Ask 30 questions, and walk out without buying anything. The owner will quickly realise the value of those price tags.
I would but I value my time. They’re gonna have to learn from someone else. Next time I need thread, I’ll drive to the suburbs and see if the stores out there are better.
Or just steal some stuff.
IMO, if there's no price tags, that means haggling is on the table. Me and the cashier are going to have a discussion about how much this doodad should cost.
If the cashier is also the owner, that might even work!
This is actually how im gonna approach this moving forward. Love it
LOL...upvote this...
No price tag? That must mean IT'S FREE, RIGHT?
HUAHUAHUAHUA
Having worked in retail, I hate you and everyone like you
Actually, it's priceless.
Fortunately there are pretty strict laws about displaying pricing here because that sounds really annoying.
I've never seen this either. I suppose it's from the US, where, typically, the end-consumer has no real rights anyway in most corners of the country (apart from getting cancer in California).
Pffff, what do you need those rights for, anyway? You have the freedom to choose any store you like in the marketplace. So don't try to infringe on the store owner's freedom to not have to display prices, you freedom hating commie! /s
Same with web sites. If I'm looking for something online and prices aren't listed I'm out.
Are there consumer sites like this? Feel like this mostly happens when it’s business customers.
In some of these stores "if you need to ask you can't afford it", but in your expample that certainly doesn't apply lol.
Kinda the same story with only giving the price before taxes in the US, why would you not just tell your customer up front what they actually need to pay? Making price labels isn't actually hard, you don't need to have them shipped from the national headquarters.
Granted, I've never experienced either. At most, some stores are sloppy and don't label all of their items.
Yeah, when I shopped for embroidery stuff in Paris everything was clearly labeled with the actual full price because France is a real country with laws. So if a historical embroidery shop in Paris can do it then this neighborhood shop in Seattle can fuck right off.
Which shop? My partner does some embroidery, and it'd be good to know what to avoid.
Heirloom Designs. FWIW they do have nice stuff. But I can’t abide the price tag thing.
ETA the delightful place is Paris is Maison Sajou and they’re over 180 years old. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in Paris.
Shit, I guess they really are Seattle's only needlepoint shop, which must be why they feel they're able to get away with that shit.
Kinda the same story with only giving the price before taxes in the US, why would you not just tell your customer up front what they actually need to pay?
you can thank corporations for this one – in several states it is actually illegal to show the full price
Holy shit!
The implication is "if you're too poor to risk spending dozens or potentially hundreds of dollars on an overpriced niknak, then you're too poor to shop here."
Yeah. It feels needlessly antagonistic. I don’t think that’s the intention but 🤷🏾
The intention is that they can fool careless shoppers into putting things in their baskets without thinking about prices (or feeling inhibited by them), and then by the time they get to the checkout counter they'd feel too embarrassed to put items back or they already feel to attached to them.
The thing is, that clearly only works on people with enough expendable income to A), put things in their basket without knowing the price; and B), go ahead and buy it anyway just to save face when you get to the counter and find out how overpriced it is.
For anyone with less wealth, it would either create a very embarrassing situation for them when they get to the checkout counter and find out they can't afford their stuff, or they'd simply not put anything in their basket anyway without knowing how much it costs (which would require asking someone, and people at these kinds of stores tend be very pretentious and act like you're being rude when you ask about the price of something; as if if price matters at all to you then you don't deserve to be there).
In other words, it's to keep poor people out while bamboozling moderately wealthy people out of their money.
I see this as an issue of trust and reputability. Typically, items will have a UPC printed on them, a tag with a price on it, or in an area with a posted price. If I don’t see any of those, and especially if it is on something not easily found on the internet, then I see no way to know if what I am holding is worth what I am willing to spend on it. And more importantly, if the person at the register is ripping me off or not.
If the purse I pick up does not have anything on it that indicates it could be $500+, then I’m wasting my time by hunting someone down to give me a price check. This is especially true with designers that have low, mid, and top tier products, ranging from maybe $100-$3000+.
I’ve only encountered “no price tag” shops a few times. And each time, I’ve walked out.
Whether inefficient, lazy, or pretentious, it’s an insult to consumers.
Whoops, I brought an extra 25 items to the register that I might want.
What's the price on that? Oh, nevermind. You can put that back. And the next one? Oh, I'm sorry. That's too much. You can put that back too.
I've worked very high-end retail, and the only reason a customer would ever have to ask the price is if they were too vain to wear glasses so they could read the labels. Having done labeling, I can see that it would take a lot of time to hang tags on individual skeins of thread, but surely at least the peg they hang from could have a label. How does the person at the register know the prices, do they have everything memorized? Or is there a code label already on the item? If so is there a way you or your phone could decode that? Or could they hand you a scanner to use? Seems like they ought to be able to explain it, or demonstrate that they aren't just making up the prices based on the shopper's appearance. Most vendors even print the MSRP, so that shop might be removing them and upcharging.
What a stupid way to turn what could be a pleasant artistic introspective shopping experience into a stressful one. And I'm sure it cuts their sales because not only would I (politely) have them take back the $75 magnet before I paid, but also on any further visits I would stop myself from even touching anything other than the list I came in for, and they'd miss selling items which I might have impulse-purchased if I'd seen they were priced within reason.
How does the person at the register know the prices?
That’s the funny part. They don’t.
When I asked about the price of the thread, she had to look it up on the ipad. There were like 3 main brands and for one of them it took a decent amount of time, like 2-3 minutes to hunt it down. It’s kinda wild because it’s a tiny store with only 2 walls for display or shelves and the thread takes up one entire wall.
Oh that's hilarious actually! So they're just really really bad at running a store. They're wasting more effort and time than it would take to label every item, starting from scratch. God forbid they would ever have to deal with multiple customers asking prices. You and a few friends could come in separately but all around the same time and just ask for price after price... Did they have any rationale for why they don't show their prices?
I didn’t ask why so IDK their rationale. I suspect that they are just inconsiderate.
Agreed.
You know when you're a little kid and you think, "I'm gonna have a pet shop so I can keep all the pets" because you don't really grasp the selling part? I'm getting the vibe of "I'm gonna have a needlepoint shop so I can have all the pretty threads and stuff."
It’s giving “my wealthy spouse funded this business to keep me busy even though I’ve never even worked a retail job before.”
Like it doesn’t do enough business to be a money laundering front so ????
I'm thinking tax write-off rather than money laundry
One thing I really like in Asia is probably half of food places have signs outside with the prices or a menu or an app. No sitting down, looking at the menu and realizing you fucked up. It's more important when a meal can cost between 1 and 100 USD.
I thought that meant you couldn't afford anything.
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