There was a boy who worked in the produce section of a super market. A man came in and asked to buy half a head of lettuce. The boy told him that they only sold whole heads of lettuce, but the man replied that he did not need a whole head, only half. The boy explained that he would have to ask the manager and so he walked into the back room and said, “There is some asshole out there who wants to buy only a half a head of lettuce.” As he finished saying this, he turned around to find the man standing right behind him, so he quickly added, “And this fine gentleman has agreed to buy the other half.” The manager okays the request and the man went on his way.
Later on the manager said to the boy, “You almost got yourself in a lot of trouble earlier, but I must say I was impressed with the way you got out of it. You think on your feet and we like that around here. Where are you from, son?” The boy replied, “Minnesota, sir.” “Oh, really? Why did you leave Minnesota?” inquired the manager. The boy replied, “They’re all just whores and hockey players up there.” “My wife is from Minnesota”, exclaimed the manager.
The boy instantly replied, “Really! What team did she play for?”
Same here in Chicago in most places. 2 for a dollar is exactly the same as 50 cents each item. There are a few exceptions, and when that happens they are noted explicitly on the sign. Walgreens is one place where they typically will have something that says “2/$3.00 or $1.99 for one” or something to that effect. At our local supermarket, Jewel, most of the time 2 for $1 means 50 cents each, but sometimes they do have signs, (like for soda), where it’s “5 for $5, must buy 5” and then a unit price given for if you don’t buy five.
A BOGO, though, does not mean you can buy one for half price. It’s buy one, get one. You’ll notice it at the check out that the first item rings up at full price. When you scan the second item, that one rings up at full price and then the price is immediately subtracted from it in the next line.
Here’s an important detail: A typical modern cash register is a computer with a database listing all the items and the price for each. So the cashier scans an item and the register automatically looks up the price. And cash registers can support a variety of pricing structures.
Thus, a “BOGO” can be set up in various ways, at the discretion of the merchant. A “2 for price of 1” price could be set up so that the first one rings up for full price and the second one rings up for free. Or it could be set up so the first one rings up for half price and the second one rings up for half price. The register will even keep track of left-over fractions of a cent: If you have a 2/$0.99 price structure, it may ring up the first one for 49 cents and the second one for 50 cents. Or, it could be set up to round UP on the first one, so the first rings up for 50 cents and the second rings up for 49 cents.
But wait, it gets even better! You could set up a price structure like “Lemons: 1 for 35 cents, 3 for $1” Then the first lemon rings up for 35 cents. The second lemon rings up for 35 cents. And the third lemon rings up for 30 cents.
That’s just the beginning of the kinds of pricing structures that can be programmed. You’ve got “Mix-and-match” pricing, and all kinds of discounts that could be possible.
I worked for a company that created and sold a cash register app, so I saw all the kinds of things like that.
Ah, yes. When technology briefly hiccups and your item doesn’t scan, please, please tell me how it “must be free!” Then I can fall over from the force of your humor and creativity.
At my store we don’t have scanners, so everything is marked with a price gun. If the cashier is struggling to fine the price tag (ie, if someone put the white price sticker on a white part of the box) the customer will almost universally say ‘no price, must be free ha ha ha"’. My usual response to that is "makes sense, I charged you double on [other thing] since it has two price stickers on it’.
I’m amused during the split second that they think I’m serious and start to get mad.
But yeah, that’s another joke that wasn’t funny the first time and isn’t funny this time. I do try to keep in mind that [when I’m cashiering] I’ve heard any specific joke hundreds of times, but they may have only told it a few times, so it’s still funny to them. Besides telling a customer to fuck off and die for telling a joke is generally frowned upon by upper management (which happens to be me, so it’s awkward).
The other inconveniencing angle I forgot to mention is that, if the extra item is heavy, it may overload my basket (carry basket vs. cart), and I might have to make a 2nd trip up the stairs to my place.
Nice to hear that the UK at least has little patience for such shenaningans.
There are some places where BOGOF doesn’t work at all. Denmark or Sweden, I think - where the customer has consumer rights to the effect that, instead of accepting a free gift offer when they buy something, they can instead demand the price of that gift to be deducted from the price of the item.
So if the offer is a free leather carrying case when you buy a laptop, customers can buy the laptop with a discount equivalent to the price of the case, but when the free gift in question is another identical one of the same item, that means they can demand for the value of the free one to be deducted from the price of the purchased item - in other words, they can get it for free.
(or something very much like this anyway - a company I once worked for made a massive gaffe related to this when they set up a new shop in Copenhagen or Malmö)
Sometimes the price for one is jacked up more than just “a little”. BevMo (a specialty beer/wine/liquor store on the West Coast) always has a “5¢ wine sale” – buy one bottle, get a second bottle for 5¢. I’ve seen wine there as part of the 5¢ sale marked as $12.95 for one, only to later find the same wine at Trader Joe’s for $7.99. So yeah, the BevMo price is a better deal if you want two, but it’s not nearly as good as “Get a second bottle for 5¢” might seem on the surface.
Sometimes they extend the deal to spirits as well. Then a bottle of whiskey that usually sells for $24.99 suddenly jumps to $39.95.
The two answers are, the one mentioned several times; to clear inventory / two guaranteed sales, and the one I don’t think has been mentioned yet; “a bird in the hand”.
It’s possible (in fact very common), for a business to go bankrupt even while assets exceed debts, just because of lack of cash flow, lack of liquidity.
So businesses value cash flow. It may often be better to sell two items for 75c than one for 50c, even though the margin is substantially less. That extra 25c might keep the lights on (when we’re considering hundreds of customers and many items on sale).
Let alone 50c vs $1.
There’s a beer bottle shop that offers buy six beers, your seventh is a penny. The penny bottle is the cheapest bottle of your seven, so it makes sense to purchase strategically.
I’m just happy to be buying beer, and the cashier always scolds me a bit because I’ll pick out six fairly pricey bottles but also have one that’s $1.99.
When the Harris Teeter where I do most of my shopping has a buy one get one free sale they almost always sell single items at half price. Occasionally there will be a notice that you must by two items, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
Another thing they do with some frequency is have “buy 2 get 3 free” sales on certain items. In those cases, you have to buy five to take full advantage of the sale; you can’t buy fewer than five and get a prorated price. There’s also almost always a total limit of ten items allowed.
That three free deal seems to come out most often when they have overstocked on a certain brand of item, like 12-packs of Coke cans. In which case the shopper can mix-n-match all Coke products to get the deal.
My local Safeway does this with soda. Their “sale” (which has been going on for years) for Coca-Cola product 12-packs is “Buy 2, get 2 free.” A single 12-pack costs like $9, which is twice the price it should be. Therefore, if I want to pay the price I should be paying for soda, I have to buy 12-packs in multiples of 4. It’s ridiculous.
Fred Meyer is a bit better about this. They usually run a “3 for $12” deal, where if you buy 3 or more 12-packs, they cost $4 a piece.
Yes, yes, yes! I was thinking of that earlier in the thread, but didn’t mention it. I don’t typically shop at Jewel, but I’ve been there a few times during their Memorial Day or Labor Day sales when they tend to run this special. And, yeah, it drives me crazy. I see the sign and think, oh, cool, and then I look at the unit price and it’s like $9.99-$11.99/lb and I’m like, um, what? (A typical slab of baby backs at a standard grocery store like Jewel run at around maybe $3.49/lb, typically, these days, though when I was looking, something like $2.49-$2.79/lb was more typical. One of the local meat markets [Park Packing] had baby backs for $1.99/lb just two weeks ago. Right now, they got spares at 99 cents a pound. For $9.99/lb I expect some heritage breed pigs.)
Yet this thread has clarified for me some of the rationales AND has demonstrated that some businesses/locales do indeed let you have one at half price.
Agree on the usual price of around $3-4/lb and $1.99 is a deal. About the only thing that gets me into Jewel(s) anymore is that they usually have* loose sandwich rolls (like kaiser, onion, brat) in the evening when the places I usually go will be sold out. The B1G2 isn’t a terrible rip off but it’s not a great bargain, either.
How does the price at Trader Joe’s have anything to do with BevMo’s prices? Pretty much everything is cheaper at TJ’s. You haven’t established that BevMo’s jacked up their price for the sale. I’ve never found BevMo to be particularly cheap in the first place.
