4 ms·

Where's the trick? Retailers have always changed their prices for items over time based on external factors, it's just happening faster now.

by mef 14y ago

lignuist 14y ago
"it's just happening faster now" That's the point. Let's say I call a shop, asking for a price of a product. They tell me a price of X, so I take amount X with me and go to the shop, just to see that the price eventually has been changed to Y (eventually higher than X). I'm missing reliability here. Sure, prices are changing all the time. That's just normal, but i would prefer stable prices for at least a time window that allows me to think about my decision before i buy.
- jrockway 14y ago
  You are overthinking the purchase of toilet paper. (It makes sense for Amazon to think about the price, they are going to sell it thousands of times at that price. But you only buy a case of toilet paper once a year, and it's going to cost you at most $30, so it's not really worth your time to figure out how to save eighty cents.)
  - lignuist 14y ago
    Maybe I'm overthinking it. Still: in the sum of all the purchases I do over the year (obviously not only toilet paper), this 80 cents can make a significant difference, if I have to invest the time only once, to find out, how I can fix my behaviour and just follow that pattern afterwards.
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      The problem is that the way the game is rigged, you can't decide only once. You've got to consciously compare every time you shop. The cognitive weight of that decision making is higher than a consistent and satisficing heuristic (shop somewhere that doesn' tplay mindfuck with prices and prices fairly).
- andrewem 14y ago
  Way back, maybe around 1999?, I was in London and there was an internet cafe called easyInternet [1]. They had this weird gimmick where the price per hour to use a computer with Internet access would fluctuate according to market conditions. It didn't seem to change that much, but it was way lower than its competitors, so that's the one I went to. I found it to be just an irritant, and would happily have paid slightly more to not have to think about the price changes. [1] I think this is the group of companies that owns/owned that: http://www.easy.com http://www.easy.com

Where's the trick? Retailers have always changed their prices for items over time based on external factors, it's just happening faster now.

by mef 14y ago

Where's the trick? Retailers have always changed their prices for items over time based on external factors, it's just happening faster now.

lignuist 14y ago

"it's just happening faster now" That's the point. Let's say I call a shop, asking for a price of a product. They tell me a price of X, so I take amount X with me and go to the shop, just to see that the price eventually has been changed to Y (eventually higher than X). I'm missing reliability here. Sure, prices are changing all the time. That's just normal, but i would prefer stable prices for at least a time window that allows me to think about my decision before i buy.

jrockway 14y ago
You are overthinking the purchase of toilet paper. (It makes sense for Amazon to think about the price, they are going to sell it thousands of times at that price. But you only buy a case of toilet paper once a year, and it's going to cost you at most $30, so it's not really worth your time to figure out how to save eighty cents.)
- lignuist 14y ago
  Maybe I'm overthinking it. Still: in the sum of all the purchases I do over the year (obviously not only toilet paper), this 80 cents can make a significant difference, if I have to invest the time only once, to find out, how I can fix my behaviour and just follow that pattern afterwards.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    The problem is that the way the game is rigged, you can't decide only once. You've got to consciously compare every time you shop. The cognitive weight of that decision making is higher than a consistent and satisficing heuristic (shop somewhere that doesn' tplay mindfuck with prices and prices fairly).
andrewem 14y ago
Way back, maybe around 1999?, I was in London and there was an internet cafe called easyInternet [1]. They had this weird gimmick where the price per hour to use a computer with Internet access would fluctuate according to market conditions. It didn't seem to change that much, but it was way lower than its competitors, so that's the one I went to. I found it to be just an irritant, and would happily have paid slightly more to not have to think about the price changes. [1] I think this is the group of companies that owns/owned that: http://www.easy.com http://www.easy.com