On the plus side, you provided lots of amusement to the staff of that store. They’ll have a ball mocking that jackass who doesn’t understand the fundamental basics of how a market works. Nicely done.
It’s not the 16 cents, it’s the principle. My corner store had cokes 2 for $2.22 (plus deposit). The lady tried to ring it higher. I challenged her, she stuck by her price, so I just got one. The customer behind me offered to pay the quarter or whatever it was, but I told her I had the money but wasn’t gonna be overcharged. This was a price campaign that was run all over town for months, every gas station and party store was charging this price (including this store depending on the cashier). There was a price sign hanging in the cooler and the item was the one described on the sign. I quit going there for months.
Well, there’s principle and then there’s pettiness. Sorry, but 16 cents falls squarely into the latter, IMO. When you give up the ability to make decisions based on circumstances and relegate yourself to blindly following principles, you’ve made yourself a slave to your own stubbornness. There’s nothing noble about that.
Ok, but it was 4 cents per snack cake. Dude had a snit over 4 cents per snack cake. A regular Rosa Parks, this guy.
That was the store price, not the manufacturer’s or producer’s suggested price. Rocket Surgery was using CVS as an intermediary, and the store was well within its rights to charge whatever the hell it wanted, whether it be 75 cents or 75 dollars, as it’s now their merchandise to sell.
In the OP’s case, there was no principle. The suggested price is not the retail price. The retail price is whatever the retailer says it is. No one has to pay it, but they aren’t being cheated just because a retailer goes a few cents over the suggested price. The OP seems to think he had some kind of legal entitlement to the suggested retail price. That’s just silly.
Welcome to the Over-The-Hill-Gang. Now get off my lawn!
Seriously, folks, ain’t it, you know, illegal (in the US at least) to advertise at one price and then charge a higher?
If the only indication of price readily viewable by the consumer (“Seriously, the price is listed on the hard drive! Just look closer! Can’t you read binary?”) is the MSRP printed on the package, aren’t retailers mandated by federal law to sell at that price?
It’s been a long time, but I seem to remember some Consumer Protection classes in school that said this kind of stuff: seller must sell at listed/advertised price, can’t “bait-and-switch,” etc.
Thn again, we’ve had four Republican presidents since I left High School. For all I know, the only protection consumers may have now is the right to fuck off and die.
A price printed on the package by the item manufacturer does not represent an advertised price by the retailer.
I don’t recall the OP saying the item had been advertised by the store at that price, and no, there is no law that says a retailer has to sell at the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.
Actually, it seems to me that the OP was simply deciding not to give the store his custom. Not once in this thread has the OP even alluded to the practice being illegal. In fact, the very last sentence of the OP seems to sum up his position quite nicely:
Was the OP being a dick by bringing a manager into a fight over 16 cents? That’s for you to decide.
But, contrary to your claim here, and to hajario’s claim that the OP “doesn’t understand the fundamental basics of how a market works,” it seems to me that It’s Not Rocket Surgery understands precisely how a market works. He understands that there is a price that you are willing to pay for a particular item, and if the store will not sell it to you for that price, then you leave the store without purchasing the item.
As for Sunrazor’s argument that the actual price charged by the store was probably clearly marked on the shelf (something he cannot know), the fact is that if i see packaging with a large, colorful “Reduced Price” or “Now only 75c” (or whatever) on it, i’m going to assume that this is the price the store is charging, and probably won’t even glance at the shelf.
I’m not arguing the store was obliged to sell it to him for 75c. But if i had arrived at the counter and been charged 79c, i probably would have been surprised too, and i probably would have (politely) pointed out to the clerk that the price is 75c. I’m not sure what i would have done after that; i doubt i would have got the manager involved, but i probably would have left the product and walked out of the store.
In my experience, when manufacturers run promotions like this, the reduced retail price often also involves a rebate or a lower wholesale price to the store. If large chains like CVS don’t want to honor these sorts of manufacturer policies, they shouldn’t stock the product.
You of course have ever right to spend your money as you like, but this kind of thinking is something I have no ability to comprehend. No way in hell I would inconvenience myself and some clerk by walking out of a store over 16 cents. I know people like this, and they boggle my mind.
What “behavior?” What did the store do that was inappropriate?
Um…no, the price was 79 cents. The manufacturer’s suggested price means absolutely nothing. Why do some people seem to be having difficulty understanding this? The MSRP is not “the price.” The price is whaever the retailer says it is.
And if a million customers were each overcharged 16 cents, that would still be OK and no one should complain? A store could make a lot of money by expecting no one to notice or bitch, and that’s fair, right?
The whole point here is that no one was overcharged. The store’s retail price was 4 cents higher than the manufacturer’s preprinted price. That is not the same thing.
Nobody was “overcharged” a cent.
You know, I would never do it either. And I am one of those folks that would be itching to pay the damn 16 cents to the annoying guy ahead of me. But, I think secretly, I appreciate the assholes that do stuff like this. Like mhendo says, the market works in a way that they charge what we are all willing to pay, usually.
16 cents isn’t a big deal, especially to someone like me, who never saves and spends on whatever I want with nary a thought to the future. Still, overall, I like the idea that prices may not skyrocket out of control at a shopkeeper’s whim.
You’re absolutely correct. It was posters other than the OP who didn’t understand the MSRP thing. Rocket was certainly within his rights to not want to purchase the cake for more than he wanted to pay. What he didn’t have to do was to be a dick to the employees, including the manager, who have no control over pricing.
But, it isn’t these assholes who regulate the prices; they are simply too rare to make a significant difference one way or the other. It’s the sum total of all consumers, the majority of whom will simply shop elsewhere if prices at one store become unbearable. That store will then either lower their prices to stay competitive, or else go out of business entirely.
I had assumed from context in the OP that the only indication of price was the MSRP listed on the box. No shelf label, no price-sticker affixed by the store.
Dog: I never said/implied there was a law forcing retailer to sell at MSRP. Try reading what I actually wrote, which was:
Something about fair labelling/pricing practices under consumer protection is stirring in the back of my mind, but I’m not going to go hunting for it today.
Basically: if a retailer lists a price (whether it’s printed by the manufacturer on the product’s package directly, or affixed by the retailer on a sticker, or by the retailer on a shelf-label) then they are obligated to sell at that listed price. They cannot charge a higher price at the point-of-sale than the listed/advertised price.
If there’s a price conflict through multiple price labels (as may actually be the case in the OP), then I agree that the retailer is authorized to declare which price is the correct out of the conflicting labels.
Thing is, though, how else do you let a store know that you dislike their pricing policies?
I saw no evidence that the OP was a dick, just that he questioned the method of pricing used by the store. If i think, for whatever reason, that a store has done something wrong, or something that i don’t like as a customer, then the only way to change things is to let the store know of my dissatisfaction. And in most cases, the first line of contact in such situations is the cashier, then the manager.
I mean, i suppose i could make my first step a letter to corporate head office, but that seems like overkill for something as minor as this. Often, small misunderstandings can be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties at the cashier or supervisor level. And it’s here that i take issue with your claim that the employees have no control over pricing. It’s true that store managers probably don’t set pricing policies, but they are often the people who oversee the changes to the barcode scanners in their store, which reflect pricing changes. And even in cases where these things are done on a system-wide level, it doesn’t mean that there can’t be mistakes.
For example, how was the OP to know that the price discrepancy was not simply an error in coding the register? I’ve had cases before where a different price shows up on the register than on the shelf, and when i bring it to the attention of the cashier, they get a manager and correct the discrepancy. There can also be shelf/product pricing differences that are accidental. At Trader Joe’s a while ago, the parmesan cheese i was buying showed as $12.99 a pound on the packaging, but $11.99 on the shelf. I had looked only at the shelf price, and was surprised when i arrived at the cashier and was charged 12.99. They were happy to learn of the problem, and corrected the price in my favor.
Thing is, if every customer lets a 16c, or a 23c, or a 39c issue slide because they don’t want to hassle the minimum-wage help or the poorly-paid manager, the only people who get screwed in the end are the customers, and the only people that benefit are the people who run these large supermarket chains.