tl;dr it's a scam.

Austria, is a zone of experimentation for large German companies like T-Mobile, REWE and friends.

Longer explanation, the bottom line is that they can do it and get away with it, why and how are just excuses and cause for infinite talk on the subject. They are allowed to get away with it, and so they will do it, basic economics.

rant/ The same applies to literally the entire world now. With the "new world order" after COVID prices for literally everything have been on the rise, with ample excuses to justify this. Then the "war" in Ukraine came along and gave the greedy in the world yet another new set of excuses to justify increased prices.

Sure, there could have been rational justification to increase costs temporarily, but long term, it feels like a global, coordinated scam.

Take energy prices in Germany and Austria for example. The energy companies were literally given the green light to scam the populace by dramatically hiking the price of fuel, and electricity.

The cost of petrol and diesel almost doubled, the price of electricity (even though MOST of it is made from rivers flowing, therefore with no significant increase in underlying cost to generate) was more than doubled in some cases and kept this way for many, many months.

So since petrol and power now costs double, we can increase all the rest to go along with it, right? Sure, let's do it!

Yeah, the politicians started yammering about how they'll tax these extra profits but the bottom line will be that all of these huge corps will get away with it, and they'll run away with tons of profits that they were never supposed to have.

Are we ever going to go down to pre-war/pre-covid costs and prices? my estimate is that it's highly unlikely and never going to happen. With minor ups and downs on the way to keep us happy and talking, pricing is only going to be trending one way, up.

Way to go our fantastic, democratically elected officials. You guys are so talented, smart and you really seem to care about your people. Give us more of this goodness please, we can't wait! We're going to elect you or your talented replacements as well next time, don't worry about it!

The world is turning into Idiocracy fast, and the speed at which its heading there is only accelerating.

/rant