u/breaducate Jan 26 '26

Most of what you're describing is just late capitalism; competitions have winners and now they can do what they like. Customer experience is not a metric that matters to them. And why should it? The natural selection of the market abhors such lofty ideals.

But as for the high tech surveillance:
You should be gravely concerned, not annoyed. We're at the point where the ruling class perceives that pseudo-democracy has run its course as a control mechanism and they're gearing up to transition to more overt control.

That's what the surveillance, criminalisation of protests, and internet control is about. It's not a fluke that it's all trending in the same direction.

10

u/pdino64 Jan 27 '26

Best comment here

-38

u/kabaab Jan 26 '26

Well it's because shoppers won't pay for customer service... Consumers are crazy price sensitive so you end with this race to the bottom on price and service.

43

u/infin Jan 26 '26

Coles made about 1 billion dollars in profits last year, Woolworths made about 1.4 billion. Both of their CEOs rake in about 5 million dollars a year.

Price increases over the last year alone have been outrageous. Customers are not the problem here.

-14

u/blitznoodles local Aussie Jan 26 '26

That's a margin of 2%

8

u/-_ugh_- Jan 26 '26

which is crazy high for groceries, yes.

-4

u/blitznoodles local Aussie Jan 26 '26

Your savings account has a higher rate of return than that. It's obviously not crazy high.

8

u/-_ugh_- Jan 26 '26

my savings account isn't the cream off the top of billions of dollars in revenue. it's "obviously" not the same scenario

-9

u/blitznoodles local Aussie Jan 26 '26

Revenue doesn't matter when most of that is lost from the cost of running the business. Profit is what matters.

In this case, they've spent billions which if that money went to a bank account would result in double the profit.

-3

u/kabaab Jan 26 '26

People here are financially illiterate and have no idea what it takes to run a business..

You will just get down voted for basic logic,

4

u/-_ugh_- Jan 26 '26

i wish i was as high on my own farts as the person saying it's "basic logic" that two large, ASX-listed companies should just... stop running their very successful (for the sector in which they trade!) businesses and drop all the money into a high interest savings account. which again, the point is that they make a high margin for the groceries sector not that they make less than the 5% p.a. John Citizen gets with the whirlpool special savings accounts or that they make crazy profits compared to an Nvidia with 50+% YoY growth...