Sales: Why wait?

Well do you shop for fashion items regardless or do you wait for the sales? Me I don’t like being ripped off by companies, so I wait for the sales.

Today I’ve got a fabulous example of why. This has been bugging me all year. It started during the January sales, when I had my wish list set up and was watching certain items of interest. No big deal you say….. Well you should try it sometime!   You’ll be amazed at what goes on.  It was real eye opener for me.

What you’ll see is price fluctuations depending on the popularity of the item, remember the good old days when an item was marked down, it either stayed there or was lowered some more to shift it? Those days are gone I think. I watched items drop to the sale price and then, if they sold well, shoot back up to near the original price.

Say for example the item was €65, dropped to €30 in the sale, sells well and shoots back to €50 in a matter of days. Sometimes it may even end up as the €65 in the sale with the original price going up to something like €75 – 80.   Are you feeling ripped off yet?

Here’s my next example. I purchased a dress for my daughter. On the retailer website it is valued at €93.75, I bought it on sale and I’m happy with the price I paid for it €28.  Beloved is the brand not where I bought it.

So what is my problem? I hear you ask. The Retailers marketing strategy! That’s what.

The dress arrived from the UK depot. Lots of price stickers, obviously the euro tag is on top with the sale price, ok that’s fine. So I peel that label off and the blank one under it to reveal the UK reduced price of £22.50, which is fine too, that’s a fair enough conversion. But, there is another label under that which, after peeling off the next two reveals the original UK price of the dress to be £52.50. No more stickers under that.  So that leads us to believe that is the original shop price.  I have looked on the UK site and found that they are charging £75.  I don't think staff bother to remove the original tags do you?

Now no conversion rate even with that added extra that you expect would convert that £52.50 to €93.75 would it.

So the next time you are out shopping, remember this. The reason the UK price is removed from the original label is because you are being ripped off by that particular retailer.

Why the sales are good, I walked into Oasis the other week and bought a dress in the sale for €6 the tag said the original price was €84.  Now that WAS a Bargain!