In some stores, the impulse-buy items by the register are priced higher than the exact same item, elsewhere in the store. I noticed this once when I lost my razor and went to buy another one. I trekked all over the damn drugstore to find it, and was just about to slap myself on the forehead when I realized there were some at the registers, too. Then I realized that the one at the registers were priced 10% higher, and the code was different on it. The items were exactly the same. I checked the other stuff around the register, and they all had the same code suffix on the price tag.
I never buy anthing from the register racks anymore, because I can’t be bothered to check for a difference, and I’m not willing to be ripped off by the “convenience” of letting them sell me stuff right before I check out.
First, my local supermarket (Price Chopper) sell the 6-pack of those 250ml cans at C$2.99 – double the price of a 2L bottle that give you 500ML more. A six-pack of 710ML bottles, on the other hand, which is equivalent to a 12-pack of regular 355ML cans, runs for $3.99.
Then they introduced 355ML bottles. Because, y’know, you can’t re-close a can. For the priviledge of being able to save 100ML of pop for later they charge you $3.99 per six-pack – the same price as a 6-pack of bottles twice the size which, by curious coincidence, you can also re-close.
I’ve also noticed that lots of times, it’s cheaper per unit to buy the middle size than the large size. At my local supermrket, it’s cheaper to buy two 1-lb boxes of spaghetti than one 2-lb. box, for example.
Don’t know if this fits, but there’s also the practice of having an exclamation in big bold letters proclaiming “33% More!”, then in small print underneath “than 12 oz. sizes”. So it really is saying nothing, but tricks you into thinking you’re getting more.
For the first 8 yrs of his life, my dog ate Purina Hi-Pro kibble.
Until they decided that making the 40# bags 37.5# would be more convienient for the consumer. Thats right folks, buying dog food every 3-1/2 weeks is MUCH more convienient for me than buying it once a month. So much more convient, in fact, that I prefer to pay the same amount for less kibble.
The costco lamb & rice house brand comes in a 50# bag. Now that is about as much as I want to hump in from the car on my shoulder. That is the size I want.
Oh and the super expensive “premium” dog foods? My lab was the healthiest dog I knew for the first 13 yrs. of his life…and that is WAY beyond the average lifespan for that breed. These brands prey on owner guilt.
Anybody remember when a can of coffee actually weighed a pound? There was some malarkey 20+ years ago when they changed from 16 oz cans to 13 oz cans that the stuff was stronger, so you needed less to make a pot. Uh, sure…
On a product labeled light I call Brand A - 50% less fat in large bold print and small print under that “than Brand B’s regular product.”
Brand B happens to have a light product next to Brand A’s product though and it has less fat than Brand A’s product. Brand A has no bussiness comparing it’s self to a different brands disimilar product when Brand B makes an equivient product.
The companies that use the word butter in the name of a margerine and but it in large bold letters is my biggest pet peave.
They have out done themselves with a new product something like OLIVE OIL & Butter Blend. Very little butter and about 1% olive oil, almost pure margerine. Once again they make a miniscule or nonexistant ingredient part of the name. About the only item on the ingredients label after olive oil is salt. This is from memory, because I’ll never buy it, so I don’t have the package. Slight variations from the product label may have occured.
At least in Canada, “Extra strength Tylenol,” name or generic brand, is simply a 500mg pill, as opposed to 325 mg. If you buy the regular stuff and just take three pills instead of two, you still save money.
I was actually thinking of combos that CONTAIN Tylenol - specifically Robaxacet vs Extra Strength Robaxacet. Same amount of methocarbomol, just more acetaminophen. And I have enough of THAT lying around that I shouldn’t need to buy more for a couple more years.
ALL those dogfoods used to come in 50lb bags. The 40lb bags were the result of Subtle Customer Screwing.
I suspect that all the “Ultra” dish detergent is another form. “You only need 1/4 as much!”, so we can charge you more for the same amount!
Well, howinell do I get 1/4 of the drop or two I usually need? I’m paying more and using almost as much.
[side note]I just the other day saw a bottle of Dawn “non-ultra”. So I guess you can’t get just regular dish soap anymore, you can only get “non-ultra”. :rolleyes:
Store brands you can usually get pretty cheap these days. Zellers’ no-name store-brand extra strength acetaminophen is usualy something like $3 for a 100-pill bottle, which is a bargain compared to $7 for a comparable bottle of Tylenol. And the easy-to-swallows? Yeah, they pull the switcheroo there. About $8 for an 80-pill bottle. 20 fewer pills for more money with the only added benefit being a candy coating. Lovely. Solution? Two-pack Kirkland 250ct coated acetaminophen bottles at Costco for $10. Extra strength. Work every bit as well, last forever.
Store-brand cold medicine is also like that, though not quite to the same degree. Nyquil is like $8 for the smallest bottle, yet Pharma Plus’ own Rexall cold medication, which contains the same ingredients in the same dosages, is $6. It’s a little thinner but it’s taken in the same dosage as Nyquil and works just as well.
Am I the only one that has noticed the recent Exedrin BS? Extra Strength Excedrin has the exact same active ingredients as Excedrin Migraine. I would venture to guess the Tension Headache formulation is the same. To their credit, they all cost the same, to our detriment, we now have to have that much more space to carry the same product which leaves less space for other products (Oh, like Goody’s which I really wanted, but the shelves were so filled with clones I either couldn’t find it or they don’t carry it)
Laundry detergent is horrible about smooshing down quantities, they know damn good and well we will use the same amount of a powder/liquid regardless of what size container it came out of, ESPECIALLY if they put the same sized scoop in it.
In Australia, the NRMA (Automobile Association) will sell you a new battery of standard, heavy duty, and extra heavy duty varieties. I asked the guy what the difference was between the latter two, and his (honest) answer was, “Mate, it’s the same battery. You just get a longer warranty with the extra heavy duty”. So, it is a better deal, but it still strikes me as a bit dishonest.
Then there’s the classic airline ploy: “$20 fares available this Sunday!” Yeah sure. There’s three of them on the entire plane.
So we recently bought some liquid laundry detergent (some stores have stopped carrying the no-name powders).
The lid/measuring cup has three lines, marked “1”, “2”, and “3”. So you’d figure that 1 is for regular, 2 is for large or extra dirty, 3 is for large and extra dirty.
Unless you read the instructions, which explain that a regular load only needs to be filled half-way to the bottom (1) line.
Wonder how many people don’t read the instructions on laundry detergent that comes with a marked dispenser and use twice as much as they should, thereby only getting half the loads they paid for.