Tag Archives: shopping

Prices not as shown

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Recently I’ve been looking at prices for things like flights, car rentals and hotel rooms. In each case I see prices per seat or per day/night and then I get to the online checkout and I am paying so much more.

On a plane ticket, I am being up-sold for luggage and seats. Hotels and cars add additional taxes, and apps like AirBNB have added cleaning fees and other fees. A hotel that said $389 a night had a final cost of $528 after taxes and fees. That’s 35% more than the advertised nightly cost! In another instance, a $159 flight ended up being over $400 with checked bags, selected seats, and a changeable date (for a small additional fee).

It’s frustrating starting your buying experience feeling like you are getting a deal and ending the same buying experience feeling like you’ve been ripped off. I understand up-selling, but if I see a room cost per night advertised, that’s what I should pay, not 35% more for the same room.

I get that profit margins are competitive and narrow, but I don’t get this false advertising of costs that end up being so much more than shown.

That said, I have no idea how this can change? AirBNB isn’t going to start putting the total cost per night including all fees into their advertised price per night if Expedia and Travelocity don’t do the same, and vice versa. So we are stuck doing the math after we get to the checkout page, and invariably feeling a bit ripped off. That’s not a great customer experience if you ask me.

Major congestion

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Yesterday I shared how malls are empty and said, “... all malls won’t die just the stand-alone ones. The newest form of densification in cities is to build a mall or commercial level shopping below high rises…”

Today I’m stuck in Traffic on the 401, the busiest highway in North America, and I wonder how more densification will affect this? Will these new vertical communities encourage less commuting or will the sheer volume of people overwhelm our transportation infrastructure?

It will depend on developers. Will they develop so that the pulse of our cities is pedestrian? Or will we continue to live inside smaller and smaller condos and use our car as the majority of our outside our apartment experiences. I hope to see more outdoor spaces designed for pedestrians to travel and congregate, but real estate is money and most developers care more about profit than liveability, even though liveability is a huge selling point.

Other countries are building communities that don’t require commuting, how much longer will we be focused on cars and congestion instead of cafés and places for pedestrians to shop, eat, and congregate?

Empty Malls

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We went to the mall nearest to my parent’s house and I was shocked to see about 60% of the stores closed. The grocery store and drug store were busy, but while my mom waited for a prescription I went looking for a coffee, and the rest of the mall was almost empty. The closest I got to finding coffee was a Subway and Booster Juice, both with no customers in the stores. Both had shuttered, empty sores next to them.

The strip mall and small malls that we’ve known for decades are dead. There won’t be a revival. Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and other online shopping sites are in direct competition with these malls and unless someone is pulled to these malls by the need for groceries or a prescription, none of the other few remaining stores will get a visit.

That said, all malls won’t die just the stand-alone ones. The newest form of densification in cities is to build a mall or commercial level shopping below high rises… stack the customers on top of the shopping spaces and make the mall convenient to visit. You don’t even need to put on a coat to visit the mall, it’s just a trip down the elevator, or a walk through an underground parking lot.

Goodbye strip mall. They will all be torn down and revived only when a few hundred condos are built above the mall space. You want customers in your mall? Make the mall an extension of their living space. Until that happens, you’ll see more and more empty, shut down, and abandoned stores… Malls that are mere shells of what they used to be.

Buying loyalty

You are offered a free ebook, but it’s not free, it includes confirmation of your email and now you are on their email list. You are buying a coffee, groceries, or clothing and you share your loyalty card to earn points and free products..

‘Have one on us on your birthday!’ – the price is your name, email, phone number, date of birth, and maybe even address.

The discounts and rewards change, and each time they do, it’s free advertising for the company. Double points days and bonus point items give you a sense that you are saving money. You are spending a little less, but you aren’t saving anything.

Loyalty isn’t always about shopping, sometimes it’s about information. E-mail lists, Reddit and Discord communities, and Facebook groups all offer the inside scoop. Membership means access to information and insights, and you can choose to pay or not. Maybe a book will be for sale at some point. You can join the Substack for free, and only pay if you want to. Watch on Twitch for free or pay a little monthly. Watch a livestream on TikTok for free, or pay with nominal donations of digital hearts and roses.

Discounts, free items, and only pay if you want to… but know this, your loyalty is being purchased. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a price you pay, even if it’s just for your attention.

Convenience at a cost

Yesterday I went to the Apple Store and purchased a new computer. I knew what I wanted but was talked into buying the larger version which came standard with the upgrade I was getting with the smaller one. The price difference happened to be the same as my educator’s discount but it did cost me a bit more for memory differences between the two sizes. Still, I left the store really happy, and excited about the added screen real estate. All said and done, the whole exchange took less than 20 minutes.

If that was the kind of exchange between the sales clerk and myself that I received at all stores, I’d probably shop in stores more often. But most exchanges end up being like my Canadian Tire experience, and this makes me not want to shop. So I do most of my shopping online. I order from the convenience of my home and the products arrive at my home. I am my own sales clerk. I don’t need any shopping bags at the till.

While grocery stores, and hair salons, and pharmacies will probably survive over the next 20 years, I’m not sure how many retail stores are going to survive when more and more people choose to shop online? Walking in the mall last night I looked at a few stores and wondered how much profit they could possibly make after paying for rent, power, and staff. Then I wondered what our economy would be like without these jobs, if most retail stores no longer needed all their staff?

Shopping from home is really convenient, but it will change the way our shopping malls and plazas look. Maybe the cost of this convenience will be far greater than the convenience is worth.

Retail sale

It doesn’t matter what store you go into today, there are items on sale. Walk into a mall and it won’t surprise you to see discounts on certain items between 50-70%. The item you came for probably won’t be that cheap, but an item or two you leave with might.

I wonder about the future of retail malls and stores. I’m sure there are specific name brands that will survive, and people will always want to try certain things on before buying them. But how does a small store in a mall survive when the once hard-to-get items they sell are actually easy to get online? And how does a company compete with online prices when they have to pay exorbitant rental/retail space fees?

They do so by drawing you in with a hard-to-resist sale. Buy one, get one free. 75% off. Clearance sale, everything must go. Hardly anything goes for regular retail cost anymore. Everyone expects a deal. Only a few places, like the Apple store, don’t play by these rules. Everywhere else is about the sale. We have entered the era of the discount, and most places won’t survive unless they offer you a deal you can’t refuse.

Retail now means sale. And stores need to provide you with amazing deals that leave you happy to buy, and happy to return for more deals in the future. And if they don’t do this, they won’t be around in a few years. The choices are to specialize or to discount… the niche or the sale.

The sales pitch

We bought a TV last night from a wonderful man with the softest sales pitch I’ve ever experienced. This included going to competitor’s web pages to show us their prices, and sharing the actual cost of the TV we were buying. It was a smooth, sincere sounding pitch, from a delightful person.

He gave us a bit of his sales background as we were paying. During that time he said he started his career in car sales but he couldn’t stand it because, “It’s impossible to sell a car without lying.”

He didn’t tell us which car company he worked for. He did mention a couple different ‘big box outlets’ he worked at for over two decades, without saying anything bad about them. And the he shared the name of one he worked for, for just 6 months, that we should never buy from. And of course, now that he knows us, he can share the same kind of deals with our family and friends.

Except for the fact that he was the busiest salesperson on the floor and we had to wait a couple times while he dealt with other customers, the whole experience felt positive… from the first time we talked to him on the phone to when we left the store.

One funny point is that when he was on the phone with us, we thought he was a young, enthusiastic sales person, on his first sales job. We arrived and was told he was in the back with a customer and walked right by him without knowing him. When he found us he said, “Didn’t I tell you to look for the short bald man when we were on the phone?”

He didn’t, and my wife and I had a good chuckle about how mistaken we were about what this man would look liked. But the mistake fed into the appeal, who was this older-than-us man who sounded so genuinely enthusiastic to serve us over the phone? Turned out he was a nice man, working for a good company, with the smoothest, most enjoyable sales pitch I’ve ever heard.

A commissioned sales job is not a job I could ever do, and so I have respect for someone that can do it so well.

Old locks

While packing things away for our renovation, I came across a my collection of old locks that I purchased at different markets in China. These locks are simple when it comes to operation, but complex in design and artistry.

My favourite of these are the combination locks:

The last of these I can’t get open despite having the combination.

My wife loved going to all the open markets when we visited a new city, and spending a few hours shopping at them really bored me. That is, until I found one of these locks and started looking for more. Suddenly I had a reason to go and it didn’t bore me quite as much.

While the locks are all unique, I honestly have not looked into them too closely and they could range in age from over 500 years old to less than 50 years old, but my guess is they are not worth that much in the condition they are in. And, I probably paid too much for them anyway. Still, I didn’t buy them for their inherent value, I bought them for the adventure of looking for them and finding them.

These locks may not have a lot of financial value, but for a couple years living in China they unlocked the secret to being a happier shopper when my wife would drag me to yet another open market on our vacation adventures.

Wifi enabled fridge

We are shopping for new appliances as part of our planned renovation and I have to say that I don’t get it. Why would I need a wifi enabled fridge? At no point in my life have I ever spontaneously wondered what the temperature of my fridge was? Besides when I first got a fridge, or when I found some frozen lettuce at the back of the fridge (once), I don’t recall ever changing the temperature of my fridge.

Maybe in the future a ‘smart’ fridge might be able to tell me if I need to go shopping before I cook a recipe; or tell me my milk is low or expired; or suggest meals based on what might be expiring soon and what I have available. But right now it doesn’t serve a purpose that I can think of. Right now I don’t need to be connected to my fridge… it doesn’t need to be enabled. And I don’t need a Samsung with a screen on my fridge either. I’ll stick to magnets to hold family photos and memos.

Maybe at some point in the future the need will be there, but for now, I’ll pass on wifi enabled appliances… I see this feature as having very little function, and just being one more possible failure point on an appliance that already won’t last as long as it would have if built years ago.

If I’m missing out, please enlighten me. Who has a wifi fridge and how are you using this feature?

All the extras

We’ve been looking to replace my old minivan, and shopping for a hybrid SUV. Today I decided that I’ll just stick with my van for a couple more years, and probably go all electric when I do upgrade.

Nowadays shopping for a vehicle is all about the extras you get lumped together. It’s not about personalization, it’s about packaging. My wife wants a sunroof, ‘Oh well then you have to go two models up and you get the video rear view mirror’ (makes me dizzy), ‘the built in GPS’ (my phone and CarPlay is fine), ‘and the trunk opens by waving your foot under it’ (wow, I couldn’t live without it, I think to myself sarcastically).

I can’t see myself buying another gas-only car ever again, but while we still want a larger SUV, the choices seem to be overpriced features in hybrids, and I think I’d rather wait for a larger full electric, that I’m not spending thousands more on features I don’t want.

My commute is 6.6 kilometres (4.1 miles) round trip, to and from work. For now, I’ll keep my minivan and shop again in a couple years… maybe then I’ll be a little less fussy about paying for features I don’t want.