Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted • Hacker News Board

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#111

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 3:50 PM UTC

netrus wrote: post #63

RulerOf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#112

Post by anlaw » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #16

I just straight-up ignore "sale" claims now, unless I have personal experience that says this really is a sale. This is mostly limited to groceries where I definitely know that the $4 bag of chips really is on sale at $1.50. Along with all the active deception, I also just count all the times I've gone price shopping for non-trivial things and the prices I see and how festooned with the word "sale" the page is is sim…

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.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#113

Post by JohnFen » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #25

usefulcanoll wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be naive, but I've only used the _current_ price of something to evaluate whether I'd be willing to pay this right now, disregarding any previous or future pricing. This way it hasn't mattered whether a sofa was claimed to be "worth" $500 or $5k and I can justify it in the future to myself that I deemed something worth what was asked at the time

There are genuine differences between high-end and mid-range products, which are never fully covered by technical specs. If you're lucky, you can watch three or four youtube videos and get a general impression; but you can't do that for every product, so you need to make a shortlist first. Pricing is a useful signal for that. Then there are mid-range products sold at a high price, of course, but you almost never see…

> Pricing is a useful signal for that.

I disagree. Pricing is a very poor signal for that, depending on the sort of good.

Pricing tells you what the target demographic of the store is. It doesn't reliably tell you much about quality.

> but you almost never see high-end products sold at mid-range prices.

I guess that depends on what you mean by "high end", but in my experience, there isn't usually a great deal of difference in quality between high priced and mid priced goods.

The large and consistent difference between the two is in presentation and aesthetic design. If those are important to you, fair enough. But I don't consider either of those to be quality issues.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#114

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

causi wrote: post #72

throwaway173738 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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)

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#115

Post by lukas099 » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 3:54 PM UTC

netrus wrote: post #63

RulerOf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#116

Post by JohnFen » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 3:54 PM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #11

jonfw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you want the free market to work, consumers can’t use price to evaluate quality

This is a bit of a chicken and egg problem and too abridged. It is like arguing that for free speech to work everybody has to write newspaper articles or that you personally need to be a programmer for opensource to be useful. These can be different people and for a free market (/free(dom) speech/free(dom) software) to work you need a sufficient number of qualified people. So I wouldn't blame the consumers (btw this…

> So I wouldn't blame the consumers (btw this term always sounds like slur to me as compared to customers)

Agree. I try to avoid using the term "consumer" except maybe when it's talking about actually consuming things (such as food and drink).

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#117

Post by ilikepi » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

netrus wrote: post #63

RulerOf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

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.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#118

Post by lozenge » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 3:59 PM UTC

sanitycheck wrote: post #67

bibanez wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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.

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.

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#119

Post by lozenge » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

willcipriano wrote: post #21

leidenfrost wrote: post #14

For other people in developing countries: Isn't it weird to see news about a massive outrage for practices that in our place are totally common? Where I'm from, this happens all the time. And the law permits them to just change the price at whim. So they can just raise the price of any product and slap a "discount" label on them, even if the new "discounted" price is higher than the previous one.

[flagged]

Yeah, like how the US is so developed, you can get anything from a surgery to a cable plan at the advertised priced.

Hang on, my hotel is calling me. Something about a resort fee...

Re: Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted

#120

Post by sanitycheck » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

walthamstow wrote: post #76

sanitycheck wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.