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Hidden price rises

bart on 2005-11-17T23:31:20

I don't like it how business find hidden ways to raise prices of goods, in a way that it doesn't look like a price rise at all. A realistic example is a bouquet of flowers, where suddenly you only get 9 flowers for the same price that you got 12 for, the week before. That's a price increase of 33%!

Likewise, proxis.be is an online bookstore, like Amazon but on a small, Belgian scale. I last ordered a children's book there for €12.50, two years ago, and handling and postage was free. I remember that that was the minimum amount: if you ordered for less, you had to pay some postage, 1 to 2 Euro, I think. I can understand it, in a way. Still, the threshold was low enough to be the exception, not the common case.

And now I'm looking at buying something, again. The threshold has risen: now the minimum amount is €25, that's twice as much as before, or you have to pay €2 extra for postage. That is, to have the package delivered in their outlet, not even at your home.

Now, for many of the goods they sell, the price range €12.50 to €25 is very common: the normal CD, DVD and even many novels, fall in that range.

Now you have a choice: buy more than one product at once, buy elsewhere, or pay €2 extra.

I would think that they're hoping that many people do the latter, and pay the postage. It means more money for them. But I think it stinks.

Update

bart on 2005-11-29T22:31:15

I finally made an order the other day (multiple items, what would you expect), and only then they would give me the details on with what means a customer can pay, and where they can send the package. Bad idea for an e-commerce site, if you ask me. Anyway, it turns out a few details have changed since my last order, two years ago.

First of all, they no longer solely depend on their own (more or less) distribution points where you can pick up your package. In addition, you can now get your package mailed home at no extra cost, instead. In that case, I can understand that they demand a minimum order of €25.

But I think that when they use their own distribution channels, bypassing mail, the threshold should be lower. Like I said, I strongly feel it should be possible to order a CD, a DVD or a book with no postage costs, for a price below €25, provided you pick it up at the distribution point.

Now, there's hardly any benefit to make use of Kiala, the only advantage left is that you can pay cash or with an ATM card. So I think it's not really surprising that the number of outlets has dropped considerably since last time: there's only 5 in the whole wide area of Ghent, where there used to be that many in a radius of just a few km around my house, before.