Archive for the 'Shopping' Category

Domain name registrar Dotster sent me an email inviting me to “confirm your email address”, and in return promised to “give you a coupon for 20% off your next purchase as a special thank-you gift”. This sounded good, as I had some domain name renewals coming up.

After checking that the email was really from Dotster and wasn’t phishing spam, I clicked on the link to confirm my email address. I figured that receiving Dotster’s promotional emails for a while would be a small penalty to pay in return for a 20% discount off my next purchase.

Not only did the 20%-off coupon expire in a mere six days, it also had a whole bunch of exclusions. Apparently, Dotster doesn’t think the purchase of domain name renewals should qualify as my “next purchase”. It sure feels like a purchase to me though.

To make it worse, not only was the coupon useless to me but I couldn’t find a way to remove my recently-confirmed email address from Dotster’s marketing subscription list.

The car rental from Tempest Car Hire (South Africa) seemed to be good value, and everything seemed to go straightforwardly. When I returned the vehicle, a staff member checked it and found that everything was OK, and confirmed that the fuel tank was full (as it should have been, because I had filled up just one block away).

I was therefore surprised to receive an email two days later charging me R61.25 for “Refuelling”. That’s about £5. Not a lot, but at least 6 litres, and more than could possibly have been squeezed into the tank.

The email said “This is an auto-generated email – please do not reply”, so I used the form on their website to send this message:

I have just received an invoice from Tempest (invoice number 2572868) which shows a Refuelling Charge of R61.25. The vehicle was completely refuelled by me at the BP garage at Cape Town airport just one block away from where I returned the car.

It’s completely impossible that driving one block used this fuel, and the person checking in the car confirmed that the tank was full while I was there. Please arrange for your accounts department to reverse the Refuelling Charge.

We’ll see what happens.

Update: Within 24 hours I received this message from Tempest’s “Total Quality Department”:

I have logged a query for you; this means someone will investigate into this matter on your behalf and you will be notified of the outcome.

I did wonder whether I would hear anything more, but sure enough two days later I received a credit note with a “refuelling adjustment” reversing out the R61.25 overcharge.

Well done to Tempest’s Total Quality Department for sorting this out correctly, although of course the refuelling charge should never have been imposed in the first place.

My daughter’s first phone was very basic – it did voice calls and text only. No music or games. She really wanted games. After a few years we decided to get her a new phone for her birthday, and of course we chose one with games.

I bought the LG KS360 from my local Orange store. The staff member assured me that I could “get the balance from her old Sim card transferred, no problems”. Yes, she actually said the words “no problems”.

So my daughter’s birthday came and she unwrapped the phone. A leaflet says you must transfer the old Sim card balance before you put the Sim card in the phone. That’s why I had been unable to fully test the phone before giving it to her.

I phoned the number provided (freephone, thankfully) and got through. The operator complained that the old Sim card was never registered (which is true, as it’s not compulsory). Anyway he took my daughter’s details and asked me for a 4-digit passcode. He asked me to call my daughter to the phone, so that he could check the details. At no point did he convey to me that he was doing anything other than transferring the old balance.

We put the Sim card in, and everything seemed to work except the games. Selecting Games just makes the phone reboot. Every time. When you click “Games” the Java logo flashes briefly then the phone shuts down and restarts. My daughter was so disappointed.

The next day I took the phone back to the store and demonstrated the problem. The staff are presumably sales rather than technical staff, and they phoned the Orange call centre.

The call centre operator then told me that he wasn’t going to fix the problem; that my daughter had to sort it out herself. What am I supposed to do, take her out of school to bring her to the store? Set a schoolchild loose to battle the multiple confusing options of the Orange call centre?

I explained that I was the buyer of the phone, and that I expected to be sold a working phone, but the operator wasn’t interested. He tried to invoke the Data Protection Act, claiming that this somehow prevented Orange from fixing the phone. How bizarre, considering that I hadn’t asked them to divulge any personal information, and in any case the only information they held was that which I had supplied to them myself the previous day.

We went round in circles a few times, but it was obvious that the call centre operator had no interest in solving the problem. I then asked the sales assistant for a refund, but she refused, saying it was impossible. She didn’t offer any positive suggestions, nor did she seem the slightest bit sympathetic.

I left as a very unhappy customer, trembling with anger, £98 out of pocket and with a non-working phone. I hope this story is going to have a happy ending for my daughter; it’s already too late for it to have a happy ending for me.

When you visit amazon.co.uk, you can buy things that are supplied by Amazon, but you can also buy things that are supplied by their associated Merchants. Amazon keeps track of the process, but it can cause you to receive a lot of confusing emails.

I bought a tap recently, and received these emails (greatly abridged here, with my annotations in green):

11 December – Thanks for ordering from Amazon.co.uk. Your purchase information appears below … Dispatch estimate for these items: 12 Dec 2007 – 13 Dec 2007 … Sold by: S.N.H. Tradecentre …

11 December – … Thank you for your order … Payment Method: Amazon Checkout … Sincerely, S.N.H. Trade

11 December – … Thank you for your purchase from S.N.H. Trade. Please note that your payment has been received today and your order will be processed as quickly as possible … We will let you know shortly, when your order has been moved to the packing dpt. (sounds like my order will be on its way soon then) … If you don’t receive an Email to confirm this in the next 3 days, please call us to let us know (Hmmm, maybe they don’t sound so confident) … so we can chase your order up (you mean their own systems can’t prompt them to chase it up?) … Payment Method: Amazon Checkout. Payment Status: Payment Received … (so I’ve paid, then)

12 December – … Please note that your Order … is being prepared to be shipped shortly (sounds like my order will be on its way soon then) … We will inform you the day before delivery (but not very soon) …

13 December – Hi, thankyou for your order,unfortunately the BE307 will not be available until approx 11.8.07. We will keep this on order for you (hmm, 11.8.07 is four months ago!) …

16 December – We have tried to dispatch your goods within our normal 2-3 day delivery time. Delivery on the outset for your goods will be within 14 working day from order, unless we contact you to let you know we may have a problem. If you have recieved this e mail it usually means that we have had a lot of orders and has a small back log. Usually this will delay your delivery by a couple of days. We apologise in advance for this dalay and are working hard to deliver all items as quickly as possable. (all these spelling and grammar errors were theirs, by the way) … If you are in a real hurry for your goods, and this is to long, please call 01843 842727 … and our sales team will do everything thay can to dispatch your goods as quickly as possible. (how will they speed it up? And why should I need to nag them for this to happen? Again, all the spelling and grammar errors are theirs.)

7 January – The following order, placed on 11-Dec-2007 with S.N.H Tradecentre, will be canceled if the order is not ship-confirmed by 12-Jan-2008. (Merchants on Amazon must ship products within 30 days from the date when the order was placed; otherwise, the order is automatically canceled.) … Your credit card has not been charged for the order. (S.N.H. already told me that they had received payment, and now Amazon tells me that I haven’t yet paid?) …

9 January – Thank you for your purchase from S.N.H Trade. Please note that your Order 150524276 has been shipped today …

9 January – Today S.N.H Tradecentre shipped item(s) in your order, placed on 11-December-2007.

10 January – (The parcel arrived, and was correct. Yay!)

A good eventual outcome, but not a smooth transaction.

Recently Mrs Penditure bought a sturdy-looking bicycle combination lock. On its second use, it jammed up, trapping the kids’ bicycles to the school bicycle rack until we found someone with a tool that could cut the cable.

I took the severed lock back to Wilkinsons where they were quite happy to refund my £5.

“I suppose you won’t want another one the same”, said the cashier. Too right!

This shampoo (Natures Organics “fruits”) works well enough. It:

• cleans my hair
• doesn’t cost too much
• has an Apple flavour that’s not too objectionable

It is also an example of what must be the pinnacle of consumerism – a container that won’t dispense a small quantity. I don’t have as much hair as some people, and I don’t need to use a lot of shampoo. A drop or two is enough.

The people who produce this product have found a way to thwart people like me who don’t use enough shampoo. They put a large hole in the top of the bottle, but give the shampoo itself a jelly-like consistency.

If you just squeeze the bottle a little bit, as soon as you release your squeeze the bottle just sucks the blob of shampoo straight back into the bottle!

Instead, you must squeeze enough to dispense a big blob of shampoo – big enough that its weight will overcome the force trying to suck it back into the bottle.

Clever people, those who work in consumer product design.

A strange kind of reminiscence this one, back to the days when the local supermarket (in Sydney) stocked a brand of toilet paper called Thousand Sheet Roll.

I was living by myself at the time. I would install one of these, and wouldn’t have to worry about changing the roll for months and months at a time. The roll started to seem like a fixture rather than a consumable. It was only single-ply paper, but it was decently strong and perfectly functional.

Even the ordinary rolls of the time (early 1980’s) held 500 sheets.

But then the manufacturers realised that most people instinctively buy toilet paper “by the roll”, not “by the sheet”. So they reduced the rolls to 400 sheets at first, then to as low as 180 sheets (although 220 seems to be pretty common nowadays).

The manufacturers ran ads claiming that their paper was softer than ever. Always, the ad showed someone squeezing the roll. Well that doesn’t illustrate anything except how loosely the roll has been wound. If you wind the roll with lots of air, the roll as a whole appears more squeezable even though the paper is the same.

The manufacturers aren’t stupid. Why put 500 sheets on a roll if people are just as happy to buy rolls of 220 sheets (and to buy more than twice as many of those rolls)?

So now, the multi-pack rules. Four, six, eight, twelve rolls at once, with all the extra shelf space costs, transport costs and extra cardboard cores that this implies.

Oh for the old days when life was simple, and Thousand Sheet Roll ruled the little room.

I recently discussed the notion of price discrimination, where the same product is sold to different people at difference prices, with the aim of extracting the maximum profit for the seller.

Another form of price discrimination can be found in many supermarkets. It’s price discrimination by variation of packaging.

For example, at Sainsburys at the moment, Granny Smith apples are £1.05 per kilogram loose. Or, you can buy them in a pack of seven for £1.05.

I weighed some of the packs, and they were around 800 or 900 grams. It’s clear that you get a better deal buying the loose apples and having them weighed at the checkout – plus you can pick and choose the better quality apples. The shopper in a hurry, picking up the prepacked bag in haste, doesn’t realise (and may not care) that they are paying more.

The same thing applies to other fresh foods, such as broccoli. It is consistently cheaper bought loose from the boxes, than pre-wrapped.

Strictly speaking, these differently-packed products are not absolutely identical. They may come from different batches, different distribution centres, or even different countries. But from the consumer’s point of view there’s unlikely to be any practical difference.

So remember – if price is important, the loose produce is probably the better bet. If convenience is important, go for the pre-pack, but realise that you may be paying a premium for it.

(photo by Linda Huber)

One form of price discrimination practised by supermarkets is to offer one item for the price of two. Only they don’t advertise it that way – they prefer to advertise two items for the price of one. What’s going on here?

The supermarkets want to sell their goods for as much as possible, so they like to price high. But they don’t want to lose customers who can’t afford the higher prices and would shop elsewhere. So they try to find a way to extract maximum profit from the well-heeled shopper-in-a-hurry whilst still getting some profit from the thrifty comparison-shopper.

So when melons are priced at £2 each, but with a “buy one get one free” offer, you can buy one melon for £2, or you can buy two melons for £2. Who would buy only one melon then? People buying from a shopping list, who only need one melon, might buy only one (if they don’t notice the promotion). People for whom time is money, who just pick what they want from the shelves without carefully checking the pricing details, might buy only one.

On occasions, the “buy one get one free” deal might be a loss leader, but more often the supermarket is making money from everyone. Those melons might only cost the supermarket 80 pence, so they make money whether you buy one or two for your £2.

I ran into this situation this morning, which is what prompted this blog entry. I wanted one melon for a recipe, and darned if I’m going to buy one for the price of two. So instead of buying one melon for £2, and instead of buying two melons for £2 including one that I don’t want, I headed up the road to the local fruit shop and bought one melon for £1.35.

Just thought you’d like to know!

If you fly by air, try asking those around you how much they paid for their seats. It’s quite possible that you won’t find anyone who paid the same fare as you. The airlines aim to extract as much profit from each customer as possible, and charging different fares to different people is one way they achieve this.

This is called price discrimination, and it’s not restricted to airlines. You might think that supermarkets are one place where everyone pays the same price, but that’s far from true.

By being aware of this price discrimination, and understanding how it works, you can make better purchase decisions.

From time to time, I’ll discuss examples of price discrimination, which I’ll link to this page:

• One for the price of two