It’s pretty well known that forasmuch as a particular company might claim to care about their customers in myriad ways, at the end of the day it all comes down to the bottom line. Cashmoney. Greens. Cheddar. That, and not (always) the Hokey Pokey, is what it’s all about. So it seems as though through clever and subtle agents, some companies have come up with ways in which you screw you out of your dosh in ways you may not even realize, at least not right away.
This morning, for example. I was buying a bit of fruit for this morning; a nice tub of honeydew chunks (pre-measured and priced) and some seedless red grapes to nibble on. Now, let me preface this by explaining that I suck at approximating weight, especially when I haven’t had any recent frames of reference, such as when I’m shipping things from eBay sales. That’s why I got a postal scale, after all. So it was when I picked up a nice bag of grapes. It seemed nice and weighty, perhaps heavier than a pound, but maybe not enough to constitute an entire kilo. The sign above read, “$1.99/lb” in large, bold, white type. Below, in itty bitty type, read “$4.39/kg.” That’s pretty much SOP for every supermarket I’ve been to. So I figured I’d take it to one of those hanging scales every produce section has. But here’s how they screw you. In about half of the supermarkets I’ve been to, the scales make absolutely to mention of the units of measure they use. It’s just clock-faced with evenly spaced numbers around the circumference interspersed with smaller subdivisions in tenths. And the scale company’s name. And possibly some other miscellaneous bits like model and serial numbers. No mention at all of whether it was kilos or pounds. Still, I put the grapes on the scale. The needle pointed squarely at one.
Well, it could be a pound. Could be a kilo too, sonofabitch I dunno*. So I took my two items up to be paid for.
Turns out the scale measured in kilos after all.
No complaints of course – barring any material evidence to the contrary I had only myself to blame for not investigating further. But hell – though I had plenty of time left I still had to get to work and didn’t really feel like hunting a produce manager down and asking. But it just reminded me of just one more way in which the unobservant or careless can get screwed.
Take my local supermarket for example. I often buy their store-brand paper towels because they work, they’re inexpensive, and the pricier stuff doesn’t really offer enough to justify the difference in price, which is often double or even triple te cheap stuff. But the unwary shopper can easily get screwed on these. They have several sizes available you see, from two-packs to six and twelve pack family-size-type deals. In the two-packs, there are two types: Regular, which is 85 sheets, and “jumbo,” which is 170 sheets and priced exactly double plus one penny over the regulars. No, that’s not where the jolly rogering happens, that’s just a product of the “99s” – $0.79 vs. $1.59. You have to actally look at the measurements before you realize that while the jumbo pack might have twice the number of sheets (thus suggesting double the quantity), each sheet is actually slightly smaller than the ones in the regular pack such that, inch for inch, you end up getting about 10 sheets less per roll. Sure, it’s not much to get excited about but in principle it’s just really shady. And it’s so subtle that in all probability almost no one ever notices they’re getting screwed when they buy the jumbo pack.
So lets hear about other subtle ways in which you get bent over the couch whenever you’re out spending money. Ways the average person probably never catches on to – 'cos I’m sure most Dopers are fairly smart consumers who are capable of sniffing out the faint smell of sleaze emanating from some of the trickier dicks of marketing. Whatcha got?
