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This assumes brain time is free. Most of us are too busy navigate all of the deals. Sure, just this one thing for audible is easy. But then you have to remember

by d-sc 8y ago

This assumes brain time is free. Most of us are too busy navigate all of the deals. Sure, just this one thing for audible is easy. But then you have to remember that other thing for Hulu ..and weird trick for Spotify ...and the spring promo for the grocery store.. Pretty soon we get lost.

gambiting 8y ago
But surely....everyone already does this in real life anyways? How is this different? I could go and do my weekly shop in Sainsburys...or drive 100m away and buy everything I need in Lidl for half the price. When buying a car I could say I am too busy to negotiate and take whatever is being offered, or I could do a little shop around and get a better price. Same with accepting salaries, when buying a house, when selecting phone contracts or utilities. You'd need to be super rich to just accept prices as they are and not worry about it - and if you are, then great, but for me it's like throwing money out of the window if you don't do this. I mean, I don't know how else do you expect this to work? That all companies and individuals should be obliged to give us the lowest price they will ever accept, just because?
- jimktrains2 8y ago
  I really hope you meant 100km. Even if you did, the amount of gas and wear on the car is non negligible, but still not a burden for a large run. However, most people don't want to drive that far or spend that much time being unproductive just to get a deal. Also, all of the examples about cars, salaries, &c are no where near the frequency of groceries or monthly subscriptions and probably don't happen simultaneously. The constant cognitive overload of doing it for everything in our lives is the issue, not that we can't do it for unique circumstances.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    100m = 100 metres. 30 seconds extra driving.
    - ska 8y ago
      That’s it how the grocery trade off happens really though. I’m not familiar with the particular stores you mention, but this market is sliced up the same way here, I expect. First off, the stores are not fungible. Secondly, most people are trading off a convenient option for a much more inconvenient option or two, not 30s more driving. So say a extra 1/2 hour to your trip, or more. Why aren’t they fungible? Because they don’t carry the same products. There is an overlap of commodity products (cans of coke, big name cleaners etc.) There are product a more bargain store won’t carry at all, and then there are products that are superficially commodity (cheese, meats, dairy, produce) but really aren’t. Of course marketing makes this all more complicated if you want to think of “rational shopping” but it’s still true that the mid and high cost stores know I would probably be happier to pay more for truly commodity products there, than make a separate trip for them. For the most part, for most people, that’s true - although cf CostCo and the like for specific counter examples based on less frequent trips to “stock up”
- 0xffff2 8y ago
  I buy a car once every 10 years or so, so it's not much overhead to research and negotiate that sale when you amortize it over the life of the car. For most other things, I pretty much pay the price I'm presented if I think it's acceptable. I do my grocery shopping at one grocery store. I know I'm paying a bit more for some items (and much more for a few), but it's worth it to me because it means I don't have to make extra trips to Target and Trader Joe's, plus I don't have to remember what the prices are at all three stores so that I buy the right items at the right store. The vast majority of my spending falls into this category. In fact, car and salary are the only two things I can think of that I actually negotiate at all. Even my house I didn't really negotiate. I made an offer slightly below asking and accepted the sellers counter in the middle. As a non-FAANG software engineer in the bay area, I definitely don't consider myself super rich. (NB: I didn't buy a house in the bay area, but where I plan to eventually retire. For now it's just a vacation home. I'll never make enough to afford a house in the bay.)
  - brownbat 8y ago
    > plus I don't have to remember what the prices are at all three [grocery] stores I take your point that only the big things are worth sweating, but I feel like local comparison shopping is the sort of thing technology should make easy, and it still seems really hard. User uploaded systems, like GasBuddy, probably wouldn't work on so many items, unless uploading the price data could be automated somehow. If we could kill paper receipts and instead get per-item sales data pumped to our feed of choice (Mint? Email?), then it'd be much easier to build a system on top of that that would run weekly local price comparisons. If you really wanted only one trip, maybe it could compare your total shopping list. I know a lot of stores offer emailed receipts as an option now, it'd be a little more seamless if your payment system communicated your receipt preferences automatically, and if Mint or something like it was ready to catch that data.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  I have some news for you. Each person sets an amount they are willing to lose for convenience, and move the extra 100m when they expect the price difference to be larger to that amount. It would be even a nice and simple "Homo economicus" behavior if the amount was context-free. But people are partially rational beings, so they will putting a lot of effort searching for a house even if they don't wait an hour on the phone to get a $2 discount on some service.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  When your time is worth enough, there are many small savings that you could get but aren't worth the time you'd spend looking for them. Example: If you're earning enough, it might make sense to eat out every single meal. The time you'd spend doing groceries and cooking, plus their associated costs, can be lower than what you'd earn working an extra few hours per week and eating out every meal. (If you actually enjoy cooking it's of course a different story. And I do too. But people who eat out constantly are a thing.)
- coldtea 8y ago
  >But surely....everyone already does this in real life anyways? No. >I mean, I don't know how else do you expect this to work? That all companies and individuals should be obliged to give us the lowest price they will ever accept, just because? Yes. Preferably with huge penalties whenever they do differently, the kind that shut down a company as opposed to slaps on the wrist. It's called transparent pricing, and not treating your customers like shit for price differentiation reasons.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

by d-sc 8y ago

gambiting 8y ago

But surely....everyone already does this in real life anyways? How is this different? I could go and do my weekly shop in Sainsburys...or drive 100m away and buy everything I need in Lidl for half the price. When buying a car I could say I am too busy to negotiate and take whatever is being offered, or I could do a little shop around and get a better price. Same with accepting salaries, when buying a house, when selecting phone contracts or utilities. You'd need to be super rich to just accept prices as they are and not worry about it - and if you are, then great, but for me it's like throwing money out of the window if you don't do this. I mean, I don't know how else do you expect this to work? That all companies and individuals should be obliged to give us the lowest price they will ever accept, just because?

jimktrains2 8y ago
I really hope you meant 100km. Even if you did, the amount of gas and wear on the car is non negligible, but still not a burden for a large run. However, most people don't want to drive that far or spend that much time being unproductive just to get a deal. Also, all of the examples about cars, salaries, &c are no where near the frequency of groceries or monthly subscriptions and probably don't happen simultaneously. The constant cognitive overload of doing it for everything in our lives is the issue, not that we can't do it for unique circumstances.
- gambiting 8y ago
  100m = 100 metres. 30 seconds extra driving.
  - ska 8y ago
    That’s it how the grocery trade off happens really though. I’m not familiar with the particular stores you mention, but this market is sliced up the same way here, I expect. First off, the stores are not fungible. Secondly, most people are trading off a convenient option for a much more inconvenient option or two, not 30s more driving. So say a extra 1/2 hour to your trip, or more. Why aren’t they fungible? Because they don’t carry the same products. There is an overlap of commodity products (cans of coke, big name cleaners etc.) There are product a more bargain store won’t carry at all, and then there are products that are superficially commodity (cheese, meats, dairy, produce) but really aren’t. Of course marketing makes this all more complicated if you want to think of “rational shopping” but it’s still true that the mid and high cost stores know I would probably be happier to pay more for truly commodity products there, than make a separate trip for them. For the most part, for most people, that’s true - although cf CostCo and the like for specific counter examples based on less frequent trips to “stock up”
0xffff2 8y ago
I buy a car once every 10 years or so, so it's not much overhead to research and negotiate that sale when you amortize it over the life of the car. For most other things, I pretty much pay the price I'm presented if I think it's acceptable. I do my grocery shopping at one grocery store. I know I'm paying a bit more for some items (and much more for a few), but it's worth it to me because it means I don't have to make extra trips to Target and Trader Joe's, plus I don't have to remember what the prices are at all three stores so that I buy the right items at the right store. The vast majority of my spending falls into this category. In fact, car and salary are the only two things I can think of that I actually negotiate at all. Even my house I didn't really negotiate. I made an offer slightly below asking and accepted the sellers counter in the middle. As a non-FAANG software engineer in the bay area, I definitely don't consider myself super rich. (NB: I didn't buy a house in the bay area, but where I plan to eventually retire. For now it's just a vacation home. I'll never make enough to afford a house in the bay.)
- brownbat 8y ago
  > plus I don't have to remember what the prices are at all three [grocery] stores I take your point that only the big things are worth sweating, but I feel like local comparison shopping is the sort of thing technology should make easy, and it still seems really hard. User uploaded systems, like GasBuddy, probably wouldn't work on so many items, unless uploading the price data could be automated somehow. If we could kill paper receipts and instead get per-item sales data pumped to our feed of choice (Mint? Email?), then it'd be much easier to build a system on top of that that would run weekly local price comparisons. If you really wanted only one trip, maybe it could compare your total shopping list. I know a lot of stores offer emailed receipts as an option now, it'd be a little more seamless if your payment system communicated your receipt preferences automatically, and if Mint or something like it was ready to catch that data.
marcosdumay 8y ago
I have some news for you. Each person sets an amount they are willing to lose for convenience, and move the extra 100m when they expect the price difference to be larger to that amount. It would be even a nice and simple "Homo economicus" behavior if the amount was context-free. But people are partially rational beings, so they will putting a lot of effort searching for a house even if they don't wait an hour on the phone to get a $2 discount on some service.
ddebernardy 8y ago
When your time is worth enough, there are many small savings that you could get but aren't worth the time you'd spend looking for them. Example: If you're earning enough, it might make sense to eat out every single meal. The time you'd spend doing groceries and cooking, plus their associated costs, can be lower than what you'd earn working an extra few hours per week and eating out every meal. (If you actually enjoy cooking it's of course a different story. And I do too. But people who eat out constantly are a thing.)
coldtea 8y ago
>But surely....everyone already does this in real life anyways? No. >I mean, I don't know how else do you expect this to work? That all companies and individuals should be obliged to give us the lowest price they will ever accept, just because? Yes. Preferably with huge penalties whenever they do differently, the kind that shut down a company as opposed to slaps on the wrist. It's called transparent pricing, and not treating your customers like shit for price differentiation reasons.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]