Prices not included
December 24th, 2006 | by mbhunter |Shopping malls get Christmastime businesses popping up to bring the mall-goers the new gotta-haves for the holiday season. Calendar shops, game shops, ornament and figurine shops, t-shirt shops rake it in during November and December. The margins on a lot of these items are pretty phenomenal.
Two of these seasonal businesses — a personalized ornament stand and a hat embroidery stand — stand out for what they don’t have. They don’t have any prices marked on the items, or anywhere else on the stand. They’ll tell you if you ask, but otherwise there is no other way to tell.
This works to the merchant’s advantage in a couple of ways:
- They can be flexible. If things are slow they can drop their prices with almost no one knowing. Or raise them on December 24th.
- They can catch you off guard. After they start personalizing your ornament or embroidering your name in the hat, you’re stuck, or at the very least you really tick them off if you balk at the price.
As with all purchases the customer is free to buy or not, but not having a price easily available leaves it up to your imagination as to what the price is. Both of my guesses were off by about 50% on the low side. (But then again, I’m a cheapskate.) So though you expect to pay something — it’s not quite as bad as paying for something you thought was free! — you probably will pay more than you guess if you don’t know what the price is. I thought these personalized ornaments were about $10. They were $15. I thought the embroidered hats were $15. They were $25.
In general it’s a good idea to ask what things cost before agreeing to get them. Asking the price of something is probably obvious, but more subtle instances occur when you’re ordering in a restaurant. The options that the waiter provides you might not all be free. Some are, but others aren’t. Some times they’ll tell you there’s an extra charge; other times they won’t.
More new and exciting ways that merchants have an advantage over you. 
One Response to “Prices not included”
By jim on Dec 26, 2006 | Reply
If you don’t know the price of something before you buy it, you’re a fool and deserve to pay through the nose… nothing prevents you, except perhaps pride, from asking.