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Gordzilla in the City: Aren’t sale prices just the real prices we should always pay?

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I was in Safeway the other day picking up the weekly tonne or so of food required to feed the increasingly parasitic teenagers in our house when something that store has done for years began to vex me. I don’t mean to single out Safeway, particularly, as they’re just one of many retailers who do this, but they do provide a good example.

What bugged me was their pricing, specifically the bogus sale prices that consumers have been afflicted with for years, especially during the Holiday Season … really the Shopping Season … that begins on Black Friday and extends through the Christmas buy-their-love consumer feeding frenzy until Jan. 1, which should probably be renamed Red New Year’s, as in in-the-red.

Safeway, like all good supermarkets, uses more psychological war tactics and tricks on its customers than the CIA ever played on the Russians. From the layout of their stores, to where they place products, to pricing, everything is designed to trick you into spending as much as possible on every trip. Hey, I’m not blaming them for this. They’re brilliant at it, and I’d do it too if I were in their racket.

I went in the other day with a shopping list of about six basic items but left with a full cart and a three-digit bill. Either I’m a sucker or, like I said, they’re brilliant at marketing. Let’s go with they’re brilliant and don’t anyone ask my wife about that sucker bit.

One of things Safeway does that tricks you into thinking you’re getting a deal is that most of their products are always “on sale.” It’s not like the old days when sales happened when some buyer accidentally ordered 200 cases of lima beans, or whatever, instead of 20, and a store needed to knock the price down to move the excess. Now hundreds of items are constantly on sale or offered at fake, “buy one, get one free” deals or even more silly pricing where they list a price for a group of two or three of the same item. Stores do this because they know that if they offer three frozen pizza for $10, as Safeway did this week, that most people will take that as an opportunity to try three different flavours. What they don’t say, but allow, is that you’re free to buy one pizza for $3.33. If they put pizzas on sale for $3.33 each, fewer would move.

To further entice shoppers, they’re warned that the sale is only good for three days! Buy now or you’ll lose out! Like I said, I don’t mean to pick on Safeway. They’re just doing what all retailers do. I even came across an ad for a “limited time offer” from Las Vegas plastic surgeon Dr. Jeffrey J. Roth, promoting buy-one, get half-off on the second, breast-implant surgery. Who’s he kidding? I presume that when it comes to that particular procedure, very few clients are looking for half a job.

Check out the flyer above for a furniture store in Ontario. It looks like the managers are prepared to sell virtually everything in their store for 20, 35, 50, even 70 per cent off the “regular prices.” I know it’s a sale and everything, perhaps they’re clearing out old stock, but I am I alone in wondering if the place rips off its customers every other day of the year?

I bought a dozen cans of pop this week for $3.33 and I bet Safeway was still making money at that price. So why not sell it for that year-round?

Why can’t stores just give us the best prices every day? I’d rather go to a store where I knew the prices were stable.

The current system of constantly changing prices makes people feel like they’re usually being tricked into paying too much. This week’s Canadian Tire flyer, for instance — again, not to pick on any particular store; tell your lawyers and PR folks to chill — has a welding machine on special for $199.99 that’s “regularly” $499.99 — a 60-per-cent savings. At that price, who wouldn’t be interested in adding a little light welding to their hobbies? But how would you feel if you’d bought that unit a couple weeks ago for $499.99? I’d be as hot as flux.

This kind of irritating price manipulation is everywhere. Toyota right now is advertising that the price of its new Prius “is lower than ever before.” I think I heard last week Toyota saying they were even cheaper than the 2007 model, if that’s possible. On one level that’s nice, and perhaps understandable as the company get more efficient at building the car. But how is last year’s Prius buyer supposed to feel? Or the guy with the old 2007 Prius beater?

And don’t even get me started on Apple products, which now come out so frequently promising to be cheaper and way better than previous models that I now iRefuse to iBuy any new iThingamajigs because I know the minute I do, Apple will release the cheaper, better iModel they’ve already developed, manufactured and are just waiting to ship. Grrrr ….

Finally, there’s the whole issue of “rebates” and “factory discounts,” like the $750 one that cheery old Charlie Chase has offered for several years “if you call right now” in those walk-in tub commercials. I don’t even want to know how much they’re charging poor impressionable old folks for those tubs, but why not just knock $750 off the fake price and just be straight with everyone?

Otherwise, some people might feel like they’ve taken a bath.

Gordon Clark is the editorial pages editor of The Province. His weekly column, Gordzilla in the City, appears in the newspaper on Monday and at various times online, depending on how lazy he’s feeling. He can be reached at gclark@theprovince.com or monitored at twitter.com/gordzillacity.



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