Sales have lost their luster

I will probably sound like a curmudgeon saying this, but I remember when sales were really sales (“back in MY day” etc. and so forth). Pre-internet, people frequently paid full price for an item because if you really wanted something, it was risky to wait until a sale came along because you would risk not finding it. Also, it was harder to know when something went on sale. Of course there were specials, end of season sales, and holiday offerings, but not the constant “sale” cycle that dominates today. This weekend (a holiday in the US) usually brings about the first of the “after-Christmas” sales of the year.

I was reminded of this today when perusing Food and Wine’s website. They had a banner that proclaimed “Williams Sonoma is clearing house with huge deals on kitchen gear this weekend” so I decided to check it out. One of the items was a small Staub skillet, which would be perfect for cobbler or pies. It was touted as being almost 50% off, so I clicked through because as you know, I’m a sucker for enameled cast iron. What the Williams Sonoma website stated is that the skillet was a “Limited Time Deal!” with a “Suggested Price” of $180.00, being offered at $99.95 USD.

What is interesting about the term “Suggested Price” is that it relates to retailers being the subject of enforcement actions due to deceptive advertising. In the past, stores would say an item was on sale by crossing out the “regular price” and replacing it with a new “sale price” tag, and the consumer would believe they were getting a bargain. However, the item was never offered at the “regular price”, making the claim of “sale” misleading. Consumer protection laws put the kibosh on this, so retailers have become more clever, saying things like “suggested price” so they have more legal wiggle room.

If I were a betting person, I would wager that no one in the US has paid $180 for that Staub skillet. It is annoying that retailers continue to use these gimmicks to draw you in and give you a sense of getting a “deal”, when the plan was to offer it at that price in the first place. You might argue that this is the nature of retail, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of stores that just have decent regular prices and if they have a clearance sale, it’s a real sale (Aldi comes to mind for this – they recently had Belvita breakfast biscuits for just $0.39 per box on closeout). It seems the higher prices a store charges, the harder it works to make you to feel like you are getting a steal. $100 USD is no bargain for that skillet; in my opinion it’s on the very high end of reasonable.

There probably is not much to be done about this situation. Caveat emptor, I suppose. With everything else that is going on around me, this is far from the most important thing to complain about, but it is exactly in moments of stress that deceptive techniques work best. Practice self care through retail therapy if it works for you, just don’t let a clever retailer trick you into thinking something is a great deal when it isn’t – unless they have a very generous return policy.