I checked merchandise in for years and I saw the cost on everything I checked in. The specially marked items where actually sold to the store at a discount to us to pass on the savings to the customer. Stores that don’t pass on the savings are not holding to their purchase agreement with the seller that gave them a promotional price to sell it cheaper. Unless you were starving I say leave them sit on their merchandise, and call up the product manufacturer to complain. The manufacturer will often like to know about this, just like they want to know if someplace is selling outdated or damaged product. I’ve seen reps rip somebody a new asshole and pull all the old damaged food product from the shelves, while calling their regional boss. The reaction will of course depend on the contracts between the manufacturer and retailer.
I find this whole OP filled with incomprehensibility. The OPer storming out over 16 cents…the clerk briningng the manager over…the manager being so adamant (even if he was technically correct). And most mind-boggingly to me, that the OPer felt it was worth writing about.
You would not believe how common this is, actually. When I used to work customer service for a major snack food manufacturer and one of the products we sold was a canned cheese dip in various flavors. We had to have a scripted explanation for people about how cheese can’t be exposed to air for more than a few minutes or it will break down into a watery consistency (I know, it is a pathetic excuse, but the people calling weren’t exactly the sharpest crayons in the box) because they were licking the spoon they were using in the cheese and leaving traces of saliva to start digesting the cheese in the fridge overnight. If you told them the truth they got really offended, like you were telling them they were gross or something when in reality they were just not very observant.
Eh. I written more mundane and pointless when there’s a slow day at the office.
Okay, a MSRP which is not contradicted by a store-marked price** is** “an advertised price” – it’s a price clearly stated on an item which the vendor is holding out for sale to the general public. Yes, he has the right to charge a higher or lower price – by marking it. If he chooses not to do so, he is committing consumer fraud by charging a different price at the register. And it doesn’t matter if that different price is precoded into the register at the store or corporately – corporate policy does not override the rule of law.
Second, It’s Not Rocket Surgery was quite clear that he did not walk off in a huff – he simply refused to continue the transaction at the price the store was willing to sell for, and walked away, in no way except dollar amount any different from declining to buy a used car at the price the dealership is willing to sell for.
That said, I have two examples from personal experience where a price over MSRP is marked, charged, and willingly paid by the consumers. First, the Sunday New York Times is available on Sunday in my old home town, 300 miles from New York City. It is trucked in, and every Sunday Times weighs about a kilo if not more. Several hundred of them will mass up to a ton or so, with consequent hauling costs in gas or diesel fuel, driver’s wages, truck maintenance, etc. So the arrangement has been that the retail price ($1.50 when last I encountered it) is X’ed out and a price 50 cents higher ($2.00 then) is charged to cover express freight costs, with Times management, distributor, retailers, and customers all buying into the surcharge.
Second, we live in a crossroads hamlet on the edge of a metropolitan area. Nearest supermarkets are five, seven, and eight miles away in three directions. The town has two general stores. One store will stock whatever his regular clientele will buy, but on the understanding that he’s entitled to a markup to turn a profit – if he has to buy it at retail price for resale, he will price it 15%-25% above that to cover his overhead. You’re free to either drive or walk 1/4 mile and pay the price he charges as a convenience to his customers, or drive the distance to the supermarket and buy it at their retail price. We all consider that fair around town.
It wasn’t just the 16 cents. It’s the principle of the thing. If you don’t see the item marked otherwise and you get to the checkout and expect to pay what is marked on the item and then get charged more…you’d be ok with that? What is your threshold…a quarter? 50 cents? some percentage of the items worth? If there wasn’t already a law against this kind of thing every store in the world would charge a few cents more than the marked price to boost their profits and you could never comparison shop.
It’s a crummy store policy to do this to begin with and even crummier not to remedy it in favor of the costumer when called on it.
Extremely pitable.
Back in the dim, distant days before the internet was in common use (early 1990s), i lived in Vancouver.
It was very difficult to get news about my home country during that time. There was, however, one newsagent in the city that specialized in foreign newspapers, and each week they would carry the Saturday edition (the BIG one of the week) of the Sydney Morning Herald. It usually arrived on Wednesday or Thursday, so the news was only a few days out of date.
I paid $C12.50 for a newspaper that, in Sydney, would have cost me $A1.00.
It depends. In this case, I’d suck it up and be on my way. Yeah, it’s probably not fair at all. And it may be the case that a lot of people are getting shafted out of a few cents, if one price is advertised and another is the actual price.
But the OP has his/her own principles, much like I have my own. One of them is that a lengthy discussion and subsequent huffing is worth a lot more in terms of my time and effort than 16 cents. If I even noticed such a discrepancy, my brain would probably process, in short order:
- Gosh, that’s 4 cents higher than the advertised price…
- Is it going to cost me more than 4 cents in terms of gas and time to go find a store that sells them at the price they adverise?
- Is the pie worth 79 cents to me, even if advertised at 75?
- How dare they!
- Oops, I’m holding the line up by thinking too long. Hand, grab plastic. Swipe.
I don’t know where my breaking point is; probably one of those “you have to be there” kind of things. It’s Not Rocket Surgery! just returned yesterday to tell us that they weren’t marked at 79 cents, but I can’t see myself even being bothered to bring it up to the clerk over 4 cents. Then again, I never take the marked MSRP for granted–even if it’s the only displayed price, I never consider it an absolute. My assumption at the register would have been “oh, they’re selling these for 79 cents, not the MSRP,” but YMMV.
If I really felt like being a dick to the cashier, who had nothing to do with the pricing and labeling, I’d ask them to go point out to me where their 79 cent price is posted.
Some things in life are worth getting worked up about; this is not.
No gas was used in the pursuit of this information. The store is literally across the street from my office. Only calories and time were expended. And it has been pretty interesting to me to ask this question to see the various Doper responses. But I never really had a reaction I would characterize as “How dare they!” Had I reacted that way, I would have gone back to the display the first time, to see if any prices were posted. My reaction was more like “Hmmm, the staff seems very invested in selling this item for the price in their system. Most places wouldn’t put up a fight over such a minor issue, and I see no reason to reward them for doing so. I don’t really need those pies, so kthanxbye!”
I never got worked up, but I was curious to see what Dopers thought about a store that was absolutely ready to do battle over 4 cents/pie. And this store was obviously unyielding over this incredibly minor issue. I personally view it as a penny-pinching attitude that probably carries over to other, more expensive store items. The store inadvertently revealed their real attitude regarding customers, and it’s that attitude that I don’t care to support, in any form.
The money amount is not the issue.
They seem very invested in selling this item for the price in their system because most business I know of aren’t in the business of haggling with customers. They set a price; you like it, you buy it. If you don’t, someone else will. To the store, you’re not a guy standing up for principle – you’re a guy trying to barter over the price of a good.
The attitude that they don’t want to barter over their prices? Um… yeah, welcome to the US. I’d hardly call it pennypinching to respond in a “no, I’m sorry, but this is the firm price” manner.
The store advertises one price, but then charges a higher price at the checkout, leaving it to the unsuspecting customer to spot the difference. That is false advertising.
The store’s clerk and manager are advised of this, but then rather than stop their practice of false advertising, on subsequent days they intentionally continue to charge a higher price at the checkout, leaving it to the unsuspecting customer to spot the difference. That is fraud.
I’m eating at this very moment a Hershey bar I bought at CVS, and the only price on it is 2/$1, printed by the manufacturer. It does not say ‘MSRP’. It is the price. If she had tried charging me more, I could have gotten it for free plus a nickel back (10%) if I felt like haggling. This is how it works in New York, I don’t know about elsewhere.
The cashiers in most stores, I think, have the power to change prices. Just unring it and enter manually, that’s what I did.
The clerks at my drugstore are not empowered to change the scanned price.
I once purchased a rather expensive item at my drugstore, I think it was a large silk plant tagged at $49.99.
When the cashier scanned it the price came up at $3.99 and the item scanned as skin lotion or something irrelevant and obviously wrong.
Of course, I pointed this out to the cashier and she basically shrugged and told me it was my lucky day… she couldn’t correct the error and there was no mechanism in place for me to pay anything other than the scanned price…oh well.
A great hero you are Rocket!
Sure, it’s only 4¢ on the pies now, but the next thing you know gum is up a nickel! Dear Og, won’t someone please think of the Chicklets?
Possibly they have the ability. In most cases, though, I am sure that the manager/owner of the store would regard this as fraud, and cause for firing.
In fact it would be illegal for a manufacturer or distributor to try to force a retailer to sell at any price.
I suppose the OP also insists on paying the suggested price when it is HIGHER. Out of principle, of course.
It would? Do you have any evidence of the particular law that would apply in this case?
I would have thought that it would be perfectly legal for a manufacturer and a retailer to engage in a contract whereby the retailer agrees to sell the manufacturer’s item at a certain price, and whereby the manufacturer reserves the right to refuse to sell to the retailer if the retailer fails to abide by the manufacturer’s selling price.
I guess it’s possible that some jurisdictions might prohibit such contracts on the basis of some sort of restraint-of-trade law, but i’d like to see some evidence that this is, in fact, the case.
This, of course, completely misses the issue that laws against bait-and-switch pricing are designed to address. You are not meant to advertise one price and then charge a higher price, precisely because it deceives and disadvantages the customer.
Also, i love how some people are specifically ignoring the fact that the OP went back to the store and found that there is no price on the item other than the one printed by the manufacturer. If the store had placed their own pricing on the shelf, or on the packaging itself, i wouldn’t have a problem with them charging more than MSRP. But when MSRP is the ONLY price the customer sees, then the customer has a right to expect that this is the price of the item.
The Sherman Antitrust Act. I just found out the ban, which was absolute, has been made somewhat more flexible.
Thanks.
I was aware of the Act, though, and it seems to me that your link doesn’t quite address the issue we’re dealing with here.
Your previous post said:
Bolding mine.
But in this thread we’ve been talking about manufacturers setting maximum prices that retailers could charge, and even the NYT article says only that the Supreme Court decision overturned a ban on setting minimum prices. Surely you can see that setting a maximum price does not have the same implications, in terms of the sort of anti-competitive behavior that Sherman was designed to prevent, as setting a minimum price?
The Sherman act seeks to prevent restrictions on competition and any restriction on the price a retailer could charge would be illegal. It mostly comes up when manufacturers or distributors have tried to keep prices high by forcing minimum retail prices but in fact it applies to any restriction. Freedom of trade and all that.
I am aware that there are ways of getting around this somewhat. For example, a manufacturer cannot prevent a retailer from selling below a certain price but they can get the retailer to voluntarily abstain from advertising prices below a certain floor price by offering something in exchange. Then you get ads which say “call for price” or “price 2.99 - Major national Brand we cannot mention because the price is so low” and similar things.
In principle the Sherman act is aimed at fomenting competition and forbids restrictions on prices, bundling, etc. In practice we all know, and especially Microsoft, that it is not impossible to get around it.
And I just want to add Little Debbies are a favorite food of mine and I still have not forgiven my old girlfriend who used to make fun of me because I liked them and she derogatively called them “junk food”. Now she’s married to some poor schmuck while I can still enjoy a fresh Little Debbie every day.