Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

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Saving

369 words

Many things are about saving these days. That's saving in the sense of paying less many than some crossed-out fantasy price rather than piling up money in your savings account these days.

Rather than focusing on the absolute price, the customer's attention is put on how much they can save over that other, presumably regular, price. The Saver price, however, is just as high, if not higher, as you'd expect the regular price to be in the first place. Which in turn means you'll be hit pretty hard should you need to actually pay the full price for some reason. I guess the British Railway system is quite a good example for this. – Although I still remember that supermarket in the U.S. which actually had two price tags everywhere where the regular price was about twice that as the 'member' price, probably to force people into their club card scheme for better surveillance.

In addition, I suspect, that calling these things savings and making them sort-of special is supposed to make you more willing to comply to any ridiculous rule they make up, just to enjoy the privilege of that price. Basically it makes you feel as if you're supposed to be thankful in some way to pay 'full price' instead of 'criminal rip-off price'.

I quite like reliable, fixed prices. That way I immediately know what I am going to pay and can decide whether it's worth it, without too much effort. The way books are sold in Germany is quite nice. Basically, prices are fixed and printed on the cover and everyone has to sell books at that price. (Although that scheme has something to do with ensuring speedy delivery of any book to any bookstore and making less popular titles worthwhile rather than with my convenience, I guess). The same used to hold for any other item: Shops weren't allowed to give more than a little (3%, I think) discount from the advertised price on any item.

Laws for that have been relaxes and in principle you can try to bargain everywhere now. In practice that should increase prices for everything – either you pay more or you have to spend extra time for negotiations. Bah.

September 21, 2003, 18:55

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