Dear retailers:
When I'm shopping, what I want to know is how many dollars I have to give you to acquire a specific product. I don't care why I have to pay you which dollars, I don't care where the money is allocated. I just want to know how much money I have to pay. Including the eco-fee in the sticker price does this. However, adding it on as a separate line item at the register is completely useless and makes me feel cheated, like those phone companies that advertise a low price and then add a system access fee and a 911 fee and a touch-tone fee (how are system access and 911 and touch tone not part of phone service?) or when I get my hydro bill and see a charge of $12 for the electricity I used and then an additional nearly $30 in regulatory charges and delivery charges and debt retirement charges and administrative charges.
Itemizing bills like this is useless. It's as meaningless to me as if you tell me that $X went to raw materials and $Y went to labour and $Z went to transportation costs. I don't care! Just tell me how many dollars you want for it! Posting one price and then adding additional fees that either aren't posted or that you have to look hard for is completely uninformative. "This costs $15, plus some extra amounts that we aren't going to tell you."
I blogged before about how I want them to include sales tax in the price, and some people mentioned that it used to be that way and people found it untransparent. So if they want to provide a breakdown on the price tag and/or on the receipt, that's fine. But please, I implore you, make the big price on the label the total, including eco-fees (and, ideally, sales taxes and any other additional fees there might be). Doing this would make me feel full-informed. Not doing it makes me feel cheated.
5 comments:
I completely agree. But, then there's those retailers that want people to see a lower price to entice them to buy..and there's those buyers that truly believe that they are getting a bargain if they don't see the entire price on the sticker. Rubbish if you ask me. I've started quoting my clients the bottom line, at work. It is after-all, what they will be paying no matter which way they'd LIKE to think it is.
I agree with Hanna but I'd put it more strongly. Sellers want to not take responsibility for the price. They want to trick you into thinking that they would gladly give you a great bargain, but [the government] [the environmentalists] [whoever] won't let them.
I don't mind that my bottom-line price is broken up into separate line items, but all of those lines should be disclosed up front immediately.
When I downgraded my cable TV package from one that cost $62.95 to one that cost $28.95, I only ended up saving $15 a month, because the $28.95 didn't include many things that the $62.95 package did. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Just like the system access fee and other examples you mention.
I say, break up the charges if you have to, but tell me EVERYTHING right away.
I do wonder if people actually feel like they're getting a better bargain when the advertised price is lower than the actual price. Back in my cashier days, we'd have customers coming in with a coupon for coffee for 99 cents and then getting pissed off when they didn't get change back from a loonie (because it costs $1.14 including the normal sales taxes that are on every cup of take-out coffee). I put up with way more shit than a teenage girl making minimum wage should have to just because the advertised price was below a psychological threshold and the actual price was above.
That's a good point. The "plus tax" is always in tiny print and people hate it. The offer should have been for whatever amount that would come out to 99 cents after tax was added.
But retailers seem to believe this non-disclosure helps them.
I would make a big noisy point of shopping somewhere that included everything on the price tag, if only I could find somewhere like that.
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