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Thursday’s Conundrum….Do you know the real Price of anything?

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There was a time when Shopping was fun…..true we always liked to track down a bargain and ‘Sales’ were exactly that a Sale!

But forgive me for being rather cynical, but am I the only one to think that the Retail Price is now set at an artificially high price so they can then reduce the price as ‘a bargain, a sale, massive reduction’…call it what you want. Walk round any Shopping Mall or down any High Street at any time of the year and it would appear that we are in a perpetual ‘Sale Time’. Perhaps the retailer now thinks it is compulsory to declare a Sale is On to get customers to buy

Nor is it just big ticket items like TV, Carpets and Furnishing and Fashion.

Take my favourite brand of coffee (and its not the only brand that does this). It is on sale at the normal price price for about 4 weeks….then a major price drop* that lasts for many more weeks, the bang up it goes again for 4 weeks before dropping once again. A constant merry-go-round of ups and downs. Nor can they claim it is an end of line/close out deal. So shop around and buy some in stock and in advance of the hike..* £ 6.70 down to £ 4.49/£ 4.69

The real problem is on the big ticket items, do you buy or do you wait, will the price fall as soon as I buy.

Perhaps I am just getting old and as I say cynical but nobody like to loose hard earned cash

23rd October
(C) David Oakes 2014

12 thoughts on “Thursday’s Conundrum….Do you know the real Price of anything?”

  1. There were two class-action suits started last year (which I think are still pending) in the U.S. against that exact practice by two major retailers. I don’t know if it has a formal “legal” name, but I’ve heard it called price-jacking, and some states already have laws against it. I can’t imagine it doesn’t happen in other countries, too; it’s likely neither cynicism nor imagination.

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    1. I know I may be showing my age but there was a time when you had a good idea of the price of most items. When a genuine offer or sale reduced that price you could recognise it as a good deal….and maybe tempted.

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  2. Often I have been going to buy something and seen the price go sky high and figured that in a couple of weeks it would be on sale. I was in a car/bike shop (Halfords) and they have the price that it was before, and it was lower than what it was at that time. It was lower, went higher and then went to a middle price on sale. We used to look forward to the post Christmas sales, but now, as you say, it is all the time.

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    1. It is some years ago when PRE Christmas Sales were unheard of. I was in Dixons buying some discs on Christmas Eve. A farther was remonstrating with staff that he had bought a Computer for his two sons the day before at £ 280 more than they were selling it at on Christmas Eve. The reply was that it was the January Sale price! and they were starting early. His response was that he knew the price may well have dropped post Christmas but he wanted to have the gift FOR Christmas for his kids rather than a promise of a gift when and if the price dropped….I can sympathies with his feelings.

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      1. I can as well. I was in a shop a while ago – well, months ago now, and I was going to help my son (18) trade in his XBOX 360 for an XBOX One as his 360 was on its last legs. I went in the shop and spoke to them, and they told me to come back in the following week because the price would be going down so he would get more for his trade-in.

        I can understand them dropping the price after Christmas, but to drop it before and say that it was starting early, that was just bad form. A sign saying they were starting early would be a better idea. Mind you, a sale done me good a couple of weeks ago. I got a £500 TV at half price from Argos. It is a 42″ jobby. I have a huge living room and the 32″ looked like a portable.

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  3. With the Internet-age, knowing prices has become much easier and one can make a decision to buy or wait or purchase elsewhere very quickly and easily. I think this puts a lot of pressure on retailers and that is why they resort to sale games. Speculation of a sale can be difficult unless there are trends, which many retailers have.

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    1. True….on the other hand not all my purchase can be made on the internet (though a great many are). Over the past few months all other retail purchases have been at so called Special Offer/Sale Prices…that sounds good but I no longer know if that is good or not in reality.

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      1. Even if you don’t buy via the Internet, you can make an informed decision based on what the item is going for elsewhere and how patient (my usual issue) you are to have it shipped to you…if you can purchase online vs. brick & motor store.

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