Black Friday, should Amazon be taken to court?

[Nelsun]

Bought a pair of Quengshang (or however you spell it) block planes from R*tlands middle of last week as they were on offer for about £68. Along comes BF... and the same pair of planes are now "reduced" to £90. #-o

I am, to this day, shocked every January when, right after Christmas has passed, you get sales on kitchens of all things. As if folk haven't spent all their dosh and think, "what I really need now is a new kitchen".

 

[Phil Pascoe]

It's sofa manufactures that amaze me - if they have to have sales to get shot of them, why do they make so many?

 

[D_W]

It doesn't need to be legal. The consumer laws are widely flouted with impunity by many large retailers. In High Street shops this is often done by having the item at a higher price in one store only, which probably wouldn't stand up to serious legal challenge but no one in authority cares.
Caveat emptor as always!
Duncan

Same issue here in the states with pricing. There are laws, but the person filing the suit gets damages for themselves.

Popular radio show here had a lady who wanted to sue dollar stores that have items that cost more than a dollar. She wanted to be able to get all of the things in the store for a dollar, and the host said "You're stupid. You'll win the case. It'll only apply to you, you'll be banned from the store, and you'll get $10 back for the things you bought".

I've got relatives who sold TVs, appliances and furniture. Even before the internet, 90% of what was in the store was "on sale", maybe more. Nobody ever troubled them. If anyone did even a little bit of competitive shopping, they'd find their sale prices to have been pretty high (they were). They weren't interested in selling in volume, they were interested in selling to a few dummies as it's less trouble.

The internet has let a lot of water out of these schemes. I never participate in black friday, because it's usually just proprietary stuff these days (you want amazon deals? you'll be buying their proprietary devices, which are no treat in my view...everything else won't be that cheap unless it's cheap everywhere) . Walmart advertised a 55 inch TV for $197 this year, and I figured it's not walmart that's offering the deal, but the manufacturer dumping a little wanted television. A quick trip on google showed the same TV listed for as low as $175 including shipping from a couple of different places.

If law enforcement is the same there as it is here, most of the departments do severe safety type things, as well as shoplifting of large items, whatever, but they'll never touch anything else that doesn't bring them revenue. You can file a complaint with state A.G. offices if you don't mind waiting for years or never on a consumer issue, and my experience (after a relentless telemarketer kept leaving voicemails on my phone) is the problem will get resolved, but you're in for hours of your own time and filling out forms (and getting bogus arguments and harassment from violators) to get anything simple done.

 

[D_W]

Lonsdale79 I also remember the days when we had maybe two sales a year if lucky, certain stores would do a summer sale but the main sales that most people looked forward to was the January Sales. People were known to queue up for a couple of days to snag a bargain and every shop was packed out until the sales ended. Every shop in the sales had genuine bargains as well.

I'd bet on most things in those days, the store was probably getting a 25-50% margin on most lower turnover items (as in, it cost them 2/3rds to 80% of the purchase price for an item) because they were made in the first world. They couldn't afford to run sales unless they lied and said they sold at list sometimes (which few ever did) and called their regular price a sale.

I remember getting sale flyers back in the 80s as a kid. 10 or 20% off was a huge deal.

about a decade ago, one of the tool dealers here in the states offered the woodnet forum a +10% sale. Anything you bought on their site, you'd get 10% over their cost. Only leap of faith is that you had no idea what the price would be, and the sale was over before there was time for info sharing.

I bought a bunch of stuff from norton (stones, abrasives, etc), as well as a gaggle of foreign made lumber racks. The retailer's regular price on norton goods showed that 70-80% of the regular price was their cost to norton (understandable on domestic goods). retailer's cost on foreign lumber racks was about 20% of regular price.

That tells us one thing as buyers - anything made domestically is up against a wall, because a retailer can afford to offer all kinds of coupons and take returns on something that costs them 20% of the price at the register.

I don't remember being able to take things back to retailers in the 1980s unless they were defective, and even if you were sold a lemon, the retailers would scowl at you for wanting to return something.

 

[thetyreman]

cheer up guys, it's cyber monday :lol: :roll: :lol:

 

[The Kergan]

Anyone remember Queensway Furniture, and their "Massive Clearout!!"?

It was so ubiquitous that a particularly extensive bowel movement became known as a "Queensway" at one point, at least in some of the circles I once travelled. I wonder if it still is?

(I've just googled it, and it turns out that it is still in use, but the definition has changed for the worse...bloody millennials). You may want to avoid looking.)

Queensway Furniture, now thats a blast from the past

 

[rafezetter]

Camelcamelcamel.com

I thought you were taking the mick there for a bit - but that's a handy site!

Rutlands and ITS did the same - "black friday" prices same as their normal "special offer" prices that come around every other week.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Stores have become like politicians - often incapable of integrity even when the answer is blindingly obvious. Generally BF deals are most commonly a way of stores shifting overstocked or shortly to be replaced/upgraded items.

Real deals are rare, may be available post BF when you have checked them out, or are for fairly trivial amounts hardly justifying an impulse purchase.

But the race to the moral bottom of retailing can be stalled. As consumers we can use the internet to find prices of comparable products within minutes.

Some may take a ittle longer where similar products carry different branding, and the precise specification is not always similar - dimensions, power, control and display systems etc.

 

[devonwoody]

Another big con by supermarkets is putting higher priced goods on display where items are less costly and its gets through the check out because we do not watch the till display going through. Items should be individually priced like the old days.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

It's clear that supermarkets often take advantage of the unwary or challenged, Black Friday or not.

Just take a look at pricing for identical products in different package sizes - eg: a bar of chocolate may be 100g for 90p, 250g for £2.50, or three 80g special offer pack for £2.70. If you can't do quick sums in your head you are just guessing!

Sometimes they helpfully put a price per unit - eg: per kilo, per 100g, per serving, per litre etc. Somewhat less helpfully they often use different unit measures when describing similar products.

You may have by now guessed I have a very low opinion of the breed!

 

[Lonsdale73]

Another big con by supermarkets is putting higher priced goods on display where items are less costly and its gets through the check out because we do not watch the till display going through. Items should be individually priced like the old days.

I've always been good at keeping a running tally in my head as I shop in supermarkets but there have been a few times recently when I've been out, not by coppers but as much as £5. Oddly enough, each time (so far) it has been in my favour. With so many promotions going on and them changing all the time I don't think they always remember to change the display ticket.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I went to a C&C years ago, when coffee had trebled in price over a matter of weeks. I picked up a trolley load of packs of 4oz sachets and the guy (whom I knew) on the checkout said nice one! everyone's panic buying and buying the large tins thinking they're cheapest. Mine were about a third of the price per oz.
On another occasion I picked up trays of bars of soap as they were ridiculously cheap. I looked again and realised that the smaller bars were actually way cheaper per oz, so I put the trays back and loaded up thirty trays of small bars. The woman doing the promotion told me she'd sold 32 pallets of large bars because I was only the third person to notice the others were way cheaper.
In Tesco several years ago for quite a long time Heinz tomato ketchup was half the price in small glass bottles than it was in large plastic bottles - very few people ever noticed.
One deliberate con that thankfully has stopped is the use of different measures for different sizes - if there were five sizes of say tomato sauce on sale, the first would be say six oz. the next 1/2 a pint, the next 14oz... People instinctively bought the largest - which often wasn't the cheapest per oz.

People just don't look, and the sellers know it.

 

[sammy.se]

I went to a C&C years ago, when coffee had trebled in price over a matter of weeks. I picked up a trolley load of packs of 4oz sachets and the guy (whom I knew) on the checkout said nice one! everyone's panic buying and buying the large tins thinking they're cheapest. Mine were about a third of the price per oz.
On another occasion I picked up trays of bars of soap as they were ridiculously cheap. I looked again and realised that the smaller bars were actually way cheaper per oz, so I put the trays back and loaded up thirty trays of small bars. The woman doing the promotion told me she'd sold 32 pallets of large bars because I was only the third person to notice the others were way cheaper.
In Tesco several years ago for quite a long time Heinz tomato ketchup was half the price in small glass bottles than it was in large plastic bottles - very few people ever noticed.
One deliberate con that thankfully has stopped is the use of different measures for different sizes - if there were five sizes of say tomato sauce on sale, the first would be say six oz. the next 1/2 a pint, the next 14oz... People instinctively bought the largest - which often wasn't the cheapest per oz.

People just don't look, and the sellers know it.

This is spot on. We are conditioned to assume that bulk = cheaper, yet smaller packets of the same product can be cheaper than the large ones - you need to check everything nowadays.


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