Pricing trickery

[TheSnugHare]

4 years ago, I bought a Winnie the Pooh box set for £30 new on Amazon it was heavily discounted from £150. Even on the actual box, it says it cost £150. I thought I was getting a steal. But even to this day, on numerous websites it is selling for about £30. I haven’t seen it for sale anywhere for its original price. I am wondering if it was ever actually sold for £150 or if it was for a very short time. I have remembered this because I have fallen for this trick again just today with another set which I bought as a Christmas gift and thought I was getting a steal. The set was originally new a couple of years ago and is no longer selling what it did then. I thought I was getting a steal because it was half price and the place I bought it from said it was worth what it was originally but I only found out it wasn’t really afterwards

Depends how it is marketed. Rrp is not a verified price point but if advertised as a discount on a previous sold price the details of when that price last applied should be included.

Of the product is available on amazon, there is a website called camelcamelcamel that tracks the price over time. It is not perfect because Amazon often overcharges for certain things, but it can give you a sense of the price trend.

Do you mean books?
If noticed the RRP is often the sum of the individual books. But the set costs a lot less.

If it was priced at £30 and you were happy to pay £30 then what's the problem?

The clothing chain I once worked for had stores in shopping centres and busy high streets across the UK.

They also had one store in a small town with only 5000 residents. All new stock arrived at that store before any of the others and was put on sale at high prices.

No one bought the stock at that price, so after a short time, the items were reduced.

The other stores across the whole chain then received their deliveries of the same stock, and they discounted it as soon as it came in, because it had legitimately been on sale at the higher price.

But in my view it was a scam, because no one would have paid the original price. I can’t imagine many people would have bought the box set for £150 either.

@BanksysSprayCan - which chain?
everyone will be wondering

That’s what I was meaning to say. I thought it was worth something it wasn’t which was one of the reasons I bought the set. Can’t see how it was worth that much ever. I think this is some kind of trickery that shouldn’t be allowed

You need to get in the habit of ignoring the idea of "getting a bargain", or magically acquiring something worth more but paying less.

It doesn't really exist. You can get lucky with pricing if something genuinely is the last of an old range, or is in a very odd size etc but these are rare situations. If it really was worth more - they'd be selling it at the higher price to people willing to pay it.

Look at the product and at the price offered right now - are you happy with that. On its own. Not "well I'm happy paying £30 for something because I've told myself it's worth more". Just... is that product something you are happy to pay that price for.

Hang on to it, it could be worth a fortune.

If that's the Adult Size Winnie the Pooh 'dressing up' boxset complete with vibrating Honey Pot, you can't buy those for love nor money outside of Japan.
(So I'm reliably told.)

I agree, it is really misleading, and this particular trick is only open to larger chain stores. If I see a good price reduction at an independent retailer, IMO it is more likely to be genuine.

There's a lot of that sort of thing out there. What they're saying is if you bought all the books at top price separately, then it would be £150. But very few people would do that, if any. In any set there's always the one no one bothers to buy.
And there's also that most of the books are probably available cheaper too.

I thought this was going to be about Amazon Prime. I was looking at something with a friend. It cost £159 and free delivery for 5 days time or I could pay £4.99 and have delivery the next day.
My friend said to me that he was on Prime, so could order it for me and get free next day delivery. And so it seemed on his page that he was signed in on.
Only thing was on his page it was free next day delivery, but the cost of the (same) item was £163.99 ie they'd just for the Prime account holders added the £4.99 already.
I'd say that was a worse offer, because I could choose to pay less and get it slightly later. he didn't have that option.