shopping

It’s our general tendency to *assume* that when things are sold in bulk, they should be cheaper. Here is what we discovered about bulk prices at our local grocery shop the other day:

Some of you may remember that last Sunday I ranted about onions getting horribly expensive (see that “was $1.99” in the upper left hand corner of the image? - that’s the price we paid last last time). As anticipated, we were done with those onions in 5 days and were back to get some more, when I took the above picture.

In the current situation as depicted by the photograph, the 2 lb onion bag comes to around $2.50 per pound, whereas if you just buy loose onions on per pound basis, you will get the same onions at $1.49 per pound - that’s ridiculous. Now, 2 pounds is not really as *bulk* as one would expect, but it’s still bulk when compared to loose onions.

On last Sunday, I am pretty certain that the price per pound was slightly lower for the 2 lb bag than for the loose onions (makes sense); however, that time, we went with the loose ones because they looked and felt much better than the ones bagged together. Anyways, what makes it all the more confusing is the constant raising and lowering of prices - on one given day bulk prices will be cheaper and then suddenly, the next day they will be more than the non-bulk prices. Perhaps, retailers do it deliberately, I am not sure. Also, I noticed this with onions, but it must be happening with other commodities as well.

Bottom line: look at the prices before you jump for the bulk - bulk may not always be cheaper.

The story behind the photograph

The first time we went to the store, we didn’t carry a camera - obviously. Then, I noticed the weird onion pricing. Initially, I thought there is some mistake with the pricing, so I weighed a couple of those onion bags and they were really 2 lb bags. Before I weighed them, I suspected that perhaps they were 3 lb bags marked wrongly as 2 lb bags - although, even with that, the price per pound would have been $1.66 which is more than the loose onions at $1.49.

Once I realized that there was something genuinely stupid about the prices, I drove back home to get the camera while my wife continued with the shopping - man you can’t loose these priceless moments.

Last Sunday, there wasn’t much motivation to carry the camera in the store, so I just took a photograph of the receipt - shown below (didn’t have a scanner handy).

Yeah…those are all the knives we have in our kitchen, and incredibly only two of them are *good* enough to be used for cutting anything.

Here is what Wikipedia says about the term “knife”:

A knife is a sharp-edged hand tool used for cutting. A minimal knife is a blade and some method of gripping it. Knives have been used as tools and weapons since the Stone Age.

For something that has been used since Stone Age, and for something that is used almost everyday in almost every household in the world, one would expect quite some sophistication and advancement in the art of making such a tool. However, it doesn’t look like the knife-making activity has been getting enough attention (even computers are cheaper than some knives). Most Walmart brands (the ones we students can afford), generally become worthless after a few weeks of moderate cutting. And the brands in other stores (Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) that *look* like they will slice our veggies and meat very well for a long time are also quite capable of cutting big holes in our pockets.

In short, here is our knife story:

In the image below, are our two latest hopes (again from Walmart; Farberware brand); the bigger one (”santoku” knife) is about 10 bucks and the smaller one (”perfect tomato knife”) is about 7~8 bucks. The knives have behaved very well till now; the santoku even sliced through a huge loaf of garlic bread like nobody’s business (even though it does not have serrations - like bread knives have) and the tomato knife has allowed us to dice our tomatoes to record small sizes. But, I have no idea how long this knife-honeymoon is going to last.

May be we are buying really *cheap* knives, may be we are not taking good care of our knives…or may be we should invest in some kind of a knife sharpening device…I am not really sure. What’s your experience with kitchen knives? Any good recommendation? Is anyone using a knife sharpening device that seems like worth it?

On a related note, I was searching for “good quality” kitchen knives and came across the following product on this website:

For a better perspective, the retail price for that set is about as much worth as our junker car or about as much as 3 ounces of gold! Just how rich does one have to be in order to buy that stuff?

Note: If you are using Google Reader with Firefox, at times, you will see only the image description in place of the images. To view the images, right click on the image description and select “view image”. I am trying to figure out how to solve this problem.

I found this garment label on the road, just outside my workplace. Couldn’t resist a chuckle.

This is by far the easiest and the cheapest way to get slim as far as I know.

And don’t worry, if you don’t get slim within a period of one year ..there is a *one-year full warranty* on it. Just go ahead and return the garment for a full refund.

Here is a snippet of a weekly advertisement from Albertson’s. We get this in our mail box very often and each time it’s almost the same stuff. Most of the deals in the pamphlet are advertised as 10 for $10.

Yeah…pretty cheap when converted to 1 for $1, but who’s going to buy 10 ?!! $10 for 10 different things is fine, but what’s with trying to sell 10 pounds of plum for $10 to just one customer? Till date, I have never been able to take advantage of Albertson’s *great deals* because of this. May be, Albertson’s doesn’t want to give *great deals* to people like me, or may be they don’t realize that half the people in this town are students who would never buy 5 gallons of milk just because it’s selling cheap at $2 per gallon (may be 5 students can get together and do their shopping in bulk and then redistribute the stuff…but then that defeats the whole purpose of bunching products in groups of 10 and selling them for cheap).

It’s not just Albertson’s, here is another snippet from a similar 10 for $10 ad pamphlet from Kroger:

Probably, some convenience stores make good use of those offers (however, I am not so sure…I am aware that our neighborhood convenience store owners do their bulk shopping in Sam’s Club). Do you (or anyone you know) buy things in that kind of *bulk* from these stores? Do such *great deals* hold any appeal for you?

Sometimes, I wonder if there is a better strategy to offer *great deals* like these. How about offering a “combo basket” with 10 different things (for example, half gallon milk, one bottle of ketchup, a pound of plum (or any other fruit), one pack of waffles, one pack of ice cream, one toothpaste, one pound of tomatoes, one pack of cookies, one pack of frozen vegetables, and one frozen dinner)? May be, more people will be ready to spend $10 for such a combo than spend $10 on buying 10 pints of ice cream. Better than that, wouldn’t more people be willing to buy milk (as much as they want) in multiples of half-a-gallon, at $1 each, rather than 5 gallons at once at $10?

Update: Apparently, the “10 for $10″ text in the advertisements and my singular experience in Albertson’s led me to believe that I cannot buy individual items at discounted price. Readers have reported in their comments that they have made use of such offers to buy just one or two units. Oh!..now I am wondering how many deals I have missed because of this. Anyways, I will head over the nearest Albertson’s at the first available opportunity and check it out myself.

Got my second “big fat check” from Ebates.com yesterday. Not a big deal, but $60.76 is not a tiny amount either. It’s sort of good news and bad news. Good news is that I got free money. Bad news is that this is not exactly *free* money…I must have spent quite a bit on buying stuff online to get this kind of a cash back within the last 3~4 months.

For those who are not aware about Ebates.com, it’s an online portal (similar to Fatwallet) that offers cash back on certain online purchases if you go through them. You can read more about Ebates in this post that I wrote long time back. I tend to maximize the cash backs/rebates by going through such portals (sometimes it’s Ebates and other times it’s Fatwallet). For example, I have a Circuit City store within a few blocks of my apartment; however, instead of going to the store to buy something, I usually buy it on their website by going through Ebates/Fatwallet. That way, I get the cash back (in addition to reward points on the credit card)…sometimes that comes to about 5%~10% in all. Not bad if you are looking for big ticket items like computers, digital cameras, or shopping for holidays…and such.Currently, Ebates is running a referral promotion:

If you are interested here is a referral link for you (valid till March 15th). If you sign up using this link, you get $10 and I get $10 too (drool…Homer Simpson style). However, before you sign up, make sure you read the fine print (click here to read it). It’s a good habit to always read the fine print before signing up through any referrals.

Btw, on a related issue, I don’t seem to get enough from my Upromise account (although I have all my cards registered with them). Over the 6 months, I have barely managed about $0.35. Does anyone have any Upromise *hacks*?

Before I rant about this subject in detail, let me tell you a quick story about my former roommate. Let me refer to this character as Mr. RI (for reckless idiot). This was back when I was single, and sharing an apartment with other students. Mr. RI, like most other students was living on the edge, barely managing his living expenses and tuition. One fine day, RI announces to the rest of his roommates that his is inviting his colleagues from his workplace for a party. He invited not 2 or 3, but his entire workplace…that’s like 26 people! Now, you all know how student apartments are ..not very presentable and lacking resources for accommodating so many guests. So, Mr. RI goes to Walmart, picks up about 30 chairs, and a whole lot of home decor stuff for a total bill of about $300 !!. We are surprised, and ask him about how he is going to afford all this and he casually shrugs off our concern by saying this…” I am frugal to the fullest extent. It’s not like I am buying it. I will return everything back to Walmart tomorrow”.

According to my meagre knowledge on the subject of ethical behavior, what Mr. RI did amounted to cheating, not frugality. Over the years, I have seen many other people do this with various retail stores; and unless I was missing something, none of them was a “rent for free” store. So what’s happening here? are people loosing a sense of what’s ethical and what’s not? Or, are they confusing frugality with cheating?

In addition to the above example of Mr. RI, here are a few more things that I have seen/heard some people do for cost cutting purposes (a.k.a frugality).

1. Deliberately “breaking” a laptop to get a new one: This crazy idea floated around our campus a few years ago, and fortunately did not gather much steam. Students bought used laptops that were still under full warranty (there are a few specific brands that give transferable warranty on laptops, but I won’t mention them here); messed with it and returned it to the manufacturer to get a new piece. I forget the specifics of the entire procedure, but I know at least one person who got a new laptop through this way.
2. Returning cell phones drowned in coffee/water: Yeah, I don’t understand how you can drop a cell phone in a cup of coffee in the first place, but even this has been done. People then use hair dryers and conventional ovens to dry up those things and try to return them to the manufacturer. If you don’t believe me, read this thread.
3. Switching bar-codes to make your expensive purchases appear cheaper: I know at least one person in real life who has done this. People have even gone as far as making fake bar-codes for buying things cheap. Read this and this for example.
4. There are many more examples, but I won’t mention all of them just to keep this post short. If you know some more, please feel free to share them through your comments.

I do acknowledge that the yardstick for measuring “ethical” is different for different individuals. What’s ethical for one person might be a sacrilege to the other. But, in the above examples, the idiots who did those things were not confused about whether their actions are ethical or not…they knew it was unethical..and yet they did it under the pretext of frugality.

Common excuse people give for such unethical behavior is “being ethical won’t save you a dime”. That’s totally crap. I think the real reason behind it is that people fall for the easiest solution to get out of their self-created mess, and in most cases…cheating is easier than admitting a problem and working on it for a genuine solution.

In my opinion, frugality doesn’t have to (and should not) conflict with ethics. Frugality is not about how to efficiently cheat people/organizations; it’s not about putting your family through a lot of pain and suffering to save a few bucks; …and yeah ..it’s not about eating less to save money. Frugality, as I understand it, is to make wise choices when it comes to your expenses; it is the art of efficiently using your resources; it is the art of making the best of your life by staying within the limits of what you can afford.

Frugality is for frugals, leave the cheating to the idiots.

If you are interested, click here, here, and here for more articles about ethics and frugality.

I have mentioned earlier that my brother (Mr. G) moved into a new apartment shortly after his graduation. Last couple of weekends we were trying to help him set up his new den. G is single, but behaves as if he is married to the television…so it was one of the first things he wanted. We spent hours looking in major retail shops to find his “perfect match” and finally zeroed in on a decent sized flat screen TV (nothing fancy…no LCD, projection, plasma or any such stuff).

We took the new TV to G’s new apartment, switched it on and ran an auto-scan for available free channels. To our dismay, it detected only 3 (useless) channels with decent reception. At this point, G started contemplating on getting a cable connection (or a dish network) in a few days, which would have cost him a minimum of $40 a month. Meanwhile, we decided to drive down to Walmart and get this $9 gadget for the time being:

Yeah… that’s a cheap in-door antenna. We auto-scanned for channels again after plugging in the antenna and to our amazement, this time the TV picked up like 30+ channels, some of them with exceptional video and audio clarity. In fact this thing turned out to be so good, that G has decided not to subscribe to cable anytime soon.

I understand that results will vary with your geographic location and your proximity to “urban” areas…but $9 is not too bad for a trial (well this one was $9, but most antennas are priced between $7 to $20). Give it a shot, if it works, it will be worth it’s value in a few days.

Brands are not really important when you look for these; I have used RCA and Phillips in the past, on separate occasions, and both have worked very well. Update: Btw, these are marked as “HDTV Antenna” or “Off-air HDTV Capable” and other similar terms.

Below is a quick review of some major players for cell phone deals in the market. When compared to brick-and-mortar retail shops, these online shops provide better phones for much lower prices and a large variety of choices when it comes to free phones. Most deals are not just “free”; they also make you some money through mail-in rebates. However, like for every other online transaction, one needs to read the fine print carefully. I have highlighted some important points that warrant consideration, towards the end of this post.Wirefly.com

This is owned and operated by Inphonic Inc. According to Wiki:
“The company’s central online storefront, Wirefly.com, has received a number of Internet awards, including Forbes magazine’s “Best of the Web” for 2004 and Keynote System’s “Best In Overall Customer Experience” in 2005.”

Apparently they know their business well. Like all other websites in this category, Wirefly.com offers large mail-in rebates with many nice phones. However, watch out for a $9 “processing fee” when you checkout. 2nd day shipping is free.

Letstalk.com

I like these guys the best. You can make your cell phone deals sweeter using a combination of Ebates.com and Letstalk.com. Ebates.com is offering a $30 discount if you go through them to Letstalk.com to sign a new contract. In addition, Letstalk.com usually offers great deals on cell phones when you sign a new contract with any of the listed service providers. It is not unusual to find some nice free phones with $100 mail-in rebate after activation. The website doesn’t charge any processing fees. Also offers 2nd day free shipping.

Cellularchoices.net

These guys act like agents (I think) for Letstalk.com and Wirefly.com. However, the deals found on Cellularchoices.net are not the same as those found on the two websites. Also, currently it’s running a $25 Mastercard gift card promotion till Jan 31st on all it’s phones. Surprisingly, even though it places the orders through the Wirefly.com (Inphonic Inc) infrastructure, it does not charge the $9 processing fee that Wirefly.com charges. Free 2nd day shipping.

Amazon.comIt used to offer some very good cell-phone deals about a few years ago, but now-a-days I don’t find anything worth mentioning here. However, like other websites, there are a lot of free phone choices available….phones that you wouldn’t get through retail outlets. Shipping is free here too.There is a jungle of websites that offer similar deals ….but if you look closely, they are just different portals (or agents) of one (or more) parent source company (companies).:) Here are some examples:

Cellularchoices.net orders are fulfilled by Letstalk.com or Wirefly.com/Inphonic;

Easycellphones.com orders are fulfilled by Letstalk.com;

Younevercall.com orders are fulfilled by Wirefly.com/Inphonic;

Freecellularphonedeals.net orders are fulfilled by Wirefly.com/Inphonic;

There are some things you should remember before you get into this:

1. There is mail-in rebate involved.
2. Usually with these deals, activation fee is charged (approx. $30~$35), so some part of your free money is lost. Make sure you account for that.
3. Read your terms and conditions carefully if you want your rebate. For example, here is an excerpt from the “Rebates Terms and Conditions” on On Letstalk.com:
   

   NOTE: Your rebate submission must be postmarked between Dec 1, 2006 and Feb 1, 2007 or we will be unable to process your rebate request.

   …and an excerpt from Amazon.com:

   Your price paid includes an equipment discount of $250 that has been provided to you by Amazon.com for activating a new line of service with T-Mobile and maintaining this new line of service with the selected rate plan in good standing for a minimum of 181 consecutive days. If these conditions are not met, you herein agree to a $250 reimbursement to be paid to Amazon.com.

4. Also, you might have to wait for quite some time for the rebates to get in your bank. ALL websites will have clauses like these:
   Letstalk.com

   Your rebate submission will be processed and any check mailed by the later of 150 days after your order activation / ship date OR ten weeks after receipt of a properly completed rebate form.

5. Usually for maximum mail-in rebates, 2-year contracts are common. The rebates are lesser for 1-year contracts. At times, it helps to call them and persuade them to give you maximum mail-in rebates on 1-year contracts…if you are lucky they might just agree.
6. During checkout, watch out for those default “Yes” to options like “Add a charger for $19.99″. You need to switch them to “No” before you confirm the transaction. Not many of those listed above will do that, but watch out just in case.
7. Read #1 again.

My personal experience

I recently ordered phones through Letstalk.com and it worked well for me. I usually don’t go for mail-in rebates (why?), but this deal was one of the few exceptions that I allow every once in a while. We went with a T-mobile family plan (two phones) and the total distribution was like this: Mail-in Rebate(+$200); Ebates discount (+$30); Activation fee(-$70); Total 200+30-70=+$160. Not bad :).

I should also mention here that I also had a very good experience with Letstalk.com as far as their customer service is concerned. Initially, I got two Motorola phones (I think they were both V195 models) and both had trashy reception. Sent those back and got two Samsung phones in return. All this was made really easy by Letstalk.com. They were not like those PITA-customer-service guys I usually encounter….and no sir, this is not pay-per-post ..or any such thing.

More than a month ago, I posted this article on human spending addiction “There Should Be A Pill To Make People Stop Spending” and tried to relate gambling and shopping with conditions of the brain. I am happy to note that more people are making that connection as this article from BBC suggests. According to the article, researchers have now identified a specific area in the brain that “wants the stuff” and another area that “doesn’t want to spend”; and have observed that the decision to buy or not to buy is a trade-off between the two.
This is good news for those with compulsive spending tendencies because with this kind of understanding, designing a anti-spending pill will become easier.
Here are some interesting excerpts from the article:

If the volunteer wanted the product, a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens lit up.

Then, when the price appeared, a high price activated a part called the insula, and deactivated other parts.

—

They said that the study could reveal how credit cards ‘trick’ the brain into buying more.

They wrote: “This finding has implications for understanding behavioural anomalies, such as consumers’ growing tendency to overspend and under save when purchasing with credit cards rather than cash.”

I am a bit wary of this claim…I have always associated higher credit card spending to lack of self control (read discipline) and lack of common sense. But may be the lack of self control is because of the mind-games our brain plays with us. That being said, it would be nice if they identify the brain area that affects common sense :).

—

He said: “Human financial behaviour is often seemingly irrational, a fact that provides employment for advertisers, casino workers, insurance salesmen, and economists.”

He said that it might be possible to understand more about compulsive shoppers and gamblers by spotting problems in the brain areas revealed by the scans.

Btw, I also see a very obvious unwanted consequence of this research. Such a finding will be immediately exploited by the advertisers, casino workers, insurance salesmen, and economists (and credit card companies…if we go along with what they are saying) and a whole lot of people are going to end up spending a lot more. Advertisers will start targeting the “nucleus accumbens” of your brain to make you spend more and personal finance bloggers will keep appealing to your “insula” to make you spend less. Man that sounds like fun.