The Tesco near work has recently been teching-up the price labels attached to its shelves. In several aisles, the old-fashioned pieces of paper with product details and price printed on them have been replaced with little electronic gizmos with LCDs of comparable size, and the same product and price information is displayed on those.

I have to assume the useful feature of this system is that they can update the prices at the touch of a button from their lair central control room; they can introduce special offers, rescind special offers, or just keep prices generally in line with the current economic conditions without having to send a henchman stock control operative out in person to physically replace lots of labels.

I am therefore at a loss to explain why they have two different types of gizmo, one with a beige case for normal prices and one with a red case for special offers. Surely this precisely defeats the purpose – now they have to send someone round to replace the gizmos again whenever they want to start or stop a special offer!