Retail crap that's pissing me off

The BBQ Pit
1

Just to get it out of the way, I fully understand that stuff like this has been and continues to go on all the time. I just happen to have noticed a lot of it lately, and it’s irritating me. Hence the thread.

First example: my wife is picky about her laundry soap. She only likes one kind. Our local warehouse store sells it in big buckets, so I went and got some a few weeks ago. When I picked up the bucket and put it in my cart, I thought, “Hmm, that feels lighter than usual.” When I got home, I checked the weight against the last bucket I had bought. Sure enough, the newest bucket was 14.5 pounds, while the old bucket was 16.5. The buckets are exactly the same size. Now, we’ve been buying this for years, and we save a lot of the buckets for use around the house, so I went out to the garage and found a really old bucket, which was 19.5 pounds. We’ve lived here for less than four years, and in that time, the bucket has gone from 20 to 15 pounds. That’s a 25% reduction in product. It goes without saying that the price hasn’t dropped one penny. If anything, I’d bet it’s gone up.

Second example: A small bag of chocolate chips is 2 cups. Always has been. No need to measure it out - one bag, 2 cups. Except now they’re not. The last bag I opened had 1 3/4 cups. Grrr.

Third example: At the checkout counter of our local grocery store the other day, there was a sign announcing that with their ripoff…err…loyalty card (and THAT’S another Pit thread all together), you could get ten cents off a gallon of gas for every hundred dollars you spend! Great news, right? Sounds like a good deal! Except for the tiny fact, not mentioned on the sign, that this program has been in place for years, and until now, we got ten cents off for every fifty bucks we spent. So they reduce the discount by half, and then have the gall to post these perky little fliers telling us how lucky we are to be shopping at such a wonderful store.

I know this will never end. I know it’s an inevitable consequence of our economic system. I know it’s up to me to keep my eyes open and avoid being ripped off. But, dammit, I have enough shit going on in my life. I’m TIRED of feeling like everyone and everything I encounter in an average day is out to screw me over. You need to raise your prices? Fine, raise your prices. I will deal with that. But this stupid bullshit sneaky-ass underhanded twattery annoys the ever-loving FUCK out of me.

2

Hear, hear.

3

I’m still annoyed that a half gallon of ice cream doesn’t contain a half gallon of ice cream.

But yes, I’m with you. It’s not even the parsimony so much, it’s the *hiding *it by not changing the package, or by changing the package in such a way that it’s designed to hide the change (like the 1.5 quart ice cream containers that are trapezoids, so the lid is as high and as large as the half gallon blocks), or blazon the product with the supposed benefits to me of them taking my money for less stuff in return.

4

What annoys me about that is the reduced quantity inside the packaging can throw off proportions in your recipe.

5

And welcome to the world of the 12-ounce pound of bacon and the 30-ounce quart of mayonnaise.

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Actually the worst part of the entire thing is that there isn’t a company that’s NOT doing it so we can’t even vote with our pocket books.

Fuckers.

7

I used to vote with my pocket book on the ice cream and mayo, by purchasing only the store brands. Then the store brands fucking went and followed suit.

I swear, when I win the lottery, I’m getting my financial ducks in a row first; then I’m heading out on safari. I’ll either bring back agreements from the responsible decision makers to revert to the old-sized portions, or I’ll have a stack of PELTS.

8

Pet food prices have sky rocketed in the past couple of years. Customers have fewer options with pet food than with people food, and I suspect stores are maintaining profits this way in order to keep other prices down.

At Wally World, a tiny can of cat food (the only kind my cats will eat) has gone from 43 cents to 58 cents. With the latest price increase, they stuck bright yellow placards all over the shelves proudly proclaiming the item is less than a dollar.

Another gripe: a few month ago I started a crochet project that involves making squares. A skein of the yarn made about 2 1/2 squares. Suddenly it was not enough to make two squares. The skein went from 2.5 ounces to 2 (same price of course). This is enormously annoying as I now have to piece bits of yarn together to finish my squares.

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  • 1

My meatloaf recipe has never been the same.:frowning:

10

I hate to be that guy, but, dude, chocolate chips have been in 12 oz bags for a while now. Maybe you’ve been buying a brand that until recently resisted the trend but I have several cookbooks of varying ages whose chocolate chip cookie recipes call for a 12 oz bag of chocolate chips.

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Is that a bag of chips with the recipe on the back? Is there any way to tell if they’ve modified it to take into consideration fewer chips, or are the cookies just slightly less chippy-y?

My first ninja!

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I don’t know. I don’t use the recipe on the bag.

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Well, the way I look at it things are getting lighter and less calorie laden at about the same rate I am getting older, weaker, and fatter so perhaps for me its a win win :slight_smile:

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And the 11.5 oz pound of coffee.

15

I wouldn’t know about that. I buy whole bean French Roast in 40-oz. bags.

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Net weight 37 oz.

17

Nailed it. Can I add to the stupid bullshit sneaky-ass underhanded twattery? Signs in grocery stores that proclaim:
"99 cents each!
If you buy 10 or more.

Also, signs proclaiming a fantastic deal, and somehow the wrong size or wrong product just happens to be right by that sign, so you grab the thing by the sign and find out your error when you check out.

I’m a very experienced shopper - if these things happened occasionally, I’d chalk it up to me not paying attention or the stocker not paying attention. It happens far too frequently to be anything but deliberate.

That’s one thing I hate about recipes that are created by US Americans - the tendency to give subjective measurements. A is a cup is a cup; a can of tomatoes can be any damned size.

18

How funny you should post this! I was just thinking about that very thing. It annoys the crap out of me. NOT that the company has to charge more for their product (though yeah, annoying), but that they think they’re so sneaky about it. For instance a jar of something or another that has a large concave bottom so that it looks as if it contains more product.

Just be honest. If you have to raise the price, raise the price, don’t stealthily keep reducing package sizes and appearances as if we’re stupid or something.

Grrrrrr!

19

It’s been a while since I bought ice cream, but I think Ben & Jerry’s is still sold in full-size pints. In fact they used to print “Still 16 Ounces!” on the lids, which is how I found out that other brands had switched to a 14-ounce “pint”. I prefer B&J’s anyway.

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Yeah, it would be truly awesome to bring integrity back to consumer protection, but in the age of predatory capitalism, I can’t see it happening.

Boston Pizza just introduced, boneless (all chicken breast) ‘wings’. Sheesh.

I think the ship sailed when we let burger companies advertise burgers with photos of burgers that in no way, shape or form, resemble anything they sell as a burger. We don’t let Chevy show you a Rolls Royce, on the tv.

And what about the ‘fine print’ on car ads especially. Are you shitting me? It’s way, way too small to read and scrolling by impossibly fast. How is that allowed?

And why are banks and Pay Day loans allowed to use ‘user/account fees’ to skirt the usury laws and as profit streams?

The saddest thing of all, we all pay, with our tax dollars, for huge agencies to protect us from just this kind of shit. All of which, have been gutted and politicized into uselessness. Most industry oversight boards, now must rely on funding, from the very groups they are supposed to oversee, to stay afloat. How sad, and both political parties, are equally to blame, in my mind.