Got a call from my cell phone carrier the other day, and they offered me a deal on a new iPhone. I went to the store the next day to get the new phone, and then the marketing happened. After picking out the new phone and getting ready to transfer the data, the salesman mentioned that the phone I thought I was buying for half of the price listed was a lease and after the eighteen months of payments I would have to finish paying the other half for the phone or turn it in. The deal offered was no deal. I felt that, after praising me for being a good customer for fifteen years and being deserving of a deal, I had been used by a large company to sell a cell phone. I left the phone on the counter and walked out. I am looking at a different carrier but suspect that they will be the same in their marketing or, really, scams to sell new phones.
Years ago our favorite furniture store went out of business, and the owners whom we had known and bought from over the years were retiring. They had a “going out of business sale.” We had been looking at a new sofa and went to the store to see if we could get a good deal. The sofa was still there, but at 40% off and priced higher than originally. We left the sofa there, and the “sale” lasted for the next two months. They were bringing new furniture in the back and selling it out the front at discount except the prices were nearly doubled before applying the discount. A jewelry store that we frequented did the same thing and apparently the word “sale” turns off our senses to real pricing. My wife asked me to buy her a gold chain a few years ago at Macy’s and said they were going on sale. I checked the chains out and noted the prices before the sale and later went back to get it at the sale price. Again, the chain I had priced was marked down by 50% but was actually priced 25% higher. Raise the price and then apply the discount. I did not buy the chain.
Marketing is all around us with constant ads on TV and signage in store windows. It is trying to get us to notice something that we might want and urge us to buy it. Often the message is misleading and sometimes completely false, but people keep buying. Many times the picture in the window does not look anything like the product offered, and the price often changes when you get to the product with the explanation that it is a different type or they just ran out of the product advertised. Another common happening at a few big box stores is seeing a sale price but at the cash register the item rings up with the original price. This happens often, and one would think that it is on purpose. Most people will not notice if there are a lot of purchases being rung up.
It is everybody for themselves and, really, a sad day that a customer cannot trust a large corporation to be trustworthy in their marketing and sales. A multimillion-dollar company trying to take advantage of a single shopper is worse than a single shopper shoplifting, but the penalties are not the same. The shoplifter can go to jail, and the company just says try again. There is no penalty for the store to steal from a customer other than the customer not using that store again, and the store does not care because there are more suckers out there. I’m going to buy a new cell phone one day, but it is getting difficult. I tried to buy one at a third party store that did offer a deal. I had to buy on time with 24 equal payments, which would save me 20% of the total cost to own the phone. I asked if I could write a check for the full amount of the deal and skip the payments, and I was told that if I did that I would have to pay the full amount and not get any discount. It was similar to the new car I wanted to buy. I was offered $3,000 off if I financed the car but would not get the reduction if I paid cash. This is just the reverse of a few years ago when a cash deal usually could be made with a discount. I did not buy the car and will not with this kind of deal. The car store was selling money instead of cars, and I was not interested. Hopefully there will be enough people to start to question this behavior of these marketing techniques to stop them and return to honest sales presentations that really represent a product and its real worth. Maybe car companies will return to selling cars instead of being in the banking business. I certainly hope so.