[redact207]

Dear author,

you are an idiot.

You claimed to have "cracked" a barcode, but have merely interpreted some of the numbers. Of course this has been done theoretically as you haven't actually proved that it works.

And it won't work.

Why? Because it's unlikely that a complicated logistics chain such as Tesco that employs half a million employees worldwide and has banking and mobile subsidiaries would let the barcode dictate the price at the register, rather than call it up from their stock management database - the way all POS enabled stores run in the 21st century.

So in your giddy, sensationalist haste, I pray that you "discount" your TV to 1p and get stopped at the gates for sheer idiocy.

Sincerely, Me

[gergles]

The whole point is that 'clearance' barcodes don't have a price stored in the database.

Every grocery store I've consulted for or worked at in my youth was operated the same way - there were "manager special" barcodes where the price was part of the barcode, and the price in the database was recorded as 0 with a flag of "barcode encodes price".

[epo]

And there may be exemptions for high value, non-perishable goods.

[7777]

Actually he did "crack" it, with the exception of the red number.

Also it wouldn't surprise me at all if it worked. Huge companies make baffling mistakes all the time.

[mryan]

One example of a baffling mistake from Tesco - "spend £1.17 on bananas, get £1.25 worth of reward points": http://www.independent.co.uk/news/banana-economics-buy-942lb...

[epo]

He may not be an idiot for that, but he'd have a hard time defending himself in court from being accused of aiding and encouraging persons unknown to commit theft (or fraud, depending on which is the more serious offence). Now placing yourself in that position would be idiotic.

[danielreilly0]

The same complicated logistics chain that send out their online passwords in plain text and claim that this is a secure format?