Dubious digital pricing: revisiting a malfunctioning sign at a Baltimore gas station.

I can’t help myself: with the newly designed blog, I have an array of options available that previously didn’t exist, and this includes media.  In the previous article, I posted my first video clip.  And now, I offer a revival of an article from a couple years ago—a sign for a gas station in Baltimore, where the digital pricing had gone haywire.  Back then, I could only capture stills of individual instances, which was still good enough to get some mild chuckles.  But I was able to post the full video to social media.  Now, here it is, on my own blog:

Pretty wild, right?  The content of this article will likely be familiar to some readers, though this time I will also show corroborating, animated evidence that it is only the promotional sign at this gas station experiencing a digital pricing malfunction.  The prices at the pumps appear to be stable.

And while we may not miss those prices, that’s about the only thing from the halcyon days of 2018 that doesn’t leave us nostalgic.  For those readers who want a more full analysis, I encourage you to visit the original posting, linked above, but I will reiterate again that the (presumably rather simple) computer program that allows this to take place may be easy for an unethical person (perhaps even the gas station proprietor) to hack and therein to con gullible motorists into paying inflated prices for gas.  Maybe I just happened to catch this station at a rare moment during the digital pricing glitch, but weird cycling of numbers continued for the duration of my time there: at least five minutes.  And yes, just for a few laughs, I bought some gas at this Exxon.  Only a few gallons though.

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2 thoughts on “Dubious digital pricing: revisiting a malfunctioning sign at a Baltimore gas station.

  1. Leslie Gerber

    I photographed my all-time favorite sineage about 50 years ago. It was two hand-lettered signs nailed to a tree outside a diner which obviously sold accessories for fishermen. It read:
    BREAKFAST
    WORMS
    It was in Phoenicia, New York. I still have the photo.

    Reply
    1. AmericanDirt Post author

      Hi Leslie–good sign! Maybe the owner of that diner was trying to tell people that it sold a breakfast specifically catering to worms. You never know.

      Reply

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