Yup. A lot of the consumer protection regulations are being totally ignored with impunity. It’s nice to see one retailer held to account. But I don’t think it foretells a larger trend.

These days you need to be very aware of what a fair price is for any given thing and then shop around to find the best deal based on that understanding. Totally ignore %-off, initial prices. Just look for the deal based on what you know a fair price to be.

I think a lot of online stores can get away with this sort of thing because they use “airline” pricing. Everyone sees a different price based on the store’s heuristics, thus there is no “one” price aside from MSRP. and so they can claim a discount off that.

Online stores can list the SKU for 50% more than their sales price for 1 day, and delist the product from showing up in searches unless you specifically ask for that SKU. Then subsequent days they being the price down and call it a sale. Totally within the rules.

Depends on jurisdiction but in some locations non sales price must be consistent for a significant percentage of the total time or it’s still considered deceptive marketing. Thus countering both short term price bumps and “sales” that last for 3/4th of a year.

There are retailers where every week they rearrange the shelves putting the things from the back shelf at "regular price" in front with big on sale signs, and the things that were on sale last week on the back shelves for regular price. They will allow you to buy the things from the back shelves at regular price, but they are trying to sell the things on the front self for half the price.

Yea, and some mark up prices on specific days of the week so they can have regular sales when people are actually shopping.

So yes companies will come up with crazy workarounds for such regulations, but the point is such things cost shelf space and worker effort which helps maintain some sanity in the marketplace. Because eventually some company will figure they can save quite a bit of effort and have ‘everyday low prices’ while maintaining better margins.

> Yup. A lot of the consumer protection regulations are being totally ignored with impunity. It’s nice to see one retailer held to account. But I don’t think it foretells a larger trend.

I'm Australian. I saw the headline, and my first thought was "I wonder if this is some US retailer playing fast a loose with the truth in Australia". And yup, it was.

Australia is not the USA. You don't ignore consumer laws in Australia with impunity like you can in the USA.

The best example I've seen was HP not honouring their warranties on laptops. The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission - a government agency) forced hp.com to put a 1/2 page banner at the top of every web page saying they didn't honour warranties, and spelling out the details of what they did. It was in your face, it was ugly, and it was startling sight for any hp.com visitor.

I've only saw this happen twice. The other time was a local retailer called kogan.com. That's probably because that demonstration of what the government will do to companies that don't comply with the law (I'm sure it hurt more than any fine) there is now near 100% compliance with what the companies doing business in Australia say they will do on their web site, and what they actually do.

Another classic example is Australian ISP's are forced to advertise what your minimum download speed at peak hour will be. And it's enforced. Can you believe that? There is a place in the world where download speeds are what they say on the box, and "unlimited downloads" really means "download as much as you like".

Australia is a living demonstration that you don't have to live in a post-truth society. It is possible to pass laws to say you have to spell out in straightforward, non-misleading terms on the box what is in the box. And it's possible to enforce them in imaginative ways that remarkably effective, yet don't involve fines so you don't get companies evaluating the tradeoff of paying the fine versus lying and keeping the loot. And yes, the end result makes life simpler fairer for everyone - including the retailers.

Wait til this guy learns about free shipping.

Obviously, there is no such thing as free shipping. Yes, I also just consider that part of the price.

Coincidentally in the past couple of days I've been doing a lot of shopping in a space where the good is nominally ~$10 but shipping is ~$20. I've heard that there's a lot of distortions like that brought on by various storefront systems not allowing you to set per-item shipping prices sufficiently granularly, and the store owners will compensate by setting their target shipping price in whatever manner they can and then making the target item price whatever it needs to be to work out. For the particular things I'm shopping for (semi-obscure CDs), $30 is a reasonable price with shipping, so I bought without complaining, because the "shipping price" isn't really relevant to me, only the final price I pay.

For a while you could kind of run some scams where you the store aggregation sites would show you as the cheapest because your price was $1 and the sort order would ignore your $25 shipping fee, sorting you in front of the shop selling for $5 and $5 shipping, but all the aggregators I've seen lately have switched to sorting by price + shipping so that doesn't work anymore.

I also remember another variant on the shipping practice back when there used to be other auction sites competing with eBay. It was standard practice for the site to take a percentage of the sale price, but some sites didn't include the shipping price in that calculation. Thus, the seller made more money off selling a Playstation for $1 with $190 in shipping than they would off selling it for $200 with free shipping. I even remember someone setting up a shipping company that would generate the invoices to "prove" that these were the actual shipping prices. They'd then subcontract the actual shipping out to the USPS and pay an $195 "affiliate loyalty comission" back to the original seller.

I kind of hate free shipping, tbh. It heavily favors sellers with massive distribution systems.

Without it, a nearby distributor might look like a more compelling option than the giant monolithic (and near monopolistic) online retailer.

Costco is pretty good about their sale prices being lower than most times.

Came here to say this. At this point I consider it part of Costco’s brand that I can trust I’m getting close to the lowest possible price for a product when I buy from them. Sure Costco still has it’s own deals and sales pop up on a cadence (for example, never buy tires off-sale because they run the tire sale basically ever 6 weeks, the Traeger event happens something like quarterly, etc.), but overall they’re trustworthy. It’s a huge part of the buying experience with Costco and it generates loyalty over time.

Agree with lotsofpulp about the sales being valid.

I have found that Costco prices are not always the lowest, but that still doesn't always mean they're a bad deal. While in an ideal world, anywhere you can pick up a Brand X product Y, it should be the same, that's not actually the case anymore. (I presume Wal-Mart didn't create this reality, but they have had a disproportional role in propagating it.) Of all things, I notice that the canned black olives I buy at Costco are consistently a step up from the exact same brand at my local megamart. So even though they aren't actually that much cheaper I still prefer to buy them there.

I also find that sometimes a product seems to be comparable, but isn't.

There was a grill at costco I was interested in and it seemed to be about the same price at home depot.

But looking further it turns out the costco model also included a grill cover and a thermometer.

I also assumed Costco’s longer warranty meant that products bought from there would be made at least a little bit better.

It is a shame the 4 year appliance warranty is gone. Used to be such a no brainer to buy appliances at Costco.

I tend to use CamelCamelCamel to find out if I'm getting an actual deal on something, at least when shopping online.

the best addon is Keepa, they have a time series price tracking thats added right in the page

I’d also recommend JungleDealsBlog

Slickdeals.net also good. Owned, iirc, by some bank though. Comments seem genuine and let you know if it’s a real deal or shill post.

I use Slickdeals all the time. It's pretty great, but has had a lot more advertising both blatant and stealth in recent years. Still good site though, I'd also like to know any more deals sites though.

And I also wonder how is there not a legitimate coupons site? Or is there? Even slickdeals now the coupon codes section is trach similar to retailmenot and the multitude of other crappy coupon spam sites.

Slickdeals used to be a good source for legit coupon codes and sometimes they are still on there but you have to dig in the forums the actual "coupons" section of the site is spam.

On a slightly more than cursory inspection. That site sucks.

Also just because something is in a larger size, it doesn’t always make the prices better. Once I was at Fred Meyer and the 1 pound bags of lentils were $1.50 but the two pound bags were $4.00. They were charging more for larger handling units.

That's interesting. I once wrote to a coffee company because online they were selling their big bags of beans at more per ounce than the small bags. The co-owner wrote back and explained that the smaller bags were in way more third party stores than the big bags so they had to delay the price increase on those (I think to give the store network more notice so one store wasn't undercutting another). Needless to say I ordered a bunch of cheaper smaller bags to stock up ahead of the price bump. Anyway no idea if that's what was going on at Fred Meyer but I suppose it's possible the lentil supply chain is equally complex.

The same issue was happening with my local service station. The 16.9 ounce bottle was $1.60 and the 24 ounce bottle was $2.50.

I find the 3 and 4 liter bottles of water are the same price at most gas stations. Of course the 3 liter bottles are on display where they are easy to find, while the 4 liter is hidden where only the price sensitive will find them. (4 liters is also one us gallon, and one you have a container you find one gallon refills vending machines that a very cheap, and those vending machines probably have better water)

Stores do this with shop towels too and it's aggravating. Why can't I buy bulk shop towels for less?!

Because they earn more money if they don't charge less! :-)

Yeah, this is a trick that retailers have been playing for a long time. Same with buying from those bulk bins. Much of the time, the bulk bin goods are the same price as the packaged versions. Sometimes, they're more expensive. Numerous times, I've seen store employees filling the bins by opening retail packages and emptying them in.

You can trust nothing in grocery stores.

It's not a "trick" -- it's a consequence of dynamic pricing and how efficient supply chains are now.

You're effectively running volume arbitrage to even out inefficiencies in seller's upstream suppliers.

Or, to put it another way, the seller's profits (margin*volume) can often be the same on smaller package (even for cheaper per weight unit) as larger package (for more expensive per weight unit).

I once ate at a restaurant where the dessert card priced two scoops of ice cream at significantly more than twice one scoop.

They weren't impressed when I put in two orders of a single scoop....

Freddie's is weird with their pricing.

I needed Q-Tips as I had finally run out of the box I bought years ago.

They had 350 Q-Tips in a box for $3.49. Ok, about 1 per penny.

They also had 500 Q-Tips in a box for $4.99. Practically the same price minus some infinitesimal rounding money.

I was about to reach for the 350 when I noticed they also had a 650 Q-Tip box for... $4.99.

And they were not on sale. None of them were. This was their flat Q-Tip pricing.

I would have guessed that the price should have been $6.49 to keep with the trend, but my guess would have been wronger than using "wronger" in a sentence where you should have used "more wrong" instead.

My favorite tactic is "50% off!" with an asterisk next to it, but no corresponding footnoted asterisk explaining the asterisk itself.

Another favorite of mine is "up to X% off". Of course, "up to" includes "0%".

Even funnier is "save up to X% or more!" as if "up to" doesn't mean "no more than".

was part of a company that was putting out mass market tv/radio ads. i was in a group that got some previews and we were asked for feedback. "Save up to 30%" and "save up to 40%" were phrases thrown around. I mentioned that our average customer was actually saving closer to 50% (often more), and asked why we didn't just say that. Head of marketing guy said those numbers were generally not believed by most viewers. I was only there a few months at that time - they'd been running variations for years, and had some numbers to back that up (website clicks, call volume, etc). We could have said "up to 45% or more!" which... is technically 'true', but confusing and awkward to anyone who parses the whole thing. And "save up to 53%!" just didn't come across as believable, even when we had the data to show it.

I love when publix doubles the price of an item and puts it on bogo to seem like it's on sale. Y'all aint fooling anyone

In my experience, they don't do this. I'm a very regular person, in that I buy the same things for long stretches until I get tired of them, so I know what the long term prices of things are. I always stock up on bogos at Publix, since they have always been true bogos. I've never seen them inflate the price just to bogo it. In fact, I don't recall Publix ever playing price shenanigans. They are one of the most honest companies I know of when it comes to being fair to the consumer.

Maybe OP means Publix doubles the price compared to another grocery store, not to the price they were selling it for last week. I don't live near a Publix, but of the chains near me, one seems to always have BOGO sales, but the prices are more or less twice as much as similar products at other stores.

Yeah, an item that would simply be sold for 2.50 at Walmart is stickered at 5 and bogod at 2.50. I think this is why so many stores avoid selling the same exact brands, so price comparison isn't possible

Since the topic is Dell, I noticed a while ago that the major computer brands (Dell, HP, Lenovo, maybe Asus does it too) will have different SKUs for each retail outlet. You could find a computer at two stores with the same specs and same chassis, but because the model number is different by one letter it's excluded from the store's price matching.

But it's also no secret that computers are a loss-leader for retailers that want you to buy additional higher margin products while you're there.

I go to a store where they put the price per kilo, even when it is discounted. This way, I only need to compare price per kilo with other products to see if it's worth it!

This was really frustrating when I had to be price sensitive shopping for paper towels. They'd list price per roll in the corner of the tag, but every package's rolls were significantly different cm^2 quantities.

It's a hard problem. Some stores have half-size paper towels, which I prefer, as paper towels are unnecessary large most of the time. So I want to price-compare based on number of sheets, not cm² ;)

I have the same issue with rice, they always put the price per kg, never per grain..

weight is better for rice since individual grains will vary with size and width.

That's the point, I would only take the biggests.

I only want that until someone figures it out and starts making 1/100 size sheets, or some other cheat.

I just rip off the size of paper towel I need every time I use them.

They're not half-size, though, they're actually a bit _more_ than 50%. So that means you'll go through them faster than if you purchase full-sized ones and get in the habit of tearing a full sheet in half and setting the unneeded half aside.

All of my grocery shopping is done on my supermarkets website and sorting by unit price brings up the price per pound or ounce or whatever that products unit of measure is. For paper towels it returns $ per square foot, so even if the product size is different the price per unit of measure stays the same and makes it easier to comparison shop.

It's the same for toilet paper. We really need sane regulations on packaging to make it easier for consumers.

Sometimes (at least in the UK) that number is wrong, possibly intentionally. The only really sure way is to do the calculation yourself. Unless the weight is wrong too.

I've never noticed a wrong per-price before. How wrong and what kind of wrong?

I remember shopping for kitchen roll once, one product had a per-price that was per 100 sheets, the other per roll. Impossible to decipher!

Occasionally, so wrong I actually notice. Which must be pretty wrong, because my mental arithmetic is not great.

There's also a thing they'll do where two similar products in jars/tins will have a £/kg number but one will be based on the total weight (e.g. including pickling liquid) and the other based on the weight of the actual food.

Another UK trick, promotional prices can skip showing the unit price. Tesco has turned half their prices into promotional prices. Either as multibuys or just by requiring their loyalty card to get a not insane price.

This is mandatory in Germany (probably EU)

Which is fine if the prices are given per 1 kg or 100 g. Here in the US they have the prices by the ounce or by the pound, by the gallon, quart, or liquid ounce ... not exactly transparent unless you can >> 4 in your head faster than / 10. I can't.

I usually find the numbers are (purposefully?) ridiculous.

if you compare products, one might say "3.24 per EACH" and another might say "0.04 per oz" or some other nonsense.

I have been truck shopping lately which means I'm constantly hounded all day long by every dealership in the 4 state region. Last weekend they ALL had "Memorial Day Sales"! So I asked them all about the sale details... Every single one said if I came in they would try to make a deal with me. That's the same thing as no sale. Actually, it is worse for cars where a sale might entail negotiating against a dealer markup.

They don't want to give you a price remotely because they fear you'll just use that to leverage a better price at another dealer. They think if you come in they'll be able to work their charms on you and get you to buy there.

yep. That's not a very good sale :) One of them was trying to sell a truck with 1000 with of nitrogen in tires apparently. But I bet the sale would knock 500 off that.

Pretty sure that is illegal in the UK. If a business is advertising a sale, they have to follow certain regulations, which include actually having discounts against a previous price which was in place for a period of time.

It's not without perverse effects though. Often you see price increases in October/November so that a discount can be advertised in December, but it's just the same as or barely-discounted from the September price.

In Washington state there's an administrative code that says retail stores are only allowed to have a 'closing down'/'going out of business' sale "once per calendar year".

Sale prices in EU now require (kinda, there are either exceptions, or many non compliant sites and stores) to show some comparison price.

Here is a page from Amazon explaining it: https://www.amazon.com.be/-/en/gp/help/customer/display.html...

That $1.50 bag of chips still cost the store 50 cents.

Red Bull cost pennies per gallon.

You see… the pricing of goods is arbitrary, as in mutable given human philosophical whims, not coupled to the movement of the universe otherwise, we’ve hallucinated an entire cottage industry around social sharing but only so long as everyone is socially sharing the right people are rich.

Our culture is itself something an AI might hallucinate.

Why everyone knows Martha Stewart has always been X rich so we will inflate the money supply with those immutable truths in mind and oops now thanks to her investment help she’s richer and everyone else without an investment team is poorer. Should have capitalized harder.

this is why crowdsourced (or otherwise) tools like https://keepa.com/ are great. because you can determine if something is a sale, not by the dark patterns utilized by your adversary, but by using historical data.

we need a decentralized version such that amazon can't just do in and bribe/pay to remove their products from it though.

Yeah. I was going to point out https://camelcamelcamel.com which I've used religiously for years to gauge prices. Or https://isthereanydeal.com for video game prices (which thankfully don't spike that often but helps for assessing how deep a sale is).

Consumer empowerment is so wonderful. I was thinking yesterday about what a mystery it is that an auction site like ebay functions, that people would use it at all, without a tool to help them do silent auctioning/last minute bidding.

Would absolutely love for distributed layers to share & syndicate price and many other indicators to the world.

I once bought three different three-for-two offers in the UK, expecting to get the 3rd, 6th & 9th most expensive items free, but I was actually charged for all but the 7th-9th, which cost me a lot more

(I got the price I expected in the end, by making three separate purchases)

I also saw a competing chain labelling food nearing its use-by date with a higher price than otherwise identical items with longer to go, but presumably that was a genuine error

Manufacturers and retailers will also change models for sales. Black Friday sales are sometimes cheaper, lower quality versions. Discount clothing retailers sometimes get items made specifically for them. And that's ignoring bad QA. Patagonia just filed a lawsuit against Nordstrom Rack for selling counterfeit clothing.