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.

155 points
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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.

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55 points

dont expect it to go back down

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45 points

Time to introduce the “lowest price from the last 30 days” requirement like in Europe.

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3 points

Can you explain this? Never heard of it.

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7 points

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”.

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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”

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4 points

As someone who somehow managed to never get hooked on drinking soda, it baffles me how expensive soda is

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106 points

See, trickle down economics works ladies and gents /s

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21 points

Fuck this is gold.

Well, unless people realise the actual worth of gold… But until then.

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17 points

How would trickle down work with gold? I’m picturing some kind of golden shower?

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5 points

sigh

unzips

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2 points

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

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1 point

It doesn’t matter how much competition there is of they’re all going to do it anyway.

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1 point

It does. Competition is literally the only mechanism that drives greedy actors to lower prices or improve their service. Without competition they hoarde.

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2 points
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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.

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14 points

That’s more than mildly infuriating.

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29 points

It’s not all bad - now instead of saving $7 I will be saving the whole $55 since I won’t buy it!

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26 points

Guess they’re using the “black Friday” technique to lure in shoppers, again!

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28 points

That’s probably illegal.

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31 points

It was so hastily-implemented that I think it’s either an oversight or by design.

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18 points

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

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20 points

tell that to amazon and every other retailer that jacks prices up the week or so before a ‘sale’

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17 points

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.

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1 point

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.

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3 points

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.

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35 points

It has been ruled illegal in the Netherlands only last year but companies still do it and het away with it.

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7 points

It is, and they don’t care.

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3 points

When fines are “the cost of doing business.”

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3 points

Fine should be a direct cut of company value or profits. Proportional, not an absolute value.

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