Canada has implemented a new tax savings from December to February for some things like taxable groceries, crafts, and gaming physical media. I wanted to get a new Xbox controller and found the best price at Walmart for $55 a week ago. The tax holiday starts today and I now see that the $55 has increased to $62 and change, which is about how much tax I should be saving. Great to see this thinly veiled attempt to help Canadians ( /s - win votes) is just going to be extra profit in the corporations’ pockets.
Kroger (grocery store) is doing the same thing this week. They’re doing a 20% off “holiday bonus” discount on a one per-customer basis (20% off your entire order). The catch? Every item in the store is at least 20% more expensive than it was last week.
Time to introduce the “lowest price from the last 30 days” requirement like in Europe.
Can you explain this? Never heard of it.
EU for online purchases mandates that the lowest price from the last 30 days be displayed alongside the actual price and discount. So they can’t pull the “make the price higher and discount to a higher price than it used to be” trick, best they can do is make price higher and discount it to what it has always been. Which is pointless to them because they’ll just get less sales in the month before. Also a month is enough time for the loss of sales to be significant that it isn’t worth it to keep the price high to create a “bargain”.
Thanks this is really interesting. Literally hadn’t heard of this before.
I’m guessing J.C. Penny’s doesn’t have EU stores?
Ah, the very store that tried “no sales so we can give you year-round low prices”!
Until they found out we consumers ain’t gonna buy unless somebody puts the word sale somewhere every once in a while.
I don’t buy soda often but fuck I’m tired of their soda sales. Buy 2 get 1 free on 12 packs. (9.99) A piece. Then 1 week out of the month or so they are buy 2 get 3 free. Still 9.99 a 12 pack.
So that’s:9.99 for 12 cans. (.83 cents per can) 19.98 for 36 cans (.56 cents per can) 19.98 for 60 cans (.33 cents per can)
I really don’t need 60 cans of soda, but I don’t want to pay .83 cents per can. So all it’s done is make me stop buying soda all together for the most part.
It can’t be coke doing it either, because it goes for “all Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper products”
As someone who somehow managed to never get hooked on drinking soda, it baffles me how expensive soda is
dont expect it to go back down
I don’t say any of this to say that I think what Walmart is doing here is ethical, onky to say that it is logical from their standpoint if they assume there won’t be any blowback.
Companies charge what they think they can get for a product. The tax is part of the price. If they think an item will sell for $5.26 including tax, it is reasonable for them to think it will still sell for $5.26 if the item isn’t taxed.
That isn’t to say this is nice on their part, but the current system doesn’t incentivise them to be nice. It incentivises profit.
It does seem like they took the easy route to gain more profit. It is likely that, in the a absence of tax, their profit would be maximized by a price that is somewhere between the old pre-tax price and the old post-tax price.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have been surprised. This is normal psychopathic behaviour for a corporation.
Working behind the scenes with retail pricing (not Walmart) I can say this is 100% how it works.
Also have been given a sheet listing all of my department’s products that were below a specific profit margin. Told that we had a sale coming in 2 weeks so make sure to raise prices on those before then so that I didn’t have a drop in my overall department sales. If the customers noticed and asked, we were to inform them the ‘sale’ was to offset the price hike that just happened because we were looking out for them.
Raising prices then advertising a “sale” at the same/higher price IS actually against the law though. Unfortunately we have terrible enforcement of these laws but they do exist:
Is it against the law if they legitimately don’t lower the price after though as the above poster is being told to give as a reason, but we know isn’t true?
Yeah. Calling something a sale at a price that’s not actually discounted under the regular price (with some caveats on how long it needs to be at said regular price), then yeah it’s a violation of the act. Basically false advertising.
Bumping up the regular price to cover what you’d have otherwise saved on tax is dickish but not against any regulations AFAIK
Not buying a new controller until Valve Ibex releases. If one of mine breaks before then, it’ll be replaced by an inexpensive 8bitdo 2C.
See, trickle down economics works ladies and gents /s
Fuck this is gold.
Well, unless people realise the actual worth of gold… But until then.
How would trickle down work with gold? I’m picturing some kind of golden shower?
sigh
unzips
This has nothing to do with supply-side versus demand-side economics.
EDIT: Actually, I take that back. It does to the extent that it is aiming to provide an incentive on the demand side, which is the opposite of what you’re complaining about.
That’s not really relevant. A break in sales tax that just targets consumer necessities should be a progressive tax.
The problem is that a lack of competition in this country means that grocers can raise their prices with no fear of losing customers
It doesn’t matter how much competition there is of they’re all going to do it anyway.
It does. Competition is literally the only mechanism that drives greedy actors to lower prices or improve their service. Without competition they hoarde.
literally the only mechanism
You forgot about laws.
No I didn’t, price control laws don’t work. Companies will find another way of maximizing profits and screwing you.
“only the market can fix this”
Gestures broadly at the market
Multiple competitors just results in them all agreeing to raise prices when taxes are lowered.
Out of curiosity, how do you propose increasing the number of competitors? Or is this a situation of “gee, that would be nice. Oh well, I guess nothing can be done.”?
Multiple competitors just results in them all agreeing to raise prices when taxes are lowered.
Price signalling happens in situations with low competition, in a healthy, competitive market, if you raises prices someone will undercut you to take your business.
Out of curiosity, how do you propose increasing the number of competitors? Or is this a situation of “gee, that would be nice. Oh well, I guess nothing can be done.”?
You literally just break up grocery store companies and stop them from merging in the future. The solution is not complicated.
In any reasonable country, that should be illegal. In many places it is
Name one. Price hikes are not illegal in any country in Europe. Changing prices after selling and other shady stuff is illegal in most European countries on the other hand, but this is not it. If the 55 were on sale before, a “sale” price can be axed as most see fit. This screams coincidence and bad luck to me.
It should be illegal for any store to increase prices by more than 0.5% per month for any product in my opinion.
Even if massive inflation hits they can still increase prices by 6% after a year, but they at least won’t be able to immediately increase prices by 10-20% after taxes are lessened or a month before a sale is supposed to start.
whatbif it’s a cash only store that wants all post-tax price to be integers or integers + quarters?
An authoritarian, controlled economy will fail. We don’t need any more examples to understand why.
You should loose the comma, then i agree with you. An authoritarian controlled economy will fail. A controlled economy is an absolut must.Without rules, that’s anarchism. That will fail either. Case in point: The USA. None of the rules are enforced and capitalism gone wild just bought the government outright.
All this will do is create a black market full of scalpers who are incentivized to buy the entire stock of a good if the market is willing to pay significantly more.
In Italy when the government reduced vat on ebooks from 22% to 4% not a single publisher passed the savings to the customer and they even increased the prices
It was so hastily-implemented that I think it’s either an oversight or by design.
It has been ruled illegal in the Netherlands only last year but companies still do it and het away with it.
It is in the US.
The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing generally require that a seller offer an item at a price for a reasonable, substantial period of time in good faith, and in the regular course of business, before advertising that price as the former or regular price (16 C.F.R. § 233.1). The FTC considers it deceptive to offer an item for sale at a higher price for a short period of time in order to support a claim that an item is discounted when the price is then lowered. This practice is prohibited.
Additionally, most states have consumer protection statutes that prohibit sellers from making false or misleading statements of fact concerning the reasons for, existence of, or amount of a price reduction (for example, Cal. Civ. Code § 1770(a)(13)). Several states also expressly regulate the length of time an item must be offered at a regular price and amount of time it is on sale (for more information, see Practice Notes, Promotional Pricing: Specific State Laws and “Up To” Discounting Law and Practice: Promotional Pricing: State-by-State Requirements).
From here
tell that to amazon and every other retailer that jacks prices up the week or so before a ‘sale’
For Amazon, I use camelcamelcamel to see price history. Personally I’ve not seen price increases just for holiday sales but I also don’t buy a lot of stuff on these sorts of days, I just set a price alert and wait for the email.
Sites like these are why amazon has been using more coupons at check out instead of straight discounts. Messes with the price tracking
How does that help Amazon if on the price tracker it appears $20, but with the coupon it’s actually $10?
If I’m using a price tracker and see it for $20 pre-coupon but another site has it for $15, wouldn’t that just drive my business to the other site?
It seems like with using coupons it’s just artificially inflating the price on whatever trackers, and that seems like it would be bad for sales to me.
The goal is to mess up price history. So it will have a list price of $50 but with a coupon to make it $35. Then a sale day happens and they lower the price to $40. It’s 20% off! Good deal.
It doesn’t really help if you’re comparison shopping with alerts. I don’t know that Amazon thinks you’re going to go to another site.
Ah, yeah that makes sense now.
The price hike in Canada’s instance, wouldn’t violate US law.
They aren’t advertising a “sale”. You just aren’t paying taxes on what you buy, and it isn’t wal mart doing it, it’s the government. Wal mart is just choosing to screw over the buyers and the government all in one go.
In that case, they won’t lower it in February than it’s not illegal because they’re not offering it for a higher price for a short amount of time.
It is, and they don’t care.
When fines are “the cost of doing business.”
Fine should be a direct cut of company value or profits. Proportional, not an absolute value.
Seems like an opportunity to use this in attack PP’s tax-cut rhetoric, and to attack the oft-repeated talking points from business that tax increases will be passed on to consumers.
Tax cuts are eaten by businesses, so long as the businesses believe that people will continue to buy. Tax increases will also be eaten by businesses, so long as the businesses believe that people will refuse to buy at a higher price. It’s all being taken by or from shareholders.
It’s a shame no political entities will actually touch this with anything more pointed or useful than “that’s appalling!”
the prices probably won’t go back down in february, either.
Prices go up and stay up.
They’ll only go down if customers stop buying, which they won’t.
They may go down 3% for some products and they’ll make a big deal out of it.
I would support Canadian Tire over Walmart.
I bought a Husqvarna chainsaw from Canadian tire and it was garbage. I thought I was getting the same one my buddy got (he got his at the local kubota). Turns out Husqvarna just licenses out their name for the right price. It was a garbage chainsaw with orange plastic and the sticker was even upside down.
Do they sell xbox controllers?
No, but Best Buy does. As does Canada Computers, Shoppers Drug Mart, Gamestop, etc. none of which are as bizzarely aggressive about nonsensical pricing schemes.
Well the debate should be over whether the taxes cause things to be expensive or it’s corporate greed causing things to be expensive.
Next time you see one of the ubiquitous Poilievre ads claiming it’s taxes that’s making things unaffordable, think about where the problems actually are.
I think the answer here is to buy that somewhere other than WalMart. Are there any stores nearby that didn’t increase their price on the controller?
Might be betraying my age here, but do you remember when GST was 7%? EXACTLY the same thing happened.
GST breaks strictly pad the revenues of business AT THE COST of funds to the public purse. Does a fat fucking zero to the wallets of consumers.
GST?
General sales tax we have had in Canada for years. Tax on all goods and services. Used to be 7% but dropped to 5% a number of years ago
Ah gotcha, thanks
Sales tax, has different acronyms in different countries such as Value Added Tax (VAT), Goods and Services Tax (GST)…
companies will 100% of the time do anything even illegal things to make more money.
removed by mod
“the consumer always loses” good point. and good luck in this dystopian society.
Reminds me when Alberta reduced the tax on gas, and within a few weeks consumers were paying the same amount again
Betcha you get reminded again when Canada sweeps the cons in because cArBOn tax and then we pay the same by Monday for everything.
Ontario did this too. Took a few weeks tops, and now we pay the same as we always have, except none of the money goes to our roads, just to big oil.
Thanks Ford.
I laugh because he keeps extending it too and I sure and shit bet he will extend it again so the next government to come in has a poison pill in killing his gas rebate effectively raising the price of gas drastically overnight.
This is 100% intentional by the OPC. Bunch of fuckwits.
His supporters say it’s because Trudeau has too much tax on gas
His supporters don’t ever shut up, despite how uninformed they tend to be.
