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Indeed! It's amazing how often people just simply don't care. Trader Joe's, for instance, makes signs for their produce with crazy prices. Five bananas for a p
by johnklos 5y ago
Indeed! It's amazing how often people just simply don't care.
Trader Joe's, for instance, makes signs for their produce with crazy prices. Five bananas for a penny! Yes, you read that right! They either don't understand decimal places, or they don't realize that it's not legal to advertise incorrect prices.
Their signs clearly say .19¢. I pointed it out to them, and they looked at me like I'm crazy.
Perhaps they'll care when I insist they sell them to me for that price, then complain to the county's Office of Consumer Affairs if they don't.
- usrn 5y agoThose are usually price per unit mass. (though the "/lb" might be very small.)
- paulcole 5y ago> Perhaps they'll care when I insist they sell them to me for that price, then complain to the county's Office of Consumer Affairs if they don't. Did you actually do either of these things?
- johnklos 5y agoI contacted Trader Joe's corporate just today. If they don't do anything, I'll contact the Office of Consumer Affairs. Ignorance of math is a bad thing!
- legalcorrection 5y agoYou are a bad person for doing this. For using the law for personal whimsy instead of remedying or preventing real harm to people. Grow up. Life isn't an internet joke.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack. If there was one way to make this subthread even worse, that would be it.
- paulcole 5y agoI think that intentional ignorance of intent is pretty awful as well. You know full well that bananas aren’t being sold for 0.19 cents each.
- johnklos 5y agoThat's an interesting take. So the implied intent is more important than their actions, even after (or particularly after ) they're told they've made a mistake and asked to fix it?
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoIf it's just a mistake then they are not bound to sell it for that price. Especially if everyone else can easily recognize it as a simple mistake of where the decimal is.
- civilized 5y agoSome states have laws [1] to this effect: > The store must honor the price in the advertisement, even if it is wrong, until they correct the misrepresentation using the same advertising medium and/or by corrective signs in the store. > Items sold in a grocery store must ring up at the lowest displayed price. Food stores that are in the waiver program must offer consumers one of the items free if it scans higher than the lowest advertised price. [1] https://www.mass.gov/guides/a-massachusetts-consumer-guide-to-shopping-rights https://www.mass.gov/guides/a-massachusetts-consumer-guide-t...
- orangepanda 5y agoHow does that work with sales tax not being included in the displayed price?
- civilized 5y agoThe website is an explanation of the law, not the actual law itself. I'm sure the actual law does not require sales tax to be included in the displayed price.
- stonemetal12 5y agoSince he specifically mentions grocery stores, groceries aren't taxed.
- mminer237 5y agoTIL that's a thing. Illinois has a lower tax rate on groceries but still taxes them. Also, grocery stores sell a lot more than just groceries.
- burlesona 5y agoDo you have a photo of this? I would love to see an example :)
- johnklos 5y agoI should've taken a picture of the bananas, but here's a picture of limes being sold for three for a penny: https://www.klos.com/~john/limes.jpeg https://www.klos.com/~john/limes.jpeg
- nyjah 5y agoWhere does it say 3 limes for a penny? It clearly says 1 lime for $0.29? It says it 3 times in that photo, but I don't see the penny claim anywhere.
- aero-glide2 5y agoIt says .29 cents not dollars :)
- cillian64 5y agoThe painted part says “.29c”
- tsimionescu 5y agoNo, the (painted) sign is saying .29¢, not $.29. It's a hundred times cheaper than $.29.
- kodisha 5y ago$ !== ¢
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 5y ago
- onion2k 5y agoPerhaps they'll care when I insist they sell them to me for that price, then complain to the county's Office of Consumer Affairs if they don't. I don't know about American law, but here in the UK you would lose that complaint. A price label is what is known as an "invite to treat", and a store is under no obligation to sell the item to you at that price. If they say it's a mistake they can and you have no right to say otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat
- stonemetal12 5y agoHow far would they have to go before they ran afoul of some sort of false advertising claim?
- tshaddox 5y agoPresumably any legal system would treat the intent as the primary relevancy. In this case it is abundantly clear what the intent was (note that even the person complaining gives an explanation for what the store intended and thus is clearly not at all confused about the intent).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- peteradio 5y agoThat sounds impossible to deal with. So you pick your groceries based on price presumably and then when you get to the register they can be something totally different? So as they are getting rung up you would have to say "no thanks for that one, please put it back" on every price you are not in agreement on?
- toyg 5y agoConsidering the recent news that online groceries can change prices (even dramatically) after you've ordered them, so supermarkets apply prices on the day of delivery, and you're on the hook for any difference... this doesn't surprise me one bit.
- theseanz 5y agoThis reminds of the internet classic VerizonMath: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-...
- darknavi 5y agoCan one be nostalgic for articles like this? Every few years I see this linked and I read the whole thing every time.
- theseanz 5y agoVery much so. I can't believe it happened over 15 years ago!
- tmp_cond_trav 5y agoHa, never heard of this before. I had to hunt the audio down (found it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU) but it was definitely worth it. Very funny! Thank you!
- treeman79 5y agoOh gosh. My dad did that all the time. Lots of bad memories of him keeping at yelling a t them until they agreed.
- forferdet 5y agoThis reminds me of this hysterically funny customer service call to Verizon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShv_74FNWU More of the backstory: https://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ https://verizonmath.blogspot.com/
- kowlo 5y ago12 minutes in... what a journey
- bryanrasmussen 5y agook so as I understand it .19¢ must be 19% of a penny, 19 * 5 is 95, so 95% of a penny. If you add sales tax to that, if your state has one, doesn't that come out to 5 for a penny? Are you being facetious or is .19¢ the same as $.19 and my base expectation is wrong?
- mholm 5y agoShops commonly use .19¢ and $.19 interchangably, when they are definitely not. The poster you're replying to also realized this.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agook thanks for clarification!
- tablespoon 5y ago> Shops commonly use .19¢ and $.19 interchangably, when they are definitely not. The poster you're replying to also realized this. Honestly, I think the correct policy is probably just to interpret .19¢ as a syntax error.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- apeace 5y agoThis left me wondering: if Trader Joe's were forced to stick by their written price, how would they go about charging you the fraction of a cent? Is that even possible?
- darknavi 5y agoAsk gas stations. Every single gas station charges .9 cents at the end of the price.
- bombcar 5y agoCommodities are often quoted down to very small fractions of a cent, depending on what it is; you round using the normal mechanisms or have a separate agreement. Trader Joes could sell for .19 cents and require a minimum purchase of ten pounds, for example.
- veltas 5y agoThat's how many people write 19 cents. For some people a decimal point is the thing that goes between dollars and cents. Yes, not a very rigorous system, not something you'll see in engineering or science, but something I see on shop signs.
- jollybean 5y agoThat's different though. That method of representing price has been normalized. We all know what it means. That's different than miscommunication something. My pet theory, is that putting 30c just 'feels' bigger to people. So a long time ago, everyone started putting .30c.