Normally, no, unless it’s expensive enough to be worth a modicum of effort at price comparisons (hundreds of dollars or more). Except that I do tend to get obsessed when there are in-your-face price differentials, and Amazon is a notorious marketplace for that. Besides sale prices, they have everyday prices that seem to be driven by inexplicable mystical algorithms that are possibly based on astrological alignments. For items that I know have had these price variations, if I’m not in a hurry sometimes just as a matter of principle I’ll wait for the stars and planets to align to another low price point. The last time I did this I saved nearly $40 on a ~$100 item.
As for gas, I know how easily one can end up wasting time and even wasting gas trying to find the best deal, but I just make a point of filling up at either of two nearby stations that both consistently undercut the competition. One is off-brand and does it as a matter of competitiveness (but the quality can’t be all bad because local police and ambulance services seem to have contracts with them). The other is a major international brand and it’s not clear why this one particular station discounts like this. I guess they’re going for volume because they’re always very busy.
At least down here, the city government is very much about lowest bidder. Quality is not even considered. I have to assume there is some lower limit to how nasty a chemical somebody could sell and label it “gasoline.”
Bottom line: I would not take official use as any kind of endorsement of a quality standard, even a low one. At least not here. Your more civilized part of the world may do better.
I’m getting less cheap, but was brought up by a broke(ish) single mom in Maine. That sticks with you. We don’t buy many things anymore, and I’m trying to train myself to say: “We have the money. It just doesn’t matter.” Otherwise I look at 2 sets items on Amazon for $12 vs $13 and freeze. Just threw down for tickets to Fiji. Fuck it.
This is a well studied psychological phenomenon usually called anchoring - our brains don’t do a very good job of valuing absolutes and tend to work off relativities, which can trip us up.
The classic example which I read somewhere is that if you pose this situation to people “You are buying a $200 tool over the phone from a store across town. It’s robust and small and you can go get it in your car easily. The salesperson says they’ll deliver for $20. Do you get them to deliver?” A large percentage of people will say yes.
But if you given them exactly the same situation but now the item is $2 the percentage of people who say yes drops massively.
Yet the cost of delivery, and the value being offered - saving you a trip across town and back - is exactly the same. Most people don’t have a clear value of their time, so they just “anchor” on the cost of the item and value the cost of the delivery relative to that.
I used to drive 40 miles to the PetSmart and scoop litter into the buckets I brought to save a few pennies. 40 years later, I have Chewy deliver it to my door. Yes, it costs more, but I’m older now and not as able to be dragging heavy buckets around, plus we can afford it.
I used to drive 30 miles a day to work and would look at gas prices on my way in so I would know where to stop on my way home because it was usually cheaper at the local stores. I had a co-worker who did my drive once a week, so I would tell him which gas station was cheapest that day.
He always told me that it didn’t matter, he was going to have to buy gas anyhow so he didn’t pay attention to how much it cost. I always asked him why he would choose to pay more money when he could just fill up that one day a week at the cheap place, but he never seemed to have an answer.
Back in the 70’s, gas was going at the unheard of price around 73 cents per gallon. But some places it was 3 or 4 cents higher or lower. I used to drive up and down the main drag looking for the lowest price. Man I was dumb. Spend 45 minutes to save maybe one dollar.
My wife is like that when it comes to filling up the car. There’s a gas station she’s fond of that’s usually .03 cents cheaper than another one that’s nearby by, but I hate going to it because it’s often crowded and it’s a tight fit. Assuming I’m running on fumes, I’m going to save maybe .40 cents by going there and it just isn’t worth the headache.
She’s like that with some of her shopping too. We’ll pick up most of what we need at the grocery store, but she wants to stop at Target to get toiletries, laundry detergent, and a few other items. I indulge her of course, because I’ve been married long enough to know better, but whatever we’re saving isn’t worth the hassle of going to another store.
I don’t order food for delivery. This started a many years ago when pizza places started charging a delivery fee and I was still expected to tip. Especially now, when I’m in an excellent place financially speaking, I can’t bring myself to spend money getting food delivered via UberEats or Door Dash.
My logic for buying the cheapest gas is not the dollar or two I save on any one fill up. I imagine that if everyone patronized the lowest price vendor, it would cause the market to move lower. 11 cents today could start a trend lower that could add up to significant savings. I’m just doing my part as a smart consumer.
I’m a bit like that. I hate feeling like I’m being manipulated. If (generic) you were willing to sell me a memory stick for $18 yesterday, why not today? Telling me that something is a “limited time offer” is more likely to make me walk away than to jump at the chance to give you money.
I’ve seen house listings for $999,999. I know they probably do it so they’ll show up when someone searches with an upper limit of one-million, but it still feels rather chintzy to me.
Don’t get me started on the whole nine-tenths-of-a-cent thing in gas prices.
Because you didn’t buy yesterday. Same as you aren’t willing to pay $22 tomorrow even though that’s the usual price, because it was $18 yesterday.
There is no price ordained by Og. There is no ordained markup ordained by Og. IME buyers are about as willing to chop and change to get the lowest price as sellers are willing to chop and change to get the highest price.
Of course not, but the fundamental economics of your business don’t change by that much from one day to the next. You have a certain amount that you pay your suppliers, and your employees, and overhead (like rent). I understand that those costs will change over time; and if you need to change your prices in response, I understand. But if you say, in essence “today I will accept $2 profit for every widget I sell. Starting at midnight, I will insist on $4 profit per widget.” ; I don’t feel like I’m getting a deal, I feel like I’m being jerked around.
Nor do the fundamental economics of what a purchaser can pay yet the generic you was prepared to pay $22 yesterday, why not now? Nor are there any rules that what they charge must follow fundamental economics, nor are there any rules that what you are prepare to pay follow fundamental economics.
Why is only $2 profit per widget the right number just because that’s what I wanted yesterday? Why isn’t $4 OK? The only answer is “but yesterday you wanted less profit”. So? Maybe that was not enough (whatever “enough” means in this context) and I was selling myself short.
I get it that you feel jerked around and I’m the same, but I also feel it’s an illogical emotional reaction on my part that doesn’t actually make sense, unless I adopt the view that everyone must conform to certain standards of stability - but then I would be in breach of that standard, as a purchaser, all the time.
As an aside, there’s a certain youtuber I follow avidly who does teardowns of, amongst other things, old Soviet consumer electronics. I always think it’s amusing that due to its command economy, they have the price in rubles as part of the specification eg “240V, 24W, ₽12”.
Sure, it’s an emotional reaction. It doesn’t have to be logical or make sense.
I would argue the reverse, in fact. Setting some arbitrary deadline for a sale price has no logical basis, and can only be done to manipulate my emotions. If you get the opposite response than what you wanted, too bad.
Unlike many of the above posters, I was raised by a mother who, faced with two stacks of identical but differently priced cabbages in a greengrocer, would automatically buy the more expensive ones on the grounds that “more expensive” must equal “better”.
I try to resist, but in the supermarket, my instinct always points me at Tesco’s “Finest”, Sainsbury’s “TasteThe Difference”, or Aldi’s “Specially Selected”. Objectively I know that the quality of these heavily promoted "better " and more expensive products is often not that (or any) real improvement over the standard, but subjectively I still assume that more expensive = better.
My parents were Depression era kids but had done quite well for themselves. So we didn’t waste for waste’s sake, but we didn’t scrimp either. Price wasn’t really a consideration on what we bought. Avoidance of waste was a big part of how we used what we bought.
Having gotten married at age 63 to an long-time but long-distance friend of the same age, I can say our home economics integration has been an interesting experiment in opposites. We’re both highly mathematical, although she’s less financial than I am. We’re also well-off enough that any incremental consumer spending simply does not matter.
I’d summarize it as
I’m penny wise and pound foolish
She’s penny foolish and pound wise
I cringe every time we go grocery shopping because she buys the most expensive feature-rich laundry detergent pods. And the name brand fabric softener, and the name brand dryer sheets (!?!) and … Then proceeds to use 2 or 3x the amount actually needed because the package (surprise, surprise!) recommends that. A single load of her laundry takes a dollar’s worth of supplies and even though the machine is large, her “large” loads are tiny because stuff needs to be carefully washed separately under different washer settings for reasons that allegedly preserve the longevity of her clothes. She prefers well-built clothes, not the flimsy single-use crap some women wear.
My idea of laundry is buy the cheapest loose powder detergent in the bulk box, use 1/3rd to 1/4th of the amount the box recommends since we have an HE machine, and run a truly full washer load of nearly everything together. My cost per load is about $0.05; about one twentieth of hers. And I did laundry for 30 years for a man and a woman on that basis without ill effect. Not like I’m a slovenly clueless bachelor with no idea what he’s doing around the house.
On and on for every household task including cooking. One shudders to think how store-brand canned tomatoes might ruin her marinara. Funny, but my marinara is just fine with store brand. Lights on for hours in an empty room? Her: But of course. Me? Of course not. etc.
OTOH, I have spent about 5x what she has on nice clothes since we got married. And 4x on cars. When we go out to eat together, her share of the bill is usually about 1/4th and mine is 3/4ths. And it goes up from there. She instinctively shies away from expensive large purchases, even if that’s just a fancy dress for a fancy occasion; she’ll find a way to get something equivalent for 1/10th the price on sale elsewhere. Or do without.
Who’s being economical and who’s being foolish? Damn good question.
The fundamental economics usually don’t change rapidly from day to day, but other considerations may. Providing a product at an usually low price may serve promotional purposes, such as introducing customers to a new store or to the product itself, in the hope that customers will buy more product in the future, or other products, or induce their friends to do so. For that reason a seller may choose to offer a product at a price that’s too low to be sustainable, but only do it for a limited time. On other occasions a particular item might be discounted just to clear out inventory, in which case it will be limited to available supplies rather than time-limited. Sometimes these are good opportunities for the buyer, and automatically feeling like you’re being jerked around isn’t always the best reaction.
That said, this is part of the reason that Amazon pricing sometimes pisses me off – prices can change with no apparent rhyme or reason, acting more like a particularly volatile stock market than cost-plus retail markups. Even worse are some third-party sellers whose prices are just simply blatant ripoffs, and are clearly based on hoping for a few buyers who simply have no idea of the product’s general availability for a fraction of the price. Amazon has worked hard to establish a reputation for generally good customer service, but blew it with its opaque pricing policies, and especially by collaborating with crooked resellers.
So, how the particular deal in the OP worked out. I bought two two-packs of the drives at the higher price anyway. I also bought two $10 drives that were in a design I didn’t really like.
Now before the $9/$11 and $10 drives showed up, what I had been planning to buy was some Micro Center drives in a design that I like a lot, a line in a compact translucent case with a red activity light inside that comes in different colors for different capacities. I did have a 256 GB one of those (that cost $26 a few years back) but misplaced it. (I also have a five-pack of the 64 GB model.) Up until recently Amazon had the 256 at $40 for two, $35 a pair with Amazon Prime. But when I was doing my shopping a couple of days ago the Prime discount was no longer available, so the drives were fully double the price of the cheapest (non-fake) 256 GB drives. But after some debate I ordered a pair anyway because I really do like the design. (Now, two days later, the $5 Prime discount is available again.)
4 @ $11 each, 4.3 cents per GB
2 @ $10 each, 3.9 cents per GB
2 @ $20 each, 7.8 cents per GB
Average $13 each, 5.0 cents per GB
They have all arrived now. I don’t dislike the swinging metal cover of the $10 drives like I thought I would, what looked pretty flimsy in the photos is actually well built (though the cover doesn’t fit snugly over the port when closed and therefore isn’t actually any protection against getting debris in it). The $9 to $11 drives have slide-on port caps, but they don’t fit on to the back of the drive, making them extremely easy to lose. Both designs have visible drive activity lights in them even though the cases otherwise seem opaque. Neither drive design is perfect but neither is horrible, so it is a toss-up for which I prefer. The Micro Center design is better than both. Besides the colors/transparency (which is a matter of taste) the Micro Center drives have port caps that “click” lock into place over the port and over the back when the drive is in use, making them harder to lose. I would rather have had all eight drives in the Micro Center design, but not enough to wish I had paid double the price for all the others.
(I haven’t done any test to gauge differences in actual read/write performance of the drives.)
And then there’s the price of “art”. We were in Ligonier on Saturday, browsing at some of the galleries. My gf saw this bench that she thought would look perfect by our pond. I guessed it would be $400, and she laughed. It’s art, so you have to consider that. She told me it was probably worth $1000.00, but that she really liked it and decided she could go as high as $1500.00
We found the owner of the gallery (a very cool lady) and asked her about the butterfly bench. She rolled her eyes. She asked my gf what she’d be willing to pay and she told her $1500. The gallery owner told her that’s exactly what it should be priced at and it would sell. She told us the artist wants $4850, firm. Oh well, no bench for us.
