What's mildly irritating you today?

[limey]

Originally Posted by Carruthers

... in the UK we have unit pricing regulations which means it should be possible to compare different size packs of the same, or similar, product for value.
...
Chicanery and sharp practise.

Better still when the cost of apples (in our local Co-operative) is expressed in cost per kilo for one sort, and cost per unit (apple) right next door ...
Also I always double-check the prices of the "bargain" litres of booze, sometimes these are more expensive than the standard size bottle ...

Chicanery and sharp practice indeed.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by limey

Better still when the cost of apples (in our local Co-operative) is expressed in cost per kilo for one sort, and cost per unit (apple) right next door ...

Chicanery and sharp practice indeed.

It's the same with bananas in Tesco. This morning I bought a bunch in the main store at £0.68/kg, but if I go around the corner to the mini Tesco they're on sale individually.

I can't remember what the price differential was, but it was obviously big enough to stop me from buying them there ever again.

[DanaC]

That's a little different I think, though. If it's a different store then the prices for individual items may well be diferent anyway - as the ground rents and so on are diferent for different stores. Tins of chappie at the big tesco in Shelf are 65p, but if we go to the smaller tesco in Queensbury they're 60p.

Where it is pure chicanery is when they are side by side but differently priced in a way that obscures or misrepresents that difference.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Carruthers, look at it as a gift for people like yourself who can see passed their marketing ploys, you can feel the self satisfaction of not being fooled. Then you can giggle all smug like at the checkout, when you spot shoppers who made the mistake.
This sort of thing has become part of marketing because everyone is trying to live their life on a dead run, no time to read the EULA. We sign contracts with copious fine print, but nobody ever reads it except the lawyers when there's a dispute. LJ can probably tell you how many people buy a car, one of the big commitments in most people's lives, and sign without reading the contracts.

I went into the supermarket and right inside the door was a huge display of berries. They'd set up a stepped like bleacher seating table, covered with fabric, about 12 ft long, with blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, etc. Half a dozen large signs said, "buy one, get one free". Now this wasn't a slapped together display, it had to be designed and planned in detail. Nowhere anywhere near this display was the PRICE. Do you think they forgot? I don't think so. Since I was planning on buying blueberries anyway, I just picked up twice as many, but I'm sure their marketing people think they conned me.

That mini Tesco sounds like what we call convenience stores, WAWA is the local biggie. Park right at the door, grab something you need, pay a premium for the convenience, and on your way. These have become the regular morning on the way to work stop for millions. Coffee, maybe a pack of smokes or a pastry. Sometimes something for lunch if you know you'll be busy at lunch time. When the market has bananas for 49 cents a lb, the WAWA will charge 70 cents for one banana, but in winter you can leave your car running to warm up.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

That mini Tesco sounds like what we call convenience stores, WAWA is the local biggie. Park right at the door, grab something you need, pay a premium for the convenience, and on your way. These have become the regular morning on the way to work stop for millions. Coffee, maybe a pack of smokes or a pastry. Sometimes something for lunch if you know you'll be busy at lunch time. When the market has bananas for 49 cents a lb, the WAWA will charge 70 cents for one banana, but in winter you can leave your car running to warm up.

Yep, they're convenience stores this side of the Atlantic also.
At one time they tended to be sole traders who grouped together to take advantage of the discounts available to bulk purchasers.
Others were franchise operations and were sometimes described as 'little gold mines'.
The big supermarket chains saw the opportunity to make even more money by opening their own convenience stores.
The rationale was that people would buy all the things they had run out of in between their weekly shopping trips.
Accordingly, they are often referred to in the retail trade as 'sod it' shops, as in 'sod it, we've run out of milk' although the 'on the way to work stop' that you describe no doubt generates considerable profit.

It's interesting that you mention the push to sell strawberries etc. The 'buy one, get one free' (BOGOF) model is well known here as well.
Of course what is meant by that is that each pack is half price. Sometimes you will see single packs of strawberries or raspberries being sold at supposedly 'half price'.
As far as I can tell, no-one has ever bought supermarket strawberries at full price!
Quite how they get around the various regulations to promote goods in this way is something of a mystery.

Dad gets 'Which?' magazine which is published by the Consumers' Association and I have a feeling there is an article in a recent edition exposing some of these marketing practices.
I'll dig that out and see what else they've been up to that I haven't spotted.
To the best of my recollection, I believe that there's an official enquiry going on into supermarket pricing policies.
No doubt it will take years to produce a result and although much of the sharp practice will be weeded out, the supermarkets will come up with a dazzling new array of ploys equally as sneaky as the last lot.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yes, the on the way to work is huge because we're drivers, if there was more mass transit, these stores would take hit. The WAWA stores sell gasoline too, any store they can't add gas pumps to is closed an a brand new one with pumps is built. The smallest I've see around me is 28 pumps. For 647 stores in 6 states, 194,000,000 cups of coffee is lucrative.

[monster]

Originally Posted by Carruthers

It isn't the actual premises and certainly not the staff at my local branch who are a great bunch.

It isn't even the woman at the check out in front of me last week who appeared to have based her shopping list on the possibility of the Red Army dropping in unannounced for afternoon tea.

What really annoys me is the methods that are employed to make you spend more than you need. They would probably call it merchandising or marketing. I would call it sharp practise and chicanery.

Everyone is familiar with economies of scale. It's obviously cheaper to buy a box of one hundred teabags than two boxes of fifty. Except that it isn't on occasion, it's actually more expensive.

Similarly, two 500 gram bags of sultanas should cost more than a 1kg bag but they don't from time to time. The shopper in a hurry will just grab what should, on the face of it, be the cheaper option, and ends up paying more.

Then there's the periodic rearrangement of the whole store which means nobody can find anything. I've mentioned that one before so I won't revisit it.

There's also the practise of putting the costlier items on shelves at eye level. Look down at the lower shelves and you'll find the cheaper stuff there, but how many people bother?

It's probably the same in the US, Canada and Oz, but in the UK we have unit pricing regulations which means it should be possible to compare different size packs of the same, or similar, product for value.

Here's a couple of examples:



Not difficult to see which is the least expensive, given that the packs are the same size. But why is the unit price of one expressed in pence per 100 grams, and the other one in £ per kg?

That can be annoying when you're trying to compare packs of different sizes.

It's easy enough to shift a decimal point about, but we shouldn't have to do it.

WHY NOT?

Chicanery and sharp practise.

[devilsadvocate] If you are too hurried, lazy or stupid to do the math, why shouldn't you pay more? A store is a business, not a non-profit public service. [/DA]

Also, regarding the costlier items at eye-level .... A scarily large proportion of people want the name brand product (which is usually the most expensive) If they don't find it quickly, they will become frustrated and leave. So that is what is put at eye level. then they feel happy which puts them in the mood for and gives them time to look around and add more items they hadn't intended to buy to their basket.

Here's a recent article about brand-name painkillers from the BBC

[Carruthers]

@monster

[devilsadvocate]If you are too hurried, lazy or stupid to do the math, why shouldn't you pay more? ..... [/DA]

Unit pricing is just one aspect of grocery retailing where there is less than plain dealing.

Two for one, or three for two offers rely on the products being sold at differing (higher?) prices in the preceding twenty-eight days.

They are manipulated with such byzantine complexity that it becomes impossible to determine if any savings are being made when considering a multi-buy offer.

[devilsadvocate].... A store is a business, not a non-profit public service. [/DA]

Quite so. My pension fund has holdings in the grocery retailing sector on both sides of the Atlantic so I want Tesco and Walmart to be successful.

I'd just rather they made their profits by fair means not foul.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ah, but foul is in the eye of the beholder. Is it foul if it's standard practice on both sides of the pond? Certainly the consumer has been subjected to it continuously, so it's not a quick switch. The price in the previous 28 days is a nonstarter when it comes to produce as that's a constant supply/demand variable.

And don't forget, "If you are too hurried, lazy or stupid to do the math" is coming from a mathematician.

[glatt]

I was deferred from donating blood this morning. I had even gone online and searched for info about donating eligibility if you have stitches but could find nothing. So I showed up. "Yes. I feel well." (I do.) And then at the end of the screening, when they ask if I have any questions, I ask about the stitches. Deferred.

They should put it in the literature somewhere if it means you can't donate. Wasted 30 minutes and took up a donation slot somebody else could have filled.

Apparently if I said I didn't feel well, there was a sub-menu that gave me the stitches option to check off.

[Clodfobble]

Ugh. I just watched a movie that was supposed to be a sort of dark, sort of twisted-funny, artsy-fartsy kind of thing.

Which it was. Except, like, 50 times harder on the dark bit. All the characters were bad people, and it genuinely depressed the fuck out of me worse than any "sad" story where I actually cared about the characters. Which, you know, mad props to a work of art that can make me feel so strongly against my will. That was most definitely the point of it.

You ever seen the movie Kids? Same kind of deal. But I'd watch Kids again before I'd watch Happiness again.

[xoxoxoBruce]

All the characters were bad people

Oh, so it was a real life drama.

[glatt]

This

[fargon]

That would do it I'd bet. How many knuckles did you bust?

[sexobon]

Send it back to China and get a free replacement (postage due).