This brings to mind a story about my first WestPac, in 1984. I was walking in Olongapo City, Subic Bay, with my buddy Gamal. It was about time for us to be heading back to the boat, so he hailed the next jitney we saw. It’s relevant to the story that the exchange rate at the time was about five cents American to the peso. In fact, we had each drunk quite a few bottles of San Miguel at five pesos a pop (which was why we didn’t particularly feel like walking back to the docks.
So the jitney driver stops, and Gamal asks how much for a ride to the base. “Twenty pesos” says the driver. Ever the haggler, Gamal acts offended to be offered such an expensive ride. “No, that’s way too much! I’ll give you a dollar!”
And that’s the story of how I learned from my friend Gamal how to haggle in a foreign land.
I was just looking at TP at Walmart yesterday and saw another price comparison – Scott brand was showing the unit price as per “10-sheet (or maybe it was 100-sheet) count.” I could see the currency amounts on each tag but couldn’t figure out what unit it was for until I looked at the really teeny print underneath. On their website, they use varying units of measurement - some are by the square foot, others are “each.” Each what? It isn’t by the roll (that would be way too easy). I tried the math several different ways and can’t get to the same unit price.
We got a grocery order pickup from WallyWorld yesterday. As I’m placing the order, I’m seeing “out of stock” for many items. Then, when I went to check out, I got a few more “out of stock” notifications. Back to shop some more, I look for replacement items. Different sizes, different brands, different containers. I finally check out, and everything apparently goes through.
Mr VOW makes the pickup, and as we’re unloading at home, I get the strange sensation I’m seeing DOUBLE. It turns out, stuff that was supposedly “out of stock” apparently was in stock.
In the UK at least, fizzy drinks - coke, lemonade, ginger beer etc - are waaay cheaper in bigger bottles. The bottles are inconvenient; they don’t fit in my fridge, they go flat sooner, and I like cans. I know I’m paying more per litre for cans and in general I’d also pay more per litre for a smaller plastic bottle (1l) too.
If I’d ordered three 2l bottles of Sprite and got roughly the same amount in cans, they wouldn’t be allowed to substitute it without explicitly asking me, but they also wouldn’t be allowed to charge me more than the original amount I agreed to. Basically, I can say yes, gimme the Sprite at 1/3 of the price, but they can’t ask me for the original price of the cans of Sprite.
This is not just about allowing substitutions; even if you allow substitutions you can’t be given one that costs more unless they check with you on the doorstep and have to sign off on that specific substitution, not just the overall order.
For the supermarkets it works out fairly well, because you get the occasional customer who’s pleased about a good deal. And they get to have really quick delivery times. If they expected their delivery guys to argue with customers about whether the customer should pay more for an item slightly different to what they ordered, they’d miss the next delivery slot.
Got a load of free salmon and avocados recently, after realising it wasn’t in my order as we took everything in - I noticed it quickly and let the delivery guy know before he left. He said to keep it because they wouldn’t be able to sell it to anyone else anyway, after it had been delivered to me already.
If he hadn’t have still been there, I wouldn’t have reported it, because the supermarket can take the hit, but the person who mis-packed might get into trouble.
Several years ago I had my dad pick out a new grill for father’s day from WalMart. We checked out from the garden section. Only us and the cashier were back there, so it wasn’t crazy, but in the process of checking out somehow it came up that we had wanted a grill with different wheels. The cashier swapped out, but didn’t re-scan (so we paid for the first grill). He had said something about being the same grill just different years.
Getting it home and assembling it, start getting suspicious and realize we got a nicer and more expensive grill than intended. I went back to customer service the next day, explained what happened, and wanted to pay the difference. The customer service guy Did Not Care about the extra $50-100 I owed WalMart. I couldn’t pay it. So, no, they don’t care about the soda.
Since this thread has been zombified by a spammer, I may as well offer my take on this as a grocery store worker; it’s quite possible that it’s an issue of volume.
For example, most of the time at my store, the 24-count packages of Kraft Singles are cheaper by a good 50-60 cents than the 16-count packages, despite them being larger. This is because we don’t sell much of the smaller packs and so our warehouse gets them at full price, but we sell a LOT of the larger packs, so Kraft gives us a volume discount for making large purchases and we’re able to pass that savings on. Chances are that it’s the same with the Iams at your store; cats only eat a few ounces of food per day, so most cat owners, who probably have 1-2 cats, buy small bags because a large bag would go stale before the cats go through it, and therefore the store gets a discount on those bags whereas they pay full price for the large ones, which are preferred by the minority who have 3 or more cats.
But that’s a chicken-and-egg thing. If the 24-ct are priced more cheaply, then of course most people are going to buy those over the more expensive 16-ct product.
I suppose. I use it as an example because it’s the one that customers question me about most often, because they’re sure it must be a mistake and we’ve put the price tags in the wrong places.
The point is that higher movement = a lower purchase price from the manufacturer/distributor. “How do we do it? VOLUME! VOLUME! VOLUME!”
We ordered delivery from Walmart this morning-- usually we get Amazon fresh for delivery, but I needed something specific that only Walmart carries. We ordered a few chewies for the dog, including a pig ear (yuck). They were out of pig ears, so they substituted a bag of bacon bits, the kind gentiles put on salads. It’s a very large bag.
We got a good laugh out of it, and they did refund our money. I’ll drop the bacon bits off the next time we donate to a food pantry, or the mail carrier is collecting non-perishables.
20-ounce bottles are one of the major products that people buy when they’re thirsty and want something to drink RIGHT NOW. This is the sort of thing that is often kept in the small refrigerators by the checkouts. In other words, you’re paying for the convenience factor.
That’s one of occasions I would probably not totally laugh it off TBH - the salt content would be too high for dogs. It’s not a suitable replacement for dog treats.