This is a bit off-topic. I recently collected a little photo evidence of pricing peculiarities at the local Walmart store for a blog post. This morning I saw this article on Boing Boing about something very similar, so I decided to post mine as well.
Vegas casinos can ban good gamblers who might make a profit from their legal means of beating the house, such as card counting in blackjack. A restaurant owner can discriminate against people with no shirt and/or no shoes. In fact private businesses can basically choose who they do business with and who they don’t, as long as those decisions are not discriminatory on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
So, I’m guessing the local Walmart store won’t be too happy with me since I was using my camera phone to snap a few photos of their pricing irregularities. I find it odd and misleading (not illegal, immoral, or even insane – just odd and misleading) for larger quantities of a product to have a higher per unit price than smaller quantities of the exact same product. So here’s a few shots of same.
My daughter loves Spaghettios. I buy small cans rather than large ones.
We have a bunny. They sell some pretty good bunny food at Walmart. I buy 4-pound bags at $4.42 rather than the 8-pound bags for $9.96. Exact same food.
My mother-in-law likes to keep a large stash of chicken broth on hand – just in case. She would be well advised to buy the small cans rather than the larger box.
So, the real question is, “who cares?” Probably almost no one. And now that I’ve got this out of my head (and camera) and onto the blog – I don’t really care anymore either. I’ll just continue to make good choices on which quantities to buy and let Wally World continue to exploit those who are math-challenged.
BTW, I’ve seen the argument that it makes to sense to pay more per unit (ounce, pound, whatever) for a large quantity over a small one since it is more convenient for you to have the large quantity on hand. Seems to me that this is just more convenient for Walmart. But really, I’m over it now.
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