Sears to sell Craftsman to Stanley/B&D

[Jack]

No, that's not what I was doing, and in fact bitched about item prices being higher when bought thru prime. If an item cost $5 plus $5 shipping and $9 with free shipping under prime, then, how much free shipping are you getting? Someone is lying, both can't be right. I'm absolutely certain Amazon used to do that, not sure if they still do, but they did, and I bet they still do.

My kids have Prime, I sometimes buy through them if the item warrants it. Mostly I just add stuff to my wish list and when it gets high enough for free shipping, I buy it. Everything they sell doesn't qualify for free shipping, and everything doesn't qualify for prime, so due diligence is required. I've been screwed more than once when I paid stupid prices for shipping that I thought was included with the free stuff.

Another nasty habit I noticed is sometimes an online search will find the item on Amazon at a low price. If you go off the page and do a search directly on Amazon for the exact same item, it comes up with a different price and you can't get back to the original price. They obviously have a number of pricing schemes to get into your pocket. Another reason Amazon loses trust from me. They are a shaky out fit and if you are price conscious (cheap, like me) due diligence is a must.

[Jack]

One of my main peeves, although I gave up complaining about it during Fidonet days. When you see me not snip a long post, you can be sure it's to get back at the poster(s) that didn't snip to begin with. It's FAR more annoying than punctuation issues.

If they are too freaking lazy/dumb to snip, I'm happy to add to the mix. Complaining about it never works, so might as well try to annoy them back.

[Jack]

I only tried price match twice, both times at Best Buy. One was Sam's club had a major sale on Samsung 55' smart TV's. I was at Best Buy and they had the same TV for a LOT more money. I told the sales man, showed him the TV on my cell phone. He said that's a hell of a price, but he would need to get his manager. The manager came out, and made some really stupid excuse, like it was a special sale, something like that, and it didn't qualify.

Second time I needed a cable for a computer I bought at BB. I looked it up and Staples had it for $7. I drove to Staples and they didn't have it in stock, would take a few days to order it. Went to Best Buy and they had the exact same cable, but in a BB box, and it was like $20. They would not do the price match then, because they were not the same brand. So for me, I'm 0 for 2 in the price match game.

Also, I noticed a lot of stuff you buy at the Borgs have unique model numbers for stuff, and looking up those numbers turn up nothing. I would imagine this tactic would put a crimp in price matching if the store didn't want to match prices. $1 difference, no problem, $100 difference, big problem....

[Jack]

The reason a retailer is going after my gonads is not important to me. If an item cost 3-10 times as much at a retail store, I'm not likely going to buy it, nor will their price gouging ways send a chill up my leg.

I hate buying machine screws at Borgs, they come in sealed package of 3 for .99. I need 4, and the price is stupid. Hardware stores used to sell them by the pound and they were cheap. Lowes sells threaded inserts individually for 10x's more than I can buy them at Granger.

Why Sears, Lowes, Home Depot won't give a decent price on small items is not important to me. I guess enough people don't mind getting screwed, or even know they are getting screwed. I've been there myself.

[Jack]

I only buy books from Amazon, used. $.01 for most books, plus $3.99 shipping, so $4 delivered to your door. All the books I've bought are like new. Your wife doesn't need to worry about me though, I don't buy many books. My wife buys a ton though, and I have no clue what she pays, but they are all bought on-line, probably Amazon.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I'm not sure you are getting screwed in spite of the high price. The big box stores have a different method of handling inventory and the cost is probably the same for a 10 cent screw as it is for a $20 light fixture or $200 appliance. I can buy a pound of ham at the deli for about the same price as a ham sandwich and loaf of bread. You pay for the handling and convenience.

[Leon]

Free "second day" shipping not just free shipping. You are miss understanding what is free. From their web site,

Prime Shipping FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items, FREE Same-Day Delivery in select areas & more.

Basically it is a free upgrade in shipping time which would cost you considerably more than standard shipping.

Someone is lying, both can't be right. I'm

Amazon sells products that it stocks and offers many of those products, through being a Prime member, with free second day shipping. If not a Prime member you may get free shipping with a minimum order. Also many, many retailers offer the same goods on Amazon ad different prices. Sometimes the prices are higher, some times lower, some times with free shipping, sometimes with a charge for shipping. typically free shipping takes longer than Prime member shipping.

Prime is not always the least expensive way to order an item but often it is, as seen with the shelf hanger clips/brackets.

[Leon]

Yes. A lot of "small cheap items" walk out of the store unpaid for. Many retailers stock the cheap item so that the customer will not go to another store to buy that item, possibly first and possibly loosing a sale altogether.

A customer wants to buy supplies for an oil change.

Store A stocks oil filters, $10. Drain plug gaskets, $2 and oil $7.50 per quart.

Store B stocks oil filters, $9. Drain Plugs gaskets, .25 cents but no oil.

Store A is the most expensive on like items but gets the sale 90% of the time over Store B.

Convenience comes at a cost, it's like location, location, location in the real estate market.

[Bill]

I needed a couple of screws from a small computer store. He asked me for

50 cents or so, but I gave him $2, and thanked him.

[-MIKE-]

With probably 50 million customers, at some of them as smart as you :-), I don't think the practice would last long before being outed and possibly means for a class action lawsuit. If it were systematic policy then people would catch on quick and there would be plenty of outrage.

One thing that leads people to believe that is taking place (and I was in that camp for a while) is how they lump together all their different vendors along with themselves. Amazon used to not warehouse anything and there were simply a conduit between sellers and buyers. After they started being a vendor themselves, it was easy to conflate them all as one and the same.

So you have one guy selling widgets at, near, or under cost just to get rid of them and possibly make some scratch off an inflated shipping cost (remember shipping and "handling?"). And you have Amazon selling them for a fair profit and offering free shipping which costs them a lot less than the little guys because of bulk postage deals with shippers. It's easy to think they are just boosting the price to cover the free shipping.

This may also be attributed to old links and out-dated ads. Some prices on Amazon change daily for various reasons. If one of there vendors gets a huge delivery of widgets which he got at a great wholesale price, he lists them for cheaper than they were yesterday and that all of a sudden becomes Amazon's lowest price. Another vendor had widgets for sale at a super low price and he sold out. Well, today the price for widgets on Amazon suddenly goes up because said vendor sold out.

[-MIKE-]

I'm not so irritated by it anymore for a couple reasons.

1. Snipping long posts was necessary when people were paying for data downloaded and using 14k modems that took quite a while to download even text. Neither of those things are a concern anymore, since newsgroups are never going to put anyone over a data limit and nobody's of dial-up anymore. (If you are, that's your problem!) :-)
2. The fact that we're even debating this in a newsgroup is like complaining about the 8-track cassette fading out and switching tracks in the middle of the guitar solo.

[-MIKE-]

As someone who has tried to make a living in the music business, I know that those barn doors are not only open, but gone, entirely.... in fact the barn has been burned to the ground.

The price of music has dropped so far that it's not even an apples to oranges comparison between now and then, it's an apples to spaceships comparison.

There ain't no going back so fighting it is futile.

[Bill]

Man, I hate when that happens!

[clare]

Okay - so which side of the fence are you on? The side that says the retailer selling the shelf brackets for something like 73 cents should be selling them for a nickel like Amazon, or the side that understands why a retail store needs to charge higher prices??

[clare]

Well that's certainly a novel idea --- If the customer is always right, perhaps he should go into buainess while he knows it all? Perhaps the "customer" can change the laws of economics - - - -

[clare]

You finally caught on. It's up to YOU - not Amazon, or anyone else, what you pay. Either you do your homework and find a price you can live with - and then live with it - or you keep looking and don't buy.

"free shipping" is a PLOY. It is not crooked. There is no such thing as a "free lunch". Prime pricing is "shipping included" pricing. It is "convenience" pricing and "convenience" shopping.. It does not implement "combined shipping" and the economies that go with that.

The only "free shipping" that really does appear to be free is buying stuff from China or other far east countries on Ebay where you buy something for less than it would cost you to send an empty envelope. In those cases, the chinese government is subsidizing the foreign trade by ssubsidizing the shipping..

I still can't figure out how I can buy something like an arduino micro, fully assembled, for less than the price of the processor chip

- and have it shipped from China (for something like $3, believe it or not - try sending a letter to China for under $3 postage from the USA or Canada - - -)

[krw]

I wasn't talking abut "vanity publishing" (AKA paying someone for the honor of being a "published" author). People are making real money with their writing skills. The publisher is just unnecessary overhead.

[krw]

At least in the US, so is Uncle Sam.

[krw]

How about the side that doesn't care; the transaction is up to the buyer and the seller and is of no business of anyone else?

[Leon]

There is no correct answer. Many under priced items are loss leaders. The first tire/automotive store I ran I immediately marked the name brand spark plug prices down to "40 cents less each" than I/we paid for them. It was a rare coinsurance that with each set of plugs we did not also have a distributor cap and "tune-up" kit to go with that, and very often an oil filter and oil. We sold lots of every thing in that category. So I lost $2.40 on every set of spark plugs we sold but add on sales were typically $30~$40.

Retail stores have to have something to get the customer in the door. They naturally have to charge more because of their over head.

So to answer you question. If it were my retail store and I only sold shelf hooks I would mark them up. If I also sold standards and brackets, and shelving, I would make the hooks cheap.

It is much better to double your profit on a $10 item than a 5 cent item. Take the loss on the 5 cent item if it could mean add on sales fot the more expensive and more profitable related items. If there is no related item to "up sale" with your shelf hooks, mark the hooks up, you really do not care if you sell them or not anyway as the customer may only be there for shelving needs.

Way too many factors to determine which method of pricing is correct including area of town the store is in.