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Which Price is Right?
slashdotNum2Big2Register writes "An interesting article at fastcompany about how things are being priced nowadays. The only drawback that concerns me is how each item and price can be connected to an individual. Amazon was already found to be doing this with their prices."
how they determine who gets the lowest price, adjust your profile to match.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The idea of pricing products is to charge every consumer the maximum amount they're willing to pay. The trick is that it's usually very hard to have a purshasing system that allows such price variance. Airline pricing is one example - the closer you are to the date you wish to fly, the higher the price. (This is a vast oversimplification, but you get the idea). This is because business travelers, who need to fly at a moment's notice, are willig to pay much more than a recreational traveler, who's planning vacations 6 months in advance and shopping for the best deal. Businesses like Amazone are going to try and use every edge they can to increase their margins. From their point of view it's a great idea to use the technology they already have.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Damn, if that's not a reason to use Mozilla, I don't know what is.
"The only drawback that concerns me is how each item and price can be connected to an individual."
.. Anyway, its just an idea! ..
Should this come to pass on a widespread basis, it could be counteracted by some sort of open pricing network, similar to P2P.
Somehow the system knows what prices I can get for an item, and what prices anybody else logged in can get, and routes the purchase through that person...
Similar to pricewatch, but more community based rather than retailer based...
An online Starcraft RPG? Only at
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
If that's not the best example of when people don't know what to price at, I don't know what is. Go to (say) expedia, travelocity, or destina.ca and price out a round-trip flight to some interesting place (I suggest Osaka). Prices range from $1400 to $6000 (CDN) on what is basically the same flight, with the same restrictions, at even the same timing conditions. And the expensive flights often include more stopovers and transfers too!
Perhaps with a $4 difference we may think differently, but I'd choose the cheap option any day when the difference is $300.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
This is capitalism. They aren't permitted to collude with other businesses, manipulate the market, or discriminate. Other than that, they have the right to set prices anyway they see fit. They can use the information they glean from you to adjust prices. However, the consumer must keep in mind that they need to get as much information about the product and competing sources as well.
All this article seems to be is an advertisement for this pricing software.
Not quite individual level, but we get many catalogs for previous occupants of our current office space. Dell, in particular, sends multiple catalogs here. What I found very interesting is that 2 Dell catalogs - indentical in products offered - often have different pricing based on the recipient. The even more interesting thing is that both recipients worked for the same company at the same time, but one was male and one was female, and they were being offered at different prices. The 'product code' was the same, but the 'catalog code' (or something like it) was different. I can not remember if the prices were higher for the male or the female - sorry...
creation science book
"We've learned that certain aspects of our site resonate with customers in different ways, and we are continually fine-tuning our site presentation to see how these variables affect customers' purchasing decisions"
Last I checked... If you want to determine if "site changes" cause increase in purchasing etc you leave the price of a product static. This way you can determine if the increase came from better navigation. The price would be your static variable.
I bet that most people who read this ( not those of slashdot but of the world at large ) would fall for this simple and elegant lie.
Neither forst nor thord porst.
I wonder of they can modify these boards to reject posts that have a mispell rate of more than 50%
Anyway, more on the subject. If you want to see an interesting way items are priced, check out the grand opening of a new Wal-Mart. A new Super-Center opened up in the next town over from where I live (which also has a Super-Center). This store is only 25 miles away yet has prices 10% more than the older Super-Center. Not only that, you can't price match between two Wal-Marts, so they gouge the prices when the store opens to get the most money.
'I bent my wookie'-Ralph Wiggum
When the licensee stops bleeding, check his/her relatives. They're still moving, and softly groaning in the corner.
i NEVER buy anything online, i rather buy at a local brick & morter store where i can see, touch, and have a good in person gander at what i am thinking about buying...
We're offering this post for $5.00. Shortly we will raise the price by 11.2%. Eventually you may read it for free, but only if you have the coupon.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? --Abraham Lincoln
Hey, is that a discrimination lawsuit I smell?
Amazon Exec 1: "This customer buys Precious Moments figurines."
Amazon Exec 2: "They must be some middle-aged soccer mom. Charge them double for new releases, and half price for Disney."
Amazon Exec 1: "What about customers who buy How to Make a Million Dollars a Second?
Amazon Exec 2: "Charge double for everything. They'll be able to afford it eventually..."
There are a few forums I used to frequent, one for webmasters. It was mostly freelancers or one-man shops, from what I could tell, but the forum moderators were strict to the point of being stupid over 'pricing discussions'. "We can be sued for supporting price fixing" is the standard response.
One person asked what it was customary to charge for a certain type of service. I replied back that I've seen people charge anywhere from $50 to $1500. *THAT* was considered 'potential price fixing'. How a number with a variation of hundreds of percents could be 'fixed' is well beyond my comprehension.
You'd think then that magazines or websites which have pricing on them (like, for example, ecommerce sites) would be collaborating in price fixing, as they can see info from other companies, and those companies can see their info, and adjust things accordingly.
There's a difference between knowing what someone else charges and actively engaging numerous people to all sell at a particular price, but people don't seem to see the difference.
creation science book
This would have the side effect of preventing most of the editors from ever submitting stories again.
On the other hand, there would probably be fewer dupes.
And thanks to me, they get a killer deal on shipping due to a little known program known as consignment shipping via UPS so they pay less than half of what they normally would pay; though they charge you for the full price of shipping, nearly all of this money goes straight into their pocket. They now claim it is for the manpower to ship your book but I have an Uncle that works for the warehouse down in Nevada and gets paid minimum and the time it takes to fill an order is less than 3 minutes ($10/hr x 3 seconds = approx 0.75).
Now, they then charge full price and have items that they overstocked pull up higher in searches with edited customer reviews to make them appear better than they are. True fact. They started editing reviews back when I was there.
Oh the horror stories I could tell...
"...people just like the feel of a dead tree in their hands." -Jeff Bezos
Then on top of that
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
From the article: The spokeswoman for a telecom company said, "We're not going to talk about prices, and the fact that we're not going to talk about it is off the record. You can't use the fact that we won't talk about prices in a story."
So he goes and prints it anyways? Can he do that?
I used to work at a music store, you know, one of those places that sells one damned cd for $16-$18. Anyways, I was reading online at VH1, after some searching, I found the article. What makes me sad is that people went and supported the stores involved anyways. Not sure how to make this a link, but here's the URL for that story: http://www.vh1.com/news/articles/1457874/10012002/ id_0.jhtml
They're more likely to think you're a woman.
gay != female
With sites like pricewatch.com, pricescan.com, and other competitive shopping sites I know what the market price is for any goods I buy online (generally big ticket electronics items, though I have used similar methods to check large appliances), so how does anyone ever pay much more than the market price for an item that isn't unique to a single online vendor? Do people really make impulse buys online?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
actually they they are doing it more than ever - see their gold box feature?
Perfect price discrimination isn't new. It's just very, very hard to do. With today's technology and consumers, it's a lot easier to guess at the price that each customer will accept. For more on PPD, check any low level econ text. or book on economic game theory. Or check out some Mises for those economically inclined poor souls who believe in the price of a good equals the amount of labor involved.
Haven't beefed up on Ricardo or Smith recently, but is this how supply and demand is supposed to work?
Sure, the ultra-rational producer is there, but my understanding was that the system was designed to ensure efficiency by forcing producers to increase the marginal value they're providing by securing efficiencies in their supply chain. So clothing chain A is not doing well because it sells "overpriced" products relative to chain B, so chain A is required to secure cheaper or superior manufacturers for their products (often through the use of technology). Cost minimization vs. price maximization. I'm somewhat at a loss to see how these technological efficiencies can be developed by price maximization. Is this the phenomenon Kenneth Galbraith was bemoaning over 30 years ago? Is this not just a formula for inflation with no discernable improvement in living standards?
It's been the mainstay of many telesales insurance companies, and companies like them to have x% of people answering the phone quoting price a. Then, to meet sales quantity targets you add certain numbers quoting at 5 or 10% lower, or 5 or 10% higher.
I don't really see the problem with charging people what you think they'll pay. It's been the mainstay of small business for years. You charge government fortunes, and penny pinching startups with low margins.
If amazon quote me a price, I'll be checking with their competitors anyway. If it beats them, fine, if not, bye..
Quick call the RIAA! we've found their problem!
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
I've known this for a while now. I have a small network at home, a number of Windows workstation, a few Linux workstations and a number of OpenBSD servers. What I do is look for an item on Amazon I want to buy, then go to that item on every available browser on every computer at home. Through Netscape, Mozilla, IE, Konqueror, Opera, Phoenix and Galeon. Then I complete the purchase from the cheapest one.
It's worked very well for me. Some browsers were as much as 30 dollars more than others for larger priced items. That to me would seem like a grey area in the legal system. You aren't allowed to charge varying prices at regular stores based on the customers appearance. You'd see Walmart getting sued left and right if at the registers they charged 15% more because I was wearing a suit and tie as opposed to looking like white trash. Or charging more for black comedy DVD's if you are black, the ACLU would be all over them in a heartbeat.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
There are a lot of posts worrying about business collusion, but what about customer collusion? A site like PriceWatch should be able to go through a website and collect prices under different profiles.
Then, as a customer, I might get a little annoyed knowing that a company is trying to sell me a book for $20 when I know Person X can get it for $15.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Financial services to the poor have, all else equal, much higher default risk. And default costs swamp everything else. Consider that the margin over cost of funds for most consumer credit is 2-3%. A default rate of 1% destroys the profitability.
And the proof of this is in the market. Credit companies are neither bashful nor shy. If there was money to make, your friends and Cap One and First USA would divert some of 1 billion or so peices of mail then send. Alliance capital tried and went bankrupt. Cap One tried, but was punished in the stock market for the risk.
The other minor effect is transaction costs. There is a smaller denominator to spread costs across. 1% of an $800 paycheck is different than 1% of a $200,000 mutual fund purchase.
This reminds of the myth about women being paid around 70% of what men are. If true, there must be someone out there hiring only women and killing their competitors with wildly lower labor costs. Ought to be easy, women are around 40% of the labor pool.
Oops. Doesn't seem to be happening. I know I'm willing to try it.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
That way, you never have to worry about prices.
But seriously, objective pricing probably is gone. Why? Well, we've transitioned to a service-based economy, and it's difficult to stick a price label on an intangible product (intellectual property, anyone?).
What makes a copy of XP Pro worth $299? Nothing. The box and the disks themselves are probably only worth a few bucks. And people know that MS runs 85% margins on these things, but still continues to buy them. And when so much of the economy is based on sales of intangibles....
Same goes for getting work done on your car. How much money does a head gasket cost? Well, the gasket, itself, is under fifty dollars. How much does a head gasket job cost? That's a different question entirely, now isn't it?
The price is wrong, bitch!
No miles, no business travel. Miles are a very appropriate perk for sitting in an O'Hare departure lounge when one could be at Ocean Beach (for example).
sulli
RTFJ.
Gee I wish there was an "Inane" moderation that didn't change the points.
It would be a nice way of saying "don't bother wasting your points on this post, it's not worth the effort."
I can go anywhere I want to buy anything amazon has to offer me. The internet allows me to shop around with minimal effort. "Memory sticks are $52 at amazon? Well I saw them at compusa for $42"
I'm not worried about this because I don't shop and expect to get the lowest price unless I do some work. That amount of work has lessend with pricewatch and other deal sites, and this is where I think technology is hurting companies. Its too bad that neither article mentioned this, I would like to see how they plan on combatting it. Remember when "price matching" was all the rage?
I mean, amazon.com's prices are usually very flexible, they flood the market with coupon codes, free shipping, and so what if they charge more to an idiot who is willing to pay it. If they notice you're only buying the things that you see as being cheapest from them they'll realize whats up or their software isn't worth jack.
"Collectively the airlines change prices 75,000 times a day". All airline customers have been trained to shop around because of this. There is no company or brand loyalty because the customer knows if they dont shop for price they WILL get screwed. Instead of focusing every cent on how to undercut every other supplier, try providing the customers with quality service at affordable and consistently affordable rates. Customers do not want to be in the price shopping business. That is a lot of work. They want a ticket at a reasonable price. If one airline gave consistently affordable rates and decent service, customers would come back to that airline with confidence instead of changing airlines everytime because of a price blip. That is not possible with the current environment where the same airline will charge you $1000 more depending on some whim from a competitor. And this is touted as science?
I charge my customers depending on the size of the client. Huge medical conglomerates pay more (per hour and per project) than my next door neighbor or my favorite local band.
International businesses charge Americans more than they charge someone who makes $2 a week.
students get discounts on almost everything
ladies get in free on Thursdays.
etc, etc, etc...
The truth doesn't care what I think.
It's called "discriminatory pricing", and is not at all illegal or unethical. Look at your local movie theater. Say they charge $2 for kids and $7 for adults. Why? Because they'd have a family of four pay $18 dollars, rather than that family not go at all because it's $28. 1 x $18 > 0 x $28
Same thing with cheap night. Tuesdays, all seats are $2, because they'd rather have some people at $2/seat, rather than no people at $7/seat.
What really baffles me is that people think they're entitled to know what goes on behind the scenes when businesses set prices, or base buying decisions on that. "They're charging $7 for shipping when it only costs then a dollar!" So what? Is the total value of getting the items to your house worth it, or isn't it?
i just looked at a few things on amazon.com in linux/galeon and ms/ie5 and didn't see any differences.
i didn't look too hard yet..
And no, it wasn't a pr0n site.
11/30/1998:
So the same computer that will
transmit you a reminder to buy
hamburger buns when you pick
up the patties will raise prices
for you as you approach the
lettuce. If your desire for a
lettuce purchase lags, you'll be
stimulated by additional
promotions designed to whet your
appetite. The supermarket will
be alive, and the deities that
govern it will operate in real
time.
link between this kind of irrational behavior and airlines going BANKRUPT by the CART LOAD ?
Airlines are the ultimate success story of the Arthur Andersen school of accounting. They've complicated the system so much that even they can't tell if they are making a profit of not. No wonder the airlines can't handle security as well.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I've *never* understood why individuals get the 'miles' associated with travel when they've not paid, but their company has. I had a relative who used to travel a lot - usually 3-4 days per week. He'd accumulate up those miles, then take extra personal trips. His company paid for those miles. If the company collected those miles and used them to offset the cost of future travel, A LOT of money could be saved. His reckoning was that probably every 5th or 6th flight of his could have been paid for by the frequent flyer miles accumulated by the previous trips, but those miles went to him personally, not the company. This was *supposedly* standard practice - I never knew if it was or not.
creation science book
From the article:
"Computerworld also checked the price of the Men in Black DVD today and discovered that on Netscape the quoted price was $25.97, while it cost $23.97 on Internet Explorer. After completely clearing the cache and cookie files of the PC being used, the price remained $25.97 using the Netscape browser but had risen to $27.97 with Internet Explorer. Oddly enough, people using Lynx were simply given items gratis."
My
Limekiller
I found this article about Wal*Mart to be an interesting read. It offers insight into the pricing game from the "other end".
-- derby
Nice conspiracy theory there. Too bad it destroys all credibility you might have had.
Indeed... correct me if Im wrong but I suspect few gay men purchase certain female realted hygenine products.
If the browser identifies as Safari, boost prices on anything hip or cool by 20% due to Apple-user lust for fashion and style.
If the browser is Lynx, lower prices by 20%, they can't even afford a free-as-in-beer graphical browser!
If the browser is Internet Exploder, blue screen thier PC and charge them a subscription just to access our web site.
Yum, the future of price discrimination!
Actually, this reminds me of a demographics company called Claritas that sells demographics assignment services based on where you live. (Try it for yourself here.)
So now in the future can we expect people to get assigned based on their browsers and OS identification?
Users who run Mozilla on Linux tend to have:
Three or more pets, play video games on a hidden Windows partition they don't talk about and consume Doritos by the truckload.
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
Let's just go back to the bartering system. I'm sick of money.
Now what can I get for this nice moist brownie?
Only 10 paperclips? This baby's worth 15!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
No, but YOUR Ken doll in the speedo gives a positive indication.
From the article:
This isn't the kind of problem solving that even most math-team alumni have any experience with. Zilliant's chief scientist, Ahmet Kuyumcu, sent along a couple of algorithms of the sort that Zilliant uses. Here's one: Pwin( R )=NfN x P( R )N.
As a "math-team alumni" I can say that this is a pretty trivial equation!
Congress gets a bug up its butt and tries to tax them as income. Supposedly, they're supposed to be part of compensation, so they should be taxed as such.
Nothing's ever developed out of this, AFAIK, but the issue comes up every so often.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Personally, I've paid $3+ for a bottle of water before, usually b/c I'm really thirsty and that's the only option. Now, if I'm dieing due to dehydration, it's certainly immoral to charge more than a fair/ standard price. Otherwise, let me make the decision.
Last note on bottled drink prices. They are expensive at sporting events, airports and rock concerts. Why? Scarcity of supply, which drives up prices, increases profits, which either go to maintain the airport and line the owner's pockets;. Note that the vendor doesn't relly make a killing. The rent (and other fixed costs) that he pays reflect the fact that he can maintain very high profit margins. I have no problem with that.
However, it makes my blood boil when I go to an event or place that charges $4+ for any sort of drink, and does not have drinking fountains available. I think it's a matter of time before some public parks decide to remove their water fountains (at some indeterminable savings), and gives the monopoly soft-drink contract to Coke or Pepsi, who then proceed to charge $1 for every drink in a public place. The park rangers/ city councilors will claim it's a win-win-win b/c 1) The city "saves" money by removing the water fountains, 2) the city is paid for giving the monopoly contract, 3) the consumers have a wider variety of drink choice! HAH!
I'd actually be fine with the scenario if there were no monopoly contract, b/c then the pricing would likely be reasonable. Ever notice how cheap Coke is in a Coke machine when it's next to a Pepsi machine? That's why the vendor wants the monopoly contract, and why public entities should NEVER give a true monopoly soft-drink contract (i.e, monopoly contract and water fountain removal).
We get the point but, actually they are more likely to think you are a cross dresser. :-)
Which is probably a whole new different demographic that amazon would need to consider
Just think, culturejammers, your identity as avowed anti-consumers will now be a marketable commodity!
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
BTW, I just tried Safari (Mac) & IE (Mac & Win) on the U.S. site and got quoted $80.98. Maybe if I wait until 2;40 p.m. I'll get it cheaper ???
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
it is science.
.99 cent menu.
the fact that you don't understand it doesn't make it less so. there are many variables the impact airline prices.
brand loyalty on services is dead. Jack in the Box proved that when it came out with its
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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What else? Well, what about Microsoft? Its margins are--can this be right?--44%, and it's sitting on $38 billion in cash. Mr. Sam would not approve. Log on to walmart.com and you'll find $199 computers powered by a fledgling Windows competitor, Lindows.
That's the Wal-Mart position. Either Microsoft is going to have to cut their prices, margins, and profits, or Wal-Mart is going to undersell them with Lindows. It's going to be an interesting battle. The outcome may be a special low-end version of Windows for Wal-Mart.This is important for open source. Wal-Mart likes generic products and price competition. No one supplier gets 100% of a product category at Wal-Mart. Start thinking "Linux for Joe Sixpack".
...a random number generator.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Too bad the software that will be doing all this complicated (and fascinating) price-analysis will be written by outsourced programmers in India and Russia. :(
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Law/lawreview/vol536/boy le.pdf
James Boyle is, apart from being a very smart economist, one of the Good Guys in the copyright debate. His paper explains why price discrimination happens and some of the effects it produces.
I've been ripped off by Amazon before; anything you ship them by accident, (UPS driver switched the labels by accident between the small package and the big package), mysteriously 'vanish' in Amazon's accounting system so that you can't reclaim or bill for the goods, but the bastards sell the product anyway.
I was tempted to make my next shipment in the form of a pipe. --But I seriously doubted it would kill the bastards who really deserved it. So I'm holding off until I can devise some other method of mayhem which is more pin-point accurate. (And if you're some government spook getting a hard-on: I'm joking, you stupid asshole. I'm not really a plumber.)
-Fantastic Lad
"Greed is good. And it drives competition to every level of the economy."
It also gives us shorter warrenties and IBM Deskstars. Viva la greed.
This is rehash of an old, flawed argument:
1) Assume that the labor market is perfectly competitive.
2) Assume that competitive markets will eliminate wage disparities between equally qualified men and women.
3) Observe that wage disparity exists between men and women.
4) Conclude that "unobserved differences" between men and women explain the wage disparity.
What justification is there for assumptions 1 & 2?
One point of the article is that businesses can make themselves better off by segmenting the market and selling products to different people for different prices. If businesses can do this when it comes to selling products, why can't they do the same for buy products, like say, labor?
The argument that markets will eliminate wage differentials based on gender or race assumes perfectly competitive markets composed of identical goods with many anonymous buyers and many anonymous sellers with full information available about the quality of the products and all prices. Every single one of these conditions is absent in the labor market.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
"The price is wrong, bitch!"
There's all this talk of how to build a better business, but is there anything comparable for how to build a better consumer?
You'd thing that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
The point the article was making is that they select people at random within a demographic, and give them *different* prices. They call this scientific pricing because they maintain other people as the 'control', then gauge how you, the experimental group react to the new prices.
Since the selection is random I don't see an obvious way to exploit it, with the possible exception of re-loading to see if the price changes. Presumably Amazon has some system for preventing that (like requiring you to log in).
One of the interesting conclusions from many of the retailers interviewed in the article was that discounts should be smaller, but sooner. That sounds good to me, since in general I'm too lazy and impatient to wait around for the 'big sale', and end up paying higher prices. Maybe that same sentiment is why it works?
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
... at 2:40 p.m. today, a search for the Planet of the Apes DVD on the Amazon site that Computerworld conducted using a Netscape Web browser turned up a quoted price of $64.99 -- 35% off the original price of $99.98, according to the online retailer. But several seconds later, a similar search performed with Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser resulted in a price of $74.99 for the same product.
No kidding!!! I wonder if they'll go any cheaper for Mozilla users...
if you want to do that, open up a Hooters restaurant.
Don't forget in Mozilla you can highlight the URL and middle-click, and that will bring up the page.
This has no impact on the arguement at a Micro-Economic level.
Hypothetically, imagine that you are a clever entrepreneur, and start your own restaurant. The restaurant is doing well, so you decide to hire a IT person. You advertise on Monster and get 50 resumes. (In this economy you get 500 resumes). You winnow the list to the 10 qualified applicants, and then discover that 4 of them want 30% less money. Which do you hire?
This decision certainly does not depend on anonymity, identical applicants, or PERFECT competition. It just depends on smart people doing a good job of hiring.
I don't believe that we have a gender gap in productivity or ability. I believe we have a statistics gap.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
I was so pleased at having noticed the time, and the fact that it was dated the 5th, I completely missed the other 'insignificant' components of the date :)
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
Thanks for the time-saving tip. I'll let you know how well it worked after I compile and install Mozilla.
What Amazon and similar companies are doing is NOT an attempt to be fair, or to offset regionally different taxes and rental costs. They are doing it because they are greedy assholes who want to rip you off. Period.
They don't charge more for IE users than they do for Mozilla users based on perceived income levels. For fuck's sake! They do it because they know that IE users are more likely to be dumb fucking sheep who have rolled over and given up, or who never had the wherewithall to wake up to the fact that they were being scammed in the first place. Using IE is tantamount to wearing a big bright, "I'm A Shill, Rip Me Off," Tee-shirt.
I should add, of course, that this does not include any here who use IE for other reasons and who are not unaware. You know who you are, and those of you who don't, come on down and visit my web site! --I've got a sale on some shitty but very popular movies you might want to buy!
-Fantastic Lad
For example, IBM had an agreement with United where United provided discounts in exchange for eliminating miles on IBM tickets.
Conversely, many consulting companies explicitly allow employees to keep the miles, as a perk in partial compensation for having to travel.
The IBM policy was pretty unpopular.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The problem is that many time, women aren't as competitive as men and have different priorities, ON AVERAGE (yes, I know that individual differences swamp the group dynamics). Women are more likely to take a part-time job or one with short hours so they can maximize time with families - men are less likely to make this sacrifice. Women are less likely to go into high-paying careers like IT, for whatever sociological reasons there may be.
So really, the job market has come damned close to being economically ideal.
A timely example might further illustrate the idea that asymmetric information can generate adverse selection. At first, firms in a new sector - such as today's IT sector - might seem identical to an uninformed bystander, while some "insiders" may have better information about the future profitability of such firms. Firms with lower than average profitability will therefore be overvalued and more inclined to finance new projects by issuing their own shares than high-profitability firms which are undervalued by the market. As a result, low-profitability firms tend to grow more rapidly and the stock market will initially be dominated by "lemons". When uninformed investors eventually discover their mistake, share prices fall - the IT bubble bursts.
Amazon has a decent browsing systems in place, but once I find something I want I use a cheap book search engine or go elsewhere to find cheap computer components or use another engine to fine cheap stuff. In the end I pay less for the product + SH than any browser purchaseing directly from amazon.
Amazon does charge different people different prices, dumb people who shop there end up paying a lot more money.
We have the best government that money can buy.
Alan is willing to write a report about something, say electronic money, if he can make $1500 on it.
Betty is willing to pay $1000 for the report.
Charlie is willing to pay $700 for the report.
If Alan were to charge $700, both people would buy the report, but he wouldn't make his $1500 so he wouldn't produce it.
How about instead, he charges:
Betty $950
Charlie $650
Now both customers get a price break from what they were willing to pay, and Alan gets an additional $100. And something of value was created that otherwise might not have been. So is this a good thing?
Changing prices depending on what you think the buyer will pay is like economic terrorism. It's a time bomb that, while initially may lead to higher profits, it will eventually undermine the trust of your customers. If a retailer decides to engage in such practices, because of competition, other retailers must follow so that they too make higher profits. In the end, once people figure out that they've been screwed in buying from your company and the others in your industry, they will lose trust in you. Thus they will be less likely to purchase the products sold in the sector. If department stores follow such practices, consumers will take their money elsewhere. Buy a faster computer or eat out every day? Both sound good, both are wants not needs. The computer sellers, well, we can't trust them anymore now that they might overcharge me, why not dine out every night?
Second, with reference to the airline pricing business, how do services like priceline work? You can basically book arbitrarily long in advance (within the 330 day limit), but you get your prices accepted pretty early on, even when there is a chance the airline could charge a premium for your seat.
The airline pricing industry is a racket indeed, because for instance, flying from Boston to Chicago is more expensive than flying from Boston to Milwaukee!
I'm not worried about this because I don't shop and expect to get the lowest price unless I do some work.
CompUSA might get smart and read your Amazon cookie or, worse, your new URU passport. Then both memory sicks might run you $100, wherever you go. Oh yeah, it will fluctuate with "market conditions", but when YOU see the big gold star price of $75 someplace and are tierd of shopping, you will buy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No, you are not the only one who has studied basic economics but you are one of the many who fail to grasp basic concepts. There's still no substitute for brains.
Discriminatory pricing is illegal. Read this fine post and learn something. Or just peruse a reasonable legal opinon.
What really baffles me is that people think they're entitled to know what goes on behind the scenes when businesses set prices, or base buying decisions on that.
No one thinks that but you. What people worry about is that companies might charge different individuals, of the same "class", different prices . It's not legal, it's not ethical, it's a waste of time that will damage your reputation.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
First, as was mentioned in another post, you'd have EEO problems if you tried to do that.
But second, this is one of those wonderful "lying with statistics" examples.
There are a couple of issues with this, mostly in assumptions, and partly in attitudes and priorities. Partly just societal realities.
First, some of these studies look at "average pay for all women in workplace" vs "average pay for all men in the workplace". This ignores pay differences in types of work, and gender majorities in job types. Most administrative/clerical/secretarial jobs are primarily female, and these jobs tend to be lower paying, dragging the average down. Most managerial and technical jobs are primarily male (though this is changing) and these are higher paying jobs, dragging that average up.
Second, it ignores time-in-grade issues. Women started entering the workforce in the 40s with WWII, but lost a lot of ground at the end of WWII, and in the 50s just started with (as I already said) secretarial and that type of work. Typically lower paying. Women didn't start becoming common in managerial and technical jobs until the mid-to-late 80s. Therefore the "typical" woman in these fields has less time-in-grade, and less experience, than the typical male. That makes a differences in pay rates.
Third, and this is the societal, women are (generally) encouraged to be the caregiver of a family, for a 2-income family. This means they'll be more likely to take time off work to take kids to see the doctor and similar things. Also, they'll probably take off significant amounts of time for pregnancy/childbirth, and possibly a couple of years after that too. (My mom married and worked until she got pregnant, then stayed at home until I started going to school, and then she went back to work... that's 5 years out of the job market, and she has a technical degree.) This is a matter of your priorities. What is important to you?
Fourth, and this one isn't fair, is that men are perceived to be more willing to put in extra time at work, because the wife is at home taking care of the kids. Therefore, it is more worthwhile for a business to promote a man, because he'll spend more time working for the business.
When you take out these non-equivalent pieces, and actually compare apples to apples, you find much more equal pay rates. For a man and a woman in a technical field, with the same time in the job market, with similar time-taken-off rates, the woman will be paid about 98% of what the man is paid.
However, this usually means you are comparing single women (or childless married women) to single *and* married w/children men.
Which means that, if you pay attention to the statistics, you learn that the way for a woman to get near-equivalent pay is to sacrifice a family life.
And this just sucks.
Incidentally, yes, I'm male.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
The issue here is about moving forward. Was there a problem with access to finance in 1969? Absolutely. And it was an embarassment 33 years ago.
In practice, our economy has come a long way. I think it is no longer clear that financial services for the poor are more exploitive than financial services to the rich.
Reason (admittedly a bunch of libertarians) argues that there is a legitimate need for this type of service.
I believe that if there is a market, greedy people will rush in.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
But if payroll taxes go up, earnings go down, and dividends go down.
"So dock the employees' wages by the change in payroll tax!" For one thing, there does exist a minimum wage in the United States. For another, it's harder to reduce an existing employee's wage than it is to increase it.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Some of this (all of it?) is borrowed from optimal foraging studies in nature; companies forage for customers, and want the most/best customers with the least effort and risk. Any animal that forages with something more than blind luck employs some kind of an optimization strategy. While is it true that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, it is not always true that the grass is of such superior quality as to justify the trouble/expense/risk of getting through the fence. Same applies to stalking predators.
We are not called "consumers" for nothing. We devour things, use them up. But we expend effort in doing so, and wish to minimize that at every turn. We've all been there; you want cheaper gas, but are you willing to sit in line, idling your engine and getting no where, to get it? Someone obviously is willing to do that because otherwise there would not be a line, but their situation (maybe they have no money and are not in a hurry) is different from your own (you got places to be.)
How do animals do this? It is the subject of a lot of study since some of the strategies would appear to require a good deal of instinct in the guise of intelligence. And the strategies can become so critical and sensitive to minor changes in input that the strategies can finally drive speciation itself. How you forage can actually shape who you are and what you look like, and even drive you into so tight a corner that you are vulnerable to extinction (take pandas for example.)
What was interesting about this article was that the author came to much the same conclusion; pricing will drive what companies do and even how they function. Eventually, pricing strategies may create new companies that can exploit/forage across new resources or simply exploit old resources more completely. That is certainly a form of commercial speciation, with all the attendant risks and opportunities.
Commerce used to be a generalized affair, a product of human imagination and under our (inexact) control. What happens when commerce becomes like an organism in its own right, with its own strategies for survival, where we are but the engine that drives it? And for that matter, do we then become the food source for commerce in turn?
Trout eat their own offspring, which seems counter-Darwinian. The study of why they do that is fascinating and terrifying at the same time; they eat their young because the young can get at food resources under stones and in the reeds that the adults cannot. When the adult eats the fingerlings, they are efficiently foraging for grubs under stones that normally they would never reach. The young are like an extended feeding organ of the adults, and the advantage of eating them is just enough to outweigh the loss of life.
Perhaps commerce, the child of our own genius, is looking at us hungrily. We work creatively to buy things and our work nourishes what used to be our child but is now our master. Unknown to us, we are in the end serving and not being served. Unless in "being served" one means served up with fries and a regular drink.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
'nuff said
brand loyalty is not dead. it is ignored in the airline industry, because people are spoon fed this pseudo-science that says you have to compete on price to the detriment of all else. You do NOT have to compete on price if your products or services are different. People will not change carriers for a small price differential. It is a pain and adds extra work to have to barain shop. But all airline travellers know that prices vary so much that they have to engage in these crazy tactics, even if it means messing up your frequent flyer growth path. By your example, the fast food industry should engage in this "science" because it works so well in the airline industry. Then at lunch every person could look forward to two hours of price checking to decide where to eat. And the fast food industry would be required to install networks of computers and station attendants to enter and check the 70,000 price changes each day. And when does the food get made? ...OR the fast food industry could make good tasting food at a reasonable price and we the consumer could go eat at the same places every day without thinking about it, because we know we will get decent food at a decent price.
The neat curves and crisp laws of supply and demand, elasticity, and rational behavior that everyone learns in microeconomics class don't work in the real world.
That's macroeconomics and it does indeed work. That's the whole problem with this aproach. To paraphrase Alan Greenspan, "laws of supply and demand are not to be conned."
Business is at the start of a new era of pricing. This era is being shaped by a new set of insights into business strategy and human behavior, and these insights are turbocharged with software, mathematics, and rapid experimentation. The result is what might be called "scientific pricing." There is even a blossoming industry of a dozen companies that offer scientific-pricing services.
I'll bet there are a whole pile of companies willing to charge you to piss off your customers like that. "Turbocharged" indeed, that means twisted, right? Anyone who believes charging two people different prices for the same thing will make them happy, has a serious lack of insight into human behavior. People talk and feel ripped off.
Changes in pricing will alter every part of the economy. The way that business gets done will change, and companies will flourish or be crushed based in part on their ability to grasp and master the new science of pricing. Among those already using the new techniques are Best Buy, DHL, Ford Motor Co., the Home Depot, JC Penney, Safeway, Saks, Staples, UPS, and Winn-Dixie. General Electric, perhaps taking Jack Welch's warnings to heart, is not only working with at least two different pricing companies -- it has also invested in one.
Send that list to fucked company. All are known for overpricing shoddy merchanise. Soon they will be known for anti-trust violations, save GE which still makes good industial wares and might be smart enough to avoid this new scheme to bilk companies. Winn-Dixie with it's silly little black punishment card is wasting money that could better be spent elsewhere, while my wife now buys groceries at WalMart.
The oldest records of prices ever found are clay tablets with pictographic symbols found in a town known as Uruk, in what was ancient Sumer and what is now southern Iraq. These price records are from 3300 BC -- they've survived 5,300 years. The documents -- records of payment for barley and wheat, for sheep, and for beer -- are really receipts. "Uruk was a large city, at a minimum 40,000 people," says UCLA professor Robert Englund, one of the few experts on the Uruk documents. "So some of the quantities are very high -- hundreds of thousands of pounds of barley, for instance."
OK so far.
But here's the really remarkable thing. The earliest Uruk tablets aren't just the oldest pricing records ever found. They are the oldest examples of human writing yet discovered. In other words, when humans first took stylus to wet clay, the first thing that they were compelled to record was . . . prices.
Bzzzzt - they recorded your generosity to the temple and other administrative stuff. What they show is a deeply rooted human desire for equal treatment and fairness. This is exactly the oposite of using electronic records in a vain atempt to foist higher prices on, "suckers".
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So, two guys own gas stations in Podunk, Iowa. They're the only gas stations within 100 miles, supporting a town center of a few thousand people.
If they colluded on price (explicitly agreed to a price), it'd be illegal. So, they don't.
Early one morning, the owner of Swell Gas gets out his ladder, and increases his gas prices by 10 cents. The owner of Hexxon (across the street) sees him raise his price. He can do one of two things:
1. Not change his price.
2. Change his price.
If he chooses (2), he can do one of three things:
a. Increase his price by less than Swell's increase.
b. Increase his price by the same amount as Swell's increase.
c. Increase his price by more than Swell's increase.
As long as he doesn't ever engage in active communication with the owner of Swell, he can legally do any of those options. The owner of Swell knows this.
So, in fact, the owner of Swell raised his prices, hoping that the owner of Hexxon would too. Swell gas can't stay profitablw at a price of 10 cents higher unless Hexxon gas is 10 cents higher too. If Hexxon doesn't raise its prices a dime, than Swell will just reduce its price back to the price it started at. If Hexxon also raises its price 10 cents a gallon, than both stations will be far more prifitable, since demand is very inelastic due to their rural location. Furthermore, if their high prices resulted in a third station setting up shop, the two old stations would probably survive. They'd lower their prices back down and rely on the small town's familiarity with their stations (including their rocking chairs and Coke from a bottle) to survive until the new station went under.
Nobody broke the law, but clear pricing signals were exhibited. They can both come to the game-theory based conclusion that it makes sense for them both to raise prices together... and can briefly offer to "go first" with little to no cost.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
That is the opposite of price gouging. The were so aggressively low fee/price that they were nearly bankrupted by a minor economic downturn.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
There is no company or brand loyalty because the customer knows if they dont shop for price they WILL get screwed.
:-) . Fact is, it's very hard to sell expensive first class seats to latin america, in comparison to europe, so the airlines can only try to make a profit on economy class. Which is exactly what they do with fares that seem abnormally high for the distance traveled. (I should add that fares to latin america are some of the most stable...they barely move up or down, and we've paid the same price, within $100, 90% of the time we've gone there, for the last 20 years. Clearly it's getting slightly cheaper with time, but it's pretty stable.)
For the most part, airline service is not differentiable...though there does seem to be an observable difference between the low quality carriers and the high quality carriers on service and on-time performance. But that isn't known to your leisure travellers, who shop entirely by price, unless they have had some abnormally negative experience on carrier X. I need not tell you that everyone and their grandmother tries to book a trip somewhere, the first thing they ask about is price.
Having said that, leisure travellers simply aren't profitable, or you need a hell of a lot of them before the flight at least breaks even. Your supersaver 21 day advance fares are a loss to the airline. (Incidentally, the consistency in airline fares come from the fact that everyone knows that fares go up the closer you are to the travel date. On a side note, the expansion of the complexity of supersaver fares is how checking for photo ID was introduced--it never had anything to do with security, it had to do with making sure that person X wasn't buying a ticket in advance that they had no intention to use, to sell to person Y who suddenly needed to go somewhere and didn't wanna pay full price.)
Anyways interesting example of this (regrettably, the only example in my head) is the Continental 757 flight from Cleveland to London Gatwick. It's not an exception at all incidentally...but if you fill all the first class seats on this flight, you'll pay for the entire plan to London *and* back. On the other hand, you need a good 100 passengers in economy class to get same result. Therefore first class is vitally important...and airlines spend huge amounts of money trying to differentiate their first class products. And who flies first class? Business travelers who care about being on-time and the service/amenities they get. Simply, airlines can barely care about their economy class product since they lose money/only break even on the majority of seats anyway.
I'm from Costa Rica, and my mother often flies down there to see the family. One thing that always bugged her was the fact that fares to latin america were terribly high in comparison to fares to europe, and it seems that flying to europe is a much more complex transaction, not to mention it's farther
So having said that, it only makes sense that airlines try to change prices many times per day to eek out just a little bit of profit on the economy class seats. It's the only thing they can do.
I incidentally disagree with your comment that Customers do not want to be in the price shopping business. Customers love to price shop...especially when they are buying their ticket 3 months in advance. There is such a psychological reward in getting a good deal.
Random price fluctuations, pathetic excuses for patents...any other reason to not shop at Amazon.com that I've missed?
In my ethics class, one example that was used to illustrate a point was the shopkeeper who could have overcharged the young child, as the child had no real concept of the value of money. We discussed the ethics behind ripping off vs. being honest with the kid, etc. etc. etc.
How many of you want to be that kid in Amazon.com's candy store? I know I don't.
If consumers think they've paid too much for an item, Smith noted, they have 30 days to request a refund from the company.
And just how are they going to know that? Keep reloading the page until a lower price show up?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
My fifth semester towards a bachelors degree in software engineering I had to choose between paying rent and paying tuition.
I went homeless for several months, showered in friend's bathrooms when I got a chance and washed my clothes (both pair) in the dorm laundromat. I studied in the dining area of fast food resturants because they had the lights on 24x7, a particularly harsh reminder that I was hungry and didn't have enough money to splurge on fast food. I was working, had a job at the local grocery store as a cashier but that money went towards tuition, books, and food with nothing left over for rent.
That was over a decade ago and I have never regretted it. I look at today's homeless begging on streetcorners and I cry my single tear in memory of that semester, then I drive on.
Everybody has a choice. If I did it, no help from anybody, no handouts, no contacts, a minimum wage job, and no welfare (I was too proud to ask, and thought I was above it. Dumb, probably, but everybody has their pride inspired dumb allowance) then anybody can do it.
You (meaning the metaphysical you, not bagging on you in particular) can do it. I know because I did it. It isn't a question of can you do it, it is a question of are you willing.
Willing to pay that 782% interest on a paycheck loan to get you through the week.
Willing to give up television, cable, all of your worldly belongings and possessions to make it happen.
Basically, willing to pay the price today in order to succeed tomorrow. Those of us that did have no sympathy for those who didn't and won't.
It doesn't take a 4 year degree, but a 4 year degree certainly helps. A BS degree doesn't come cheap however, in what you will need to sacrifice to get it in terms of dollars and hours.
To summarize, I have been poor (homeless for 3-4 months qualifies) and I have been rich. Rich is better.
I was a man with no contacts, no power, and no wardrobe. Nobody GAVE anybody a crippling overdraft and credit card bills, those were a choice (and yes, rent is a choice, as is medical attention, warm food and pretty clothes and a vehicle are all choices...) and I lived on $3.35 an hour, 30 hours a week (that's $400 a month.) Granted that was a while back, but that's real life.
I used my skills constructively and guess what, became a self made man. Maybe I am the exception to the rule, but I sure hope not.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Any telecom currently in existence would have a policy of not talking about prices because...
They're ALL gouging us! I still pay $5 flat a month for TOUCH-TONE SERVICE!
Freedom: "I won't!"
Sure, there's a cost in switching service providers. My company is not going to switch ISPs for leased lines and colo for a lousy $100/month price break. But, I can choose between different airlines quickly, and with no transaction costs. I go to Expedia.com, enter my flight search info, and pick the one with the cheapest price at the times I'm willing to fly. I could care less whether they are Continental or US Air. It's so easy to choose between the two, I won't care.
Frequent flier systems are an attempt to get vendor lock-in, and I have a friend who flys Southwest whenever he can because his every 5th flight is free. But, for most airlines, frequent flyer isn't enough of a lock in because you'll never know when your preferred vendor "sells out" early, and the only thing you could get with them is the $1200 seat. You'd tell them not to offer the $1200 seat so they could make it worth my while to show brand loyalty, but they've obviously done the math and decided it's better to gouge the late traveller for $1200 then have me as a regular customer at $250. (Why? The late travellers travel the most. How many occasional travellers need to book a flight one day in advance? The sales reps for my company do it all the time.)
And the fast food industry falls completely short. Fast food doesn't "perish" so instantly. If I get to the door at 11:55, they aren't going to tell me I have to pay 5 times for my lunch cause it's the last minute. It's trivial and easy for me to go somewhere else. I never have to have food *right now*, where many people need to get on a flight *right now*.
The airlines' prices change so drastically because they have the ability to charge very high profit margin rates at the last minute. I can't think of a single other industry that can do this.
Note that you can game the system. Find an underbooked plane at the last minute, and say you want a ticket, but it's not an emergency and you *won't* pay more than $100. They'll take your money versus let the plane fly empty. This is what flying standby is all about.
The last time gas prices spiked like this, about two years ago, there were a few feeble attempts to boycott gas stations until they stopped gouging consumers. The gas stations said it was the oil companies that made them raise prices; recently, a spokesperson from the American Petroleum Institute said in an article that it's up to the individual station owners (saw it in a local paper a few days ago, but can't find an online copy of that piece). The boycott went nowhere.
if prices swing between browser brands, you better choose Opera, because with 2 clicks you change the browser id... and voila! DISCOUNTS
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
"If one airline gave consistently affordable rates and decent service, customers would come back to that airline with confidence..."
At the risk of sounding like a corporate shill (which I am not) for them, I believe you are referencing Southwest Airlines. Their fares are pretty much solid and reasonable, AND in my experience the service has been pretty good (at least as good if not better than my experiences with United, Delta and American).
It should be noted that Southwest is THE one airline mentioned in the article that does NOT belong to ATPCO. They don't list fares through Orbitz either. And even though you hear airline after airline complaining about the economy and begging for concessions and bailouts these days, Southwest is actually continuing to MAKE money... coincidence? I think not...
Granted, the secret to Southwest's success goes beyond their pricing strategy. Their fleet standardization (B-737) and other ingenious cost-saving maneuvers ("no frills", no assigned seating, no class-sorting of fares, etc) also have a big part. It will be interesting to see if the new low-cost carriers announced by United and American (to emulate who else but Southwest, natch) will use those strategies as well.
~~~
"The slave thinks he is released from bondage, only to find a stronger set of chains" - NIN
Has anyone heard of small businesses doing this kind of thing? The articels all talked about large coroporations, but small mom-n-pop stores have even less idea about what to charge their customers than large chains. Is there such thing as listings of suggested pricing reccomendations for various small scale services or even for people who do a little work here and there on the side?
Actually ailine prices tend to fall the closer you get to departure time. For example, I once had to fly from Cleveland to L.A. I went up to the counter and was quoted $1800 for a one way ticket. I told the ticket agent that I didn't want to go that bad and started to walk away. Suddenly I was offered the choice to fly standby for $99.
The bottom line is that airline pricing, like most things in the world is simply a matter of supply and demand. The price you pay is determined by how much you want the item and how badly the seller wants to sell.
as you possibly can. They have proven to me over and over again, that they don't care one iota(sp?) about the customer. It's all about make as much money for Bezos. Just my opinion. :)
If you had actually read the Robinson-Patman act you would see that selling the same product to different parties is not illegal. There is a list of 10 items that must be met to have the act apply. Number 10 is a big one.
10) For the Act to apply, there must be a showing of an adverse effect on competition.
Unless you can prove that offering the same product to different customers at different prices will have an adverse effect on competition, then this law doesn't apply.
Thanks for telling me I did not read the link I posted to share with people. As you astutely read on that page, proving damage to competition is the most difficult thing to prove and is the grounds most challenged.
It would be difficult indeed to prove that a company did not use this as a means to dump in locations or engage in any other predatory behavior. Why, because the actual prices are only known to people who buy the goods. The numbers can be fudged to balance for any record demanded in a chanlenge. Strategically lowering prices for a few influential people could create just enough buzz to draw shopers away from a competitor on a "percieved value" that is not real. A truely sinister use would be for a credit card banks to offer clients a "maxi-pad" service to retailers, which would be outright price fixing. Other abuses are possible, but I'm not devious enough to think of them in a short time.
Other restrictions include: sales must cross state boundaries
All the listed companies are national international.
relevant time periods .. applies to commodities only .., equivalent goods...
WinnDixie and Home Depot, dude, we are talking about lumber and eggs. What could be less time dependent, more a comodity or more equivalent?
In the end, the people getting bilked are the retailers who invest in this system. People know it's a swindle at Winn Dixie already despite the billboards promising "it lowers prices, yes it does." They know their bills increased, despite the lotto like savings they might have enjoyed on a bag of chips. They are going to troop on over to a store down the street that sells things honestly for a fixed price, leaving the black card managers to lower their prices in a panic. Often, when you colude with others to rob your friends, the person being robbed is you. Add the word "scientific", as Redkin did with "pH balanced" shampo, and you a clasic scam in the making.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Some reporters refuse to consider anything off the record, and say so to their sources. That's fair, but you need to actually say so. I suspect also that PR flacks who say "Oh and what I just said is off the record" after refusing comment will not get the same treatment as trusted sources who say it's off the record in advance of commenting.
sulli
RTFJ.
every dance club in this city charges $4 for a bottle of Disani.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Grimey, is that you?
-1, Redundant
"Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said."
Just moved to Singapore from the states, and I was amazed to see that when it rains here, stores DROP the price of umbrellas, on the spot. From something like S$9 to S$6 (which is only about US $4, for a pretty nice umbrella!) It's downright unAmerican, I'd say...
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
don't get me wrong, i don't want to sound like one of those false altruist losers who claims 'i am poorer than you so everyone else and you should be as poor as me' but your post made me quirk up for some odd reason. you've been down roads that i'm just starting on and know what your talking about. chastize me if i overstep my youthful zeal, as you deserve my respect - if anything
some points: i'm not sure what you mean by 'handouts' or 'contacts'.
university students here are not eligable for welfare [!].
also keep in mind that you [the specific, elemental you.] may just be talented or lucky. it may not be the case, but it also may. i made it out of my old hometown because i knew that no one who lived there was going anywhere fast.~.being successful in making out of there alive makes me think that i can make it to somewhere nice - and this place isn't all that bad. of course all this was before i realized that there may be no place for me in this world [or any other]...but that's a different thread...
"is a question of are you willing" willing to sacrifice everything, personal posessions, moral highground and anything else i may have ever had possession of? sure. but mabye if the question were a little different i'd have a different awnser--- is a question of are you willing to propegate the system that put you here to begin with. no i'm not willing to do that. I can barely look at myself in the mirror now, lying and stealing and ripping off people for a living [a la selling pizza at extrodinarily high prices so that my employer will have enough money to justify paying me]...
"do not lend your voice to that which you wish to be free from"-Jewel
i do agree that everyone has a choice...i'd dissagree that this means anything.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I've being looking at a MP3 player reciently. In America the Nomad Jukebox Zen sells for $300 (recommended retail price,without tax) while in Europe it's 410 euros (or $440). Creative prevents any one from Europe buying at the American price. I think they do the same for all consumer electronics. What's the justification for this price difference?
I can't believe that /. is so full of CompSci's that Yield Managment is newsworthy - this has been taught at university for years.
Of course, the AC you're responding to didn't say whether the poster was male or female. If she's buying gifts for her girlfriend, that's a whole different story.
There are exceptions to every rule, including this one.
Amazon Exec 1: "This customer buys Precious Moments figurines."
Amazon Exec 2: "They must be some middle-aged soccer mom."
I'm in the minority. I'm a 22-year-old man, fresh out of college, and I like PM figurines partly because I liked The Time Machine, a novel by H. G. Wells. (The 2002 movie wasn't even close.) I see too many parallels between the PM characters and the Eloi for it to even be funny.
Amazon Exec 2: Charge them double for new releases, and half price for Disney."
Pfft. A simple web search on the e-mail address I provided would lead them straight to my anti-Bono Act page and my anti-Finding Nemo page.
Amazon Exec 1: "What about customers who buy How to Make a Million Dollars a Second?
Amazon Exec 2: "Charge double for everything. They'll be able to afford it eventually..."
Do you imply that Amazon sells books containing offers pitched in spam? Now I remember why Amazon was once called Spamazon.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your
hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you
notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This
teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never
use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects
that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt.
The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger,
where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels
down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.
Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger
would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have
carpeting.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
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