alt text
three rows with a barbecue on the left and William Wallace in Braveheart on the right.
In the first row, captioned Wednesday, the barbecue is labelled “$899.99” and Wallace says “hold”.
The second row, captioned Thursday, depicts the same.
In the third row, captioned Black Friday, the there is a label with $1099.99 struck through with “$899.99” written underneath, and Wallace charges.
edit: grammar
in slovenia we just passed a law that requires shops to state the price change of an item in the last 30 days :)
One of the benefits of being part of the EU :)
I think its a thing here in norway as well. Thats why they just increase the price in early october, just a month ahead of black week bullcrap. Have seen plenty of electronics “super discounted” to the same price they had in september/october
I think its a thing here in norway as well. Thats why they just increase the price in early october, just a month ahead of black week bullcrap. Have seen plenty of electronics “super discounted” to the same price they had in september/october
It might actually work if the requirement was a year instead of 30 days.
Also mandate minimum font size for it and that it must be displayed along with the current price anywhere the current price appears.
I honestly think 1 year would be too far back to be actually relevant to the current price, but I can see a 3 month period being a good middle ground.
Big items I usually start watching a few months out. If I see a store or brand that pulls tthis garbage, I simply go elsewhere. If I can’t find it on offer, I buy it regular price at the smaller retail store.
All of EU is adopting this practice to comply with the EU Price Indication Directive.
I love to see the eu fucking over companies
Oh wow that’s cool! I’m from Slovenia too and I didn’t know that.
How did you figure out your citizenship then?
We have a comedian among us
ඞ
I know nothing about your country, is it common to speak English and what’s the native language?
It’s quite common for people to speak English. The native language is Slovene. It’s a really small country in central Europe (much larger than Liechtenstein tho).
Nice, very cool, thanks for informing me!
In America we keep the same price but decrease the amount of product. #profit
Also in Poland
Brazil’s consumers rights department listed itens prices so stores can’t fake advertise them. Countries with regulations: ok, we can do Black Friday, but…
I like how for all the problems Brazil has, the consumer protection laws are consistently some of the best around.
That’s a sample of all the good things it can have when corruption doesnt happen
As a past retail worker. Black Friday was miserable. I worked at Bestbuy. I saw a lot of people breakdown and quit thay day due to the stress. Don’t encourage it. If you do go out. Be respectful and remember it’s just things that don’t really matter. I have never gone out and don’t support it especially the trickling of businesses forcing employees to work on Thanksgiving.
Currently at work at the worst company you could ever work for, Big Lots. We’ve even got extended hours today, but hardly anyone here shopping. ANY corporation that has shareholders has no choice but to become increasingly evil and vile to their employees.
God damn, that sucks… Best of luck pal.
Honestly my entire life is a wreck, my fiance is probably going to leave me because I absolutely can’t seem to find a real job and I’m my debt has ballooned like 3x it’s size in 6 months because even though I’m a manager who does literally everything you could do working retail, I get paid $10.50 an hour. I quite literally can’t afford to eat and am going hungry most days for the last month. Yet the only thing my mind can seem to focus on is saving my relationship but I just feel it drifting every day I can’t secure a real job. I’ve applied to literally hundreds of jobs over the past 6 months, gone to many interviews, called called called and called some more, and yet nothing, no one wants to give me a chance even though I have a decent resume, I’m polite, I’m very good with computers and have no criminal or any kind of bad history. Definitely thinking about ending it a lot lately. Sorry to dump on you, just feel like I need to write this out somewhere instead of just festering in my head.
🤗 I’m sorry your having such a tough time… Everything is temporary. I know it feels hard right now… Don’t make a permanent solution to these temporary problems… Things will change. Keep going. Best of luck to you. 🤗
It’s funny how when you’re doing okay a message like that doesn’t feel like much from a stranger, but his a lot deeper when you’re feeling at the end of your rope, I appreciate your kindness and compassion. It’s just gotten worse and worse every year, I had stability at one time and I was an equal contributer, but I just feel like complete shit about myself constantly and nothing seems to go right. My vehicle which I’m still paying a loan on has been in a mechanics shop for 3 months, the car that I had been borrowing developed a major oil leak and can’t be driven so I am stuck getting rides across town with no decent bussing options (which I’ve admittedly never taken a public bus out of anxiety), my credit cards which I got initially to help my fiance with things have gone unpaid for about 6 months with daily calls from collectors, and whatever else I can’t bring to mind right now, but it’s all just a decline no matter how hard I try or how decent of a person I try to be to everyone I interact with in my life. And on top of that most of my friends haven’t talked to me in years and the one good friend I do talk to every few months or so has her own life and issues to deal with, I have no family anywhere near me and have a bad relationship with my father, my mother is wonderful but I feel even worse dumping my troubles on her because she has no way to help me from across the country and with her extremely limited resources and I know it makes her feel like she failed as a parent because she couldn’t provide me with the things she thinks she should have (I don’t blame her a bit, she really is a wonderful person), which means the only person who I can talk to about anything going wrong in my life is the love of my life who is being embittered towards me by every compounding issue. I recently got back on ADHD meds after being off them for a decade or more and it’s only seemed to serve to make me have energy and no appetite, but not help me that much, I want to try antidepressants for the first time in my life, but the doctors don’t make it easy, it was a struggle just to get on the ADHD meds even though I had taken Adderall for 5+ years in the past. It’s just overwhelming and never ever seems to let up. I can’t play video games any more, television just seems to fade into the background as I’m consumed by horrible thoughts constantly.
Do you have insurance or, if not, does your state provide Medicaid to low income individuals? If you have private insurance I would recommend looking up therapists and maybe even psychiatrists who are covered by your insurance. If you have Medicaid your county probably has a behavioral health department that can provide some help.
If no to both, you can call 9-8-8 and ask for behavioral health resources that are available. in your area. You can also call that number to talk about your depressing and self harming thoughts if you feel like you want to give your friends and family a break.
Thank you, I have my states ACA insurance which is the only way I’ve seen a doctor (hadn’t seen one in about 15 years before last month). I had never heard about that phone number, I might give it a call later, thank you so much.
Accidental double post**
Your situation really sucks. The most important part is to tell yourself you can be happy again, even if it feels very far away right now. Being happy is the best thing there is, and worth a lot of effort and tough times to get to again.
Life gets overwhelming. You don’t need to see the whole staircase to take the first step. You’re doing your best. Be sure to talk about your feelings with your SO.
There is a mentalhealth community. As you’ve said, sometimes it is really good to write stuff down. Best of luck to you my friend.
Thank you, I have talked to her a lot, but she has valid reasons. I have not been an equal contributer and the weight of everything has been on her for too long, I would do anything in my power to not lose her, but what NEEDS to happen just doesn’t seem to. I know I need back in to see my doctor and see if she can get me on an antidepressant, but the number one thing I need is sadly just money. My income, even though I bust my ass for it, feels like drops in a very very large bucket. Thanks again.
I was on year 4 or 5 retail, working in a small strip mall that included a best buy. The people swamped the door so hard it came off when the poor kid unlocked them, literally doorbusters and he got trampled and died.
Every year there’s a few deaths to the craze and I made a habit of checking the count every year.
Work at Best buy currently in inventory, last year all week of black Friday we have over 300 online orders at once until we were getting closer to the end of the night. This week so far the most I’ve seen is 50. We’re staffed the same, less so in fact with all the call-outs, but still we have a full team in tomorrow from 1am until midnight.
1am geezus back when I worked at Bestbuy. 2008ish I came in at 3:30am to sell shitty netbooks to customers waiting in the lines outside.
In 1998 I used to have to be in at 6AM.This thread is like a nice little timeline of the enshittification of America.
Years ago, in October I wanted to buy a new TV, my wife said we should wait for black Friday but I just bought it anyway. I keep checking the price day after day and the price of it keep rising slowly every day, until black Friday when it had a 40% sale off and was still more expensive of what I paid two months before.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
These transcriptions are getting incredible. I never would have thought it was possible to accurately convey a comic through text, while keeping the meaning and humour intact.
Oh, you’re too kind. I can’t nearly compete with the masterpieces shown over at alttexthalloffame.org :))
You really did a great job, plus thank you for that website. Minor correction: struck through, not striked. Striked is only for baseball, afaik
I kinda assumed it would still be “striked through”, or maybe “stricken through” because of the typographic term “strikethrough”. But “struck through” also seems like it could be correct
I’ma need an expert typographical linguist to weigh-in on this matter. The world needs an answer
Struck is simple past, stricken is the past participle. It’s the same pattern as “write, wrote, written.” Striked through is not “right” here, but at the same time, it’s a totally valid way to say it in various dialects, so that’s right enough for most purposes. In my dialect, workers might have “striked,” but that’s also nonstandard.
Just a regular linguist, which means I’m obligated to make it really clear that prescriptivism is bullshit, but does really simplify things for non native speakers
Is that AI generated? If so that’s fucking amazing!
OP wrote it thrmselves :)
Plot twist op is a bot
Wrong, Black Friday not $899, but
$1099$999Speaking of sweet Black Friday deals, I came across this gem recently and chuckled a bit, the nerve.
The price decreased by $1.00
K
Yeah they’re clearly mistaken
three words: camel, camel, camel
For anyone who is unaware of what this refers to, it is this website:
The website describes it’s services like so:
Our free Amazon price tracker monitors millions of products and alerts you when prices drop, helping you decide when to buy.
Right now the product is showing camel. You can wait for it to be camel and then buy, but if you’re patient you’ll catch it when it’s in the camel and save a lot.
I would rather have something that has not been in a camel.
Not in a camel, but theeeeeeeeee camel
Sure is nice seeing all of those 40% off tags and seeing on CCC it’s actually more expensive than it was a week ago.
Love those camels.
What’s up with this product price of $99 for a “re-usable straw” that listed near the beginning for me
It’s list price is $99,999 with an average of $68,267.48?! I obviously wouldn’t be purchasing from that vendor for many reasons; but how easy is it to manipulate prices for a website like this? Or maybe it’s a vendor that’s trying to make the website seem useless? Or just a one-off?
Idk, it caught my eye right off the bat though lol
For scamazon I vastly prefer keepa
I take screengrabs through the year of products I’m interested in and keep records. So I tend to see when they raise their prices in early November, only to drop it to just above the original price for their Black Friday “deals”.
Really there needs to be changes in consumer law to tackle this. We either lost a bunch of legal protection after Brexit, here in the UK, or the retailers realise they can get away with it. Amazon is really bad at this. So are the really big tech retailers.
Camelcamelcamel
I dont need it, tbh. I’m interested in so little, LOL!
You don’t need to use it as an add-on. You can go to the website and set up a price drop alert for whatever it is you’re interested in.
There’s about 20 things at most that I’ll monitor over the year, so its really not worth the effort.
There’s maybe 4 things I buy a year on Amazon. I set the price watch, when it hits the price I want I chick the link and buy it.
Not sure why you would need to buy more things to make it worthwhile.
Does the price watch email work for you?
I have 2 Gmail accounts and I don’t know if Camel is broken, or Gmail filters them as spam. I never get any emails.
It’s pretty quick and easy, but that’s more than I’ve ever monitored in a year, so it would be more work for you than it has been for me.
Like I said, its about 20 things max. Really not hard to keep track.
That’s why I have extensions that track prices so I have an accurate price history.
That’s why I live in the EU, and they have to include the lowest price in the last 30 days with the “discount” price.
That’s a strange reason to live in the EU.
There’s many, many good reasons to live in the EU, fam.
Yeah, I’d rather live there for the healthcare, education and public infrastructure.
I’m in the EU and have never heard of this
It’s a relatively new (became applicable in 2022) thing called price indication directive. The TLDR is what the other guy said, the only addition is that member states can set different rules for certain goods.
Wouldn’t a loophole be to relist something to include some extra trinket with the main product (e.g. lens cleaner with a camera) and argue the “new” listing is something completely different than before?
Or raise the price 31 days prior, and “drastically discount” it after. It seems like a cool policy in theory, but it also sounds like it doesn’t really have any teeth. Like a “political theater” kind of law. But who’s to say, maybe it could be someone’s poli-sci thesis some day.
Or I’m just dumb and don’t understand something fundamental about it; I also except that
It seems like a difficult thing to regulate. I hope that this can be a starting point that will be potentially expanded later as needed, but we’ll see.
Yes, have worked in the field, can confirm.
So if you raise the price 31 days prior, and then put the discount on, you should still be good to squeeze more profit!
You would not gain a profit for 30 days with such high prices.
Maybe the 30 day decrease in profit would be worth the additional units sold later (possibly at a slightly elevated price), due to the marketing of a perceived “deal”.
I guess there’s a lot of variables that could come into play (type of product, inventory, how many units need to sell over a time period to break even, etc), but it doesn’t seem implausible, so much as it does dependent. But idk, I still can’t figure out how the fuck magnets work, let alone accounting
The extensions are nice.
The annoying part is the 10 things on my save list haven’t budged in price for over 1.5 years. 😭😭😭
Oh… Im so sorry to hear that. Second thing I do is check the second hand stores near me. I have one that validates their products and offers a 1 year warranty on the second hand stuff I buy from them, and it’s kind of awesome. They even rate the quality.
But which extensions in particular…
Keepa which gives a chart on every Amazon page or camelcamelcamel
I’m from Romania so I don’t know how relevant they are for you but I use Pricy and Istoric Preturi. And the website Compari.ro
The only way to know if a Black Friday price is good is to know the usual “regular” price of the item. That takes planning to jot the price down a month or more in advance and then wait to see what the Black Friday price is. It’s all a game.
Also using plugins like camelcamelcamel can help with this. Shows you a graph of history for prices
I use Keepa, same type of thing, and I’ll just set it to notify me when it reaches the desired low price again. I rarely buy anything unless it’s on sale prices now.
That exact model was $599 in October. I would know, because I bought one.
It’s actually a really great smoker, but the app is terrible.
Shockingly, the app used to be worse. Of course, now today their ad backend is down so the app won’t work at all.
the smoker has an app? Who gives a shit about a smoker for an app…
It’s nice because you can keep track of the internal temperature remotely.
Why are you remote grilling?
You’ve heard of weather? Or doing things other than babysitting a hit smoking pit for 16 hours?
Why are you not?
You’ve discovered the secret sauce of marketing.
Why are people giving descriptions of their images
So text-to-speech can be used, meme made accessible to people with disability.
Helps accessibility and search indexing
It’s so blind people who use screen readers can still enjoy the meme.
That’s awesome
Low price Sale does not exist. It’s a myth!
This year especially it feels, prices actually went up for Black Friday. They don’t even care anymore.
there’s a couple decent deals on basic laptops… that aren’t shit-tier specs, either. that’s about all i’ve seen–but then, i haven’t been “looking” either. rent keeps going up, can’t afford anything so i don’t even bother to look at ads and sales on things that aren’t absolutely essential to simply exist.
i do plan on going to wm on friday… but later in the afternoon–for a few groceries.
They care…for the money
It definitely does, I’ve already made out pretty good on a couple things but you have to know the actual price well in advance and shop outside of Amazon
Or you use a price comparison website that shows you the pricing history.
Haven’t seen this in the comments, shouldn’t this shit be illegal? Forgive me if i am being dumb
For companies “illegal” just means “make more money than the fine you’ll pay once you’re caught”.
They’ll sometimes bring in the exact same form with a different SKU/UPC so it’s technically a new product.
Also look out for weasel words like “Compare To”, “X value”, or “Special Buy” where they aren’t actually saying it’s on sale.
New items can’t be “on sale.” It is that simple. The price is the price.
If robbing a bank got you 10 million dollars, and the legal penalty for robbing a bank was a few thousand dollars, why would you choose to refrain from robbing the bank?
I’m almost certain it is
Maybe in the EU, but it’s standard practice in the US.
Nope, it’s illegal in the US. File a complaint with the FTC and they’ll look into it.
