Just wanted to echo Cher3 about buying formula at Costco. My son could not be breast-fed, because of medical issues with my wife, so he was taking formula since day 1. Buying all our baby essentials at Costco definitely helped in those days.
(And the nice thing is, unlike Wal-Mart, they actually pay their employees decent wages, and don’t try to destroy the local economy! 
)
Many stores, even those within the same corporate chain, have surprisingly different methods of operation. Sometimes that name and logo are the only things alike between the two.
An example: I work at Texas Steakhouse. There are rougly 30 of them, all owned by the same company, and they’re all pretty similar. The casual customer is not likely to notice the differences between them…with a couple of notable exceptions. The following is a scenario I have to deal with once a day, at minimum:
Customer: “I’ll have the Marshall Dillon, cooked medium.”
Me: “Sure, and what would you like for your side dish?”
Customer: “Mashed potatoes.” (hoo boy, here we go…)
Me: “I’m sorry, we don’t have mashed potatoes.”
Customer: “I’ve had mashed potatoes here before.”
Me: “Well, I know the Texas Steakhouse at [our other Roanoke location] serves them, are you sure you didn’t have them there?”
Customer: “No, it was Texas Steakhouse, and I had mashed potatoes.”
Me: “Sir/ma’am, I’m sorry, but we don’t have mashed potatoes here.”
Customer: “Yes you do, I’ve had them before.”
Me: “No, you fucking didn’t, asshat. I work here, I think I know what the hell we have better than you do.”
Ok, so maybe I don’t say that last part 
.
I understand that situations like this can be confusing, since after all it is supposed to be the same restaurant, and I’m not comparing you to my assholish customers. I just wanted to clarify that the employee you were talking to wasn’t completely nuts; it’s the fault of corporate management for not making sure the right hand knows what the left is doing.
It should make your heart feel good to know that the Babies R Us in Hartsdale NY shut its doors permanently a few months ago. Now the space is empty and the landlord is getting squat for it. Which is good, because the SOB kicked out the local Bagel Emporium to put in a Dominos “pizza” instead. :mad:
Correct.
…I guess I have nothing further to add. Well, except that IttyBittyChastain might have been sleeping better not because there’s too much water in breastmilk, or whatever, but maybe because if breastfeeding wasn’t going well, he/she wasn’t getting enough to eat. Unless by “sleeping better” you actually just meant “sleeping longer” – as someone already pointed out, formula is more difficult to digest than breastmilk, so it hangs around in the stomach longer; therefore sometimes formula-fed babies will sleep longer stretches earlier than breastfed babies will. Sometimes. Still not worth the extra expense and hassle, IMHO – I truly feel your pain. I was another one who was so hell-bent on avoiding the cost of formula that I didn’t even have any around to use as emergency backup. Luckily, in my case, we worked through the early issues and were able to successfully breastfeed, but I feel nothing but sympathy for those who tried it and weren’t able to make it work.
I’m not sure where the charges of price-gouging come from. I mean, this isn’t the only place in town to buy formula, or even that brand of formula. There is no formula shortage, and the prices are right there for people to compare. If a customer is too stupid or lazy to do the math, well, you know what they say about a fool and his money.
After all, there are lots of times where multiples of the smaller package is actually the better buy. Canned goods, cereal, laundry detergent, you name it, the bigger box (or the multipack) isn’t always cheaper. The price difference is usually much less than $10, but the total price usually isn’t $140, either. One-fourteenth of the total price…man, that’s like 35 cents on a 5 purchase. Would you be so outraged if you went to the grocery and realized that one big box of cereal was .35 more than two small boxes?
20 bucks for a can of formula? What are you feeding her?
Enfamil w/Iron ran us anywhere from $12-15!
Well, no, but I can deal with an extra thirty-five cents. But ten bucks? If you saw a ten dollar bill blowing down the street, you’d pick it up, right?
I get what you’re saying, but upon query one of the Purple Shirted Rapists told me himself:
“When we run low on the individual cans on the shelf, we just cut open one of the six-packs and put them out.”
That, to me, says that the six-pack is just how it’s shipped to the store. The price should be no different than if I bought six individual cans. The “extra packaging” consists of a thin cardboard flat and cellophane. For which they charge an extra 10 bucks.
And yes, I have a right to be angry about this. Even Sam’s Club and Costco will give you a cardboard box to carry your purchases, for Og’s sake. For BRU to charge 10 bucks more, just because of the convenience of carrying, is the worst kind of greed.
No worries, though. Any store that assumes stupidity on the part of its customers deserves no more of my business.
Maybe not outraged, but I’d certainly think less of the retailer.
Two examples:
At a local bar: Lobster dinner, $7.95. Double lobster dinner, $15.95. So I get to pay a nickel more for the privilege of not getting an extra salad, roll, and potato. That’s some smart pricing there.
At a local eatery coughSbarrocough: Spaghetti, $3.00. Meatballs, $1.00 each. Spaghetti with two meatballs, $6.00. I ordered this, and the checkout girl wanted to charge me $6.00. I insisted that I pay for the meatballs a la cart. There was nothing she could do.
:wally
On the subject of limiting the amount of baby formula you can buy, isn’t there a way to make a bomb or a drug out of the stuff? Or am I thinking of something else?
If you want to be an asshole (an I encourage it), take the sixer to the register and let them ring you up. Then remove the cans from the cardboard and insist they ring you up again.
I take it you don’t do much grocery shopping, tdn. Like I said before, it’s fairly common for the big size to be a worse buy than the small size.
If it helps, Chastain, think of that ten bucks the way I think of the 35 cents on the cereal–as a tax for stupid and/or lazy people.
Our local liquor store sells beer at $4.99 a six-pack, $12.99 a 12-pack. It’s like the lottery: a tax on people that can’t do math.
One of our local (now out of business) economy steak houses had an all-you-can-eat salad bar lunch special of $3.19. They also had a lunch sandwich special of $3.09 for a fish sandwich which included the all-you-can-eat salad bar. I don’t think they ever figured out why their fish sandwich was so popular.
I don’t shop that much, but when I do, I try to look out for situations like that, and in some cases I make a big deal out of it. But it doesn’t come up often, as I usually buy the smallest packages I can find anyway.
CCL, forgive me if I’m misunderstanding you, but I think you missed a point in the OP. The individual cans and the cans in the cardboard flat were identical. It wasn’t a matter of 6 3lb cans being more or less per pound than a single 10 lb can. The exact same cans were significantly different prices (20.99 vs. 22.99) depending on whether you bought them individually or in the cardboard flat.
That’s not a big deal really. They probably wanted all their prices to end in .95 for simplicity’s sake, not to nefariously scam people out of a nickel.
Speaking Of Sam’s, that’s where I buy formula for LittlePurlBoy (I just couldn’t make more than a few ounces of milk a day. Had the same problem with TeenPurlBoy as well.) We get the Similac Advance /w DHA & ARA for $23 plus change for a big can, over a pound. The big cans in the grocery stores cost about the same, but hold quite a bit less. They also have some other brands of formula. It’s also the cheapest place for diapers and wipes. I’m sure CostCo and other stores of this type would have similar prices. We actually like CostCo better, but since we moved, all the CostCos are over ten miles away and Sam’s is 1 mile.
CrazyCatLady, perhaps it is different around the country. I am a “frugal” (that’s the polite word) shopper, and I always compare unit prices. In my grocery store, anyway, the unit prices are listed on the shelves. In my years of shopping, I can only recall three examples (not including sales or use of coupons) where the bigger size was a worse buy.
Well, acc. to my friend who works at Kroger (regional grocery chain), they sell their powdered formula at break-even prices or even a loss. Loss leader kind of thing. It worked until people started coming in and buying up the entire lot of baby formula to re-sell at flea markets or at convenience stores in the poorer neighborhoods in Cincinnati, at a signficant profit. They were using Kroger as their middle man, if you will. So they had to put a limit on the number you could buy.
As for the OPer, this kind of thing happens ALL the time. Take Disney vacations, for instance. I paid 40-50% less for the room, flight, and park hopper passes simply by calling and booking a la carte than I would have had I booked directly with Disney. Same hotel, same park pass, same flight. I’m talking thousands of dollars.
As long as there are lazy people there will be unscrupulous salesmen who will take advantage of them.
Enlighten a non mom. When you say formula costs say $15/can or $20, how long does that last you? Are you talking about a tall can of premade liquid or the powder stuff that you use up and mix per bottle? I have zero concept and am curious. I mean, if you’re formula feeding a baby exclusively, how much does it cost (average) per week for food?
20-20$ buys a jumbo can of the powdered formula, 25–28 oz–think big can of coffe size. With my first son I formula fed and he would go through at least two of them a week, sometimes three.