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Once i had a very amusing discusson with a store that sold laptops. I wanted to purchase a laptop at the advertised price. The sales person told me i was in lu
by b3lvedere 11mo ago
Once i had a very amusing discusson with a store that sold laptops.
I wanted to purchase a laptop at the advertised price. The sales person told me i was in luck, because all their laptops came preinstalled with Microsoft Office for a little extra money. I told him politely i did not want to buy Microsoft Office, even for such little extra money. I just wanted the laptop.
Semi-flabbergasted he told me this was not possible, because all the laptops had Office pre-installed. I told him i did not care and wanted to buy the laptop for the adverstised price.
After 15 minutes of discussion, some manager came frustrated what the problem was. I pointed to the price tag and told him i wanted to buy the laptop for that price exactly and if that was possible. It was, but it would require uninstalling Office, which took them another 15 minutes.
So i waited for another 15 minutes so they could remove Office. Back at home i powered on the laptop, popped in a usb disk and removed every partition that its harddisk ever had and started a nice fresh install without any bloatware.
- cbdevidal 11mo agoThe irony is even though Dollar Tree prices are honest because they all are the same $1.25 (excluding the new “More Choices” $3-5 items) they’re still ripping you off. I always shop on a per-unit basis e.g. dollars per pound or cents per ounce, since that’s how I actually eat food. I need a certain amount of calories and a certain quantity of food to survive, and the less I pay per unit, the lower overall cost. On a per-unit basis, DT is almost always the most expensive store around, because quantities are so small! There are of course exceptions; I can recall not long ago for example buying a pound of Himalayan sea salt for a dollar. That was a solid deal, and I haven’t seen it since. But generally speaking, if you want to save money, don’t go to Dollar Tree.
- jtbayly 11mo agoUnless you are buying cards. Maybe candy, too? I’d be curious about that.
- schnable 11mo agoThat's not really a rip off, it caters to people who can't afford to buy in larger quantities.
- CyberDildonics 11mo agoThere are some things at dollar tree that are a good deal and some that aren't. I think part of the appeal when everything was a dollar was so that people would know exactly how much it would be when they went to check out. Then they could manage a little bit of money with precision.
- account42 11mo ago> I always shop on a per-unit basis e.g. dollars per pound or cents per ounce, since that’s how I actually eat food. For staples that's definitely sensible but surely there are also times where you need one-off items where any extra amount would just be waste?
- cbdevidal 11mo agoNot usually but yes at times DT makes sense. And yes there are times when some cannot always afford bigger quantities. But we’re not talking about 50 pound bags at Costco here; The price per pound for a ten pound bag of something at Walmart vs a six ouncer at DT is substantial.
- angmarsbane 11mo agoWe used to buy raspberries, blackberries, blueberries etc at Dollar Stores. They wouldn't last a week in the fridge which is why they were at the Dollar Store, but we were eating them same-day or next day so spoilage wasn't a concern. Really helped the berry budget with toddlers.
- opendomain 11mo agoSO what do you buy for food and where do you buy it? With your focus on calories per dollar, do you also get supplements? Which ones and where? Why are you so focused on this?
- bee_rider 11mo agoIs there any reason to assume they are “so focused” on it? Keeping an eye on unit or per-weight prices is somewhat conventional and pretty easy—at least I think most major grocery chains around here include that info right on the sticker.
- fc417fc802 11mo agoAt least where I'm at they're legally required to include that info and they appear to comply maliciously whenever possible. Sometimes it's slightly wrong. Often the unit of weight changes between items of the same sort. It's absurd.
- angmarsbane 11mo agoI've been using Gemini or Chat GPT in store to quickly calculate the cost-per when two like items use different measures ex. ounces vs. lbs.
- pessimizer 11mo agoYou did not understand the comment. The person is talking about units per dollar, not necessarily calories per dollar, or anything about health. If I can buy one sponge for $1.25 and three sponges for $3, for example, I prefer three. This has nothing to do with how many calories are in a sponge.
- mastax 11mo agoYou may be shocked to hear that there are no seas in the Himalayas.
- williamdclt 11mo agoWell ackshually, Himalayan salt does come from a sea (although this sea has disappeared a long long time ago) so it's not _technically_ wrong
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- harimau777 11mo agoThat sounds like it's basically the grocery equivalent of the boot theory of poverty. Poor people have to pay more in the long run because they can't afford to buy in bulk.
- the_sleaze_ 11mo agoThis is exactly right and the reason that Costco shoppers are un-intuitively among the richest groups in the country (average $125,000 household income).
- brookst 11mo agoCostco is great for wealthy families, less so for less wealthy. People living in small apartments have no place to put 36 rolls of paper towels and 12 jars of pasta sauce. Having a large home is a prerequisite for shopping at Costco.
- angmarsbane 11mo agoWe live in an apartment but use Costco to stock our freezer with meat and seafood. We also use it for gas, cat litter, eggs, and cheese (lasts a long time). Basically for perishables that only need to be stored so long.
- brookst 11mo agoWhich is great, but you receive a fraction of the benefit wealthy households do.
- hattmall 10mo agoThey don't even build Costco in close proximity to poor people.
- kccqzy 11mo agoIt’s slightly different for groceries. I am not poor but I also don’t want to buy perishables in bulk. I can choose to buy one week’s worth of lettuce to be eaten in a week, but by the seventh day the lettuce has visibly degraded. I want fresher produce, so I am willing to buy smaller amounts every two days.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoYes because when I need a small bag of snacks to put in my backpack before a flight, my first stop is to Costco and buy everything I need in bulk.
- froglets 11mo agoDollar Tree regular items aren’t all $1.25 anymore. Maybe half of what I’ve purchased there recently (mostly craft/gift wrap/party supplies) have changed to $1.50 or $1.75. If you grab multiple of the same item each one can ring up a different price.
- crazygringo 11mo agoThat's actually fascinating, because they surely weren't tracking the actual Office license keys, and getting their money back. The manager literally uninstalled Office just to spite you. That's super funny! Especially since it made zero difference to you in the end.
- zamadatix 11mo agoI give it an even split between spite and genuinely not understanding how software licensing is tracked/preinstalled trials work, thinking "if they don't buy the office addon I need to make sure they don't receive one with the office addon" as they would have to do with most other products.
- sarchertech 11mo agoI did many of these preinstalls 20 years ago. When you get credit back from Microsoft they ask you to make sure the key isn’t installed anywhere. They don’t track it, but it is a retirement from the vendor not a misunderstanding on the part of the manager.
- sarchertech 11mo agoI worked at Geek Squad almost 20 years ago and here’s how it went. We would preinstall office on say 80% of the door buster laptops for something like $29. Most people used office so they’d pay it. Occasionally some people didn’t want it so they’d buy a bare laptop. If all the bare laptops had been sold, we’d remove office from one of the preinstalled laptops. Then we’d take the box and send it back to the inventory guys to process and get credit back from the vendor. As part of that process we were supposed to verify to Microsoft that the product wasn’t installed on any machines. So they weren’t tracking keys, but the manager wasn’t doing it to spite the OP, he was just doing what the vendor asked for.
- crazygringo 11mo agoOh thanks, that's really interesting. It makes more sense if there's a physical box involved -- I don't remember ever getting physical boxes for preinstalled software, but it makes sense that way.
- greenavocado 11mo agoWas this in the US? I never purchased computers from people in a storefront.
- satvikpendem 11mo agoThis is possible in the US but I'm sure in many other countries too where electronics and computer stores exist, not even counting the wide swath of Apple stores around the world.
- b3lvedere 11mo agoNo. Western Europe.
- dylan604 11mo agoI was really waiting for this to be a Windows bloatware where Linux laptops are cheaper since there's no unnecessary Microsoft license at all. So you are principled in not wanting to use Office, but unprincipled enough to go ahead and use Windows?? That's a bold position on HN. Linux or death!!!!
- thekid314 11mo agoThis will be the year of Linux on the desktop!
- fc417fc802 11mo agoTBF between SteamOS and ChromeOS I'd say that already happened some time ago.
- b3lvedere 11mo agoMy brother in law needed that laptop for his studies back then. Since he does not annoy me with countless IT related requests like some other family members tend to do and he did not have much money, i did some research for him. School supplied all the necessary licenses for free and i installed an extremely optimised Windows.
- knowitnone3 11mo agobut you re-installed Windows which is the definition of bloatware and malware.
- b3lvedere 11mo agoHis studies required it.
- calmworm 11mo agoThey do this same type of thing at car dealerships everywhere. Some pre-installed dealer add-on they just tack onto the total. Annoying.