I’m in the market for a lower cost alternative to traditional personal watercraft (PWC’s), and the YouTube algorithm has seen fit to show me these electric mini boats from China that the YouTuber ordered through websites like Temu. I looked for such vessels from American manufacturers and found one that caught my eye. Except the retailer is keeping the price a secret from me. I have to fill out a form.
This type of business model irks me on two levels. On the first level, it seems they’re trying to gatekeep their product from customers with less money to spend; the old, “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” model employed by snooty jewelry stores and botiques and such. And on the second level, I don’t appreciate having to volunteer myself to be a mark (by providing my phone number so a salesman can call and give me the hard sell).
Give me the price up front, or I take my custom elsewhere. Bottom line.
That never bothered me. I appreciate it when a vendor advertises ahead of time that they are a terrible business that I don’t want to engage in a transaction with.
Can we expand this pitting a bit to include websites that don’t tell you a ‘real’ price - looking at you airlines; even business people on a day trip usually take a laptop with them, which means a carry on bag of some sort. @#$%& budget airlines (& the legacy ones who more & more mirror their model)
Make that price upfront plus shipping costs. Too many times I am quoted a ridiculously low price and the shipping costs are only released after you giving with the personal info.
Counterexample: When you have to add the item to your cart to see the price, it means it’s such a screaming good deal that the contract with the manufacturer won’t allow them to advertise that low of a price. You have to add it to your cart so that it’s no longer an advertisement, but a price quote or whatever. It also means that item is about to go out of inventory for one reason or another, so y’best act quick if you want it.
Just be glad the marketing system of some bioscience stuff hasn’t got more widespread; if you look at the website without logging in, you can get a quote for around £100 per item. If you have an account registered with them, it’s less than £5 each, typically around £2. A 95-98% discount discount.
Almost no-one is buying this stuff without having an account, because it’s useless without a bunch of other very expensive kit and they make it easy to get an account. I have no idea why they have to do this whole dance around the prices. Nearly had a heart attack the first time I had to go buy some myself and I got a quote of half my remaining student project budget, when it was actually under £20.
Yeh. I have seen “Hurry! There is only (insert small number) left!” on a website, and the number doesn’t change usually until the scam is over and the website has disappeared… along with your money.
Depends on the website. I have bought from legit sites that have said “one left” in my size, and after I purchased it that changed to “Sold Out.” (And looking again later it still was Sold Out so they did not add more.)
I’ve seen what Chessic Sense describes on sites for reputable stores, including one with many brick-and-mortar stores (a Best Buy). I put the item in my cart and the price was indeed lower than I would expect for the item.
@Chronos: a listing on a website isn’t “in store.”
Now of course there will be sites that fake it, but that most likely works because it is a real thing that can happen.
As for the rest: I join the Pitting. Both of not showing the price at all, or hiding the real price. I generally won’t shop somewhere if I can’t get even the shipping prices without giving them info. (And if I do give in and give info, it will be fake.)
Maybe that was the case once, but now the fakers so far outnumber the real thing that I think most folks have now forgotten that the real thing ever existed. It’s like the old trope of a guy selling “Rolexes” from a trenchcoat on the street corner: Nowadays, everyone just takes it for granted that they’re fake. That’s the scam that Malcolm X is described as using in his biography. But it worked for Malcolm X because, in his time, the default assumption was that they were real and stolen.
Do you have a cite for that? I tried to find one and couldn’t. He did go to prison for trying to pick up a stolen watch from a pawn shop to take it for repairs but couldn’t find anything about a history of selling multiples of watches from a trenchant.
He’s a native son of my home state and should only be defamed if he deserves it.
Mrs. Odesio often runs into the same problem when trying to look at a restaurant’s menu. These websites force her to start ordering something before she can even peruse the menu and it irks her to no end. Certainly not all restaurants do this, but it comes up once in a while.
It’s been a long time since I read the book, so I don’t remember precisely when in his life it was. But the point was that it was perfectly legal: He never actually said that the watches and such were real (he just let people draw their own incorrect conclusions), and he had a proper vender’s license and whatever other paperwork was needed. IIRC, one of his friends or relatives set him up with it as a favor, because he needed to not get in trouble with the law, but also, well, needed a way to make a living.
It might not have been literally a trenchcoat; that’s just the way the trope usually manifests nowadays.