Greg wrote:
>My consumer quaulifications have been called into
>question.
Not yours specifically, but men's in general. I think we can make this distinction. Your wife may not know these things, but I'll bet many more wives than husbands do. Anyone want to commission a survey?
> With regard to stickers on priced items, we
>have in NY, or maybe it's even at the county levels,
>rules opposed by the markets, which require price
>stickies. It is a rule often honored in the breach.
>But in any case there are plenty of stickies around.
Really?? I just moved from Syracuse and it was rare that I ever found stickies, not even in an IGA. Did they recently pass this law? I thought they took care of this with the laws about clearly shelf marking prices? And then there was that proactive little policy at the Price Chopper: "If you find that you've been charged differently than the price marked on the shelf, we'll give you the item for free AND give you a buck" Now that made it worth the effort to shop and try to find these bargains.
Now, I'm in the wonderful state of Florida where the wonders of Wegman's (do you have a Wegman's yet Greg? If not, you must lobby for one. They are a joyous experience. The benchmark for supermarkets. Price Chopper is trying, but Wegmans can't be beat. Why when they installed one in Ithaca a few years ago, it actually became a pick up joint--the open style European fruit and veggie section and bakery with all those hearty erotic aromas was the most popular.) And by the way, isn't it funny that SUPERmarkets were once counterposed to grocery stores like the good ol' IGAs.) Anyway, here there are no such laws and they don't even have the requirement that the per oz/per gallon compartive price must be displayed. This is a tragedy for bargain hunters. I miss Wegman's terribly.
And Paula, those buy one get one free weeks are simply mahvalous dahlink. In New York they were even better because the price wars meant that there were double coupons, too. Once I had so many boxes of hamburger helper, laundry detergent and the like that I just *had* to build an addition. Though it is true that P&G banned coupons from distribution in the Central New York area once because the shoppers there were known to be such tightwads that they were loosing way too much money. We sued 'em though and got a three dollar coupon in the Sunday paper for *anything* we wanted--except smokes and booze of course.
>Second, though I do go to the occasional Wal Mart's, I
>basically shop at the generic mega suburban
>supermarkets, which are mega but not as mega as Wal
>Mart's, in which I get lost.
How can one get lost in a Walmart. They are the same each and everyone of them. Well pretty much. I mean you walk in to find the boys/men's section on the left. To the right front, women's. Behind that women's undies and accessories. In the middle is Electronics Square, bordered by baggies, garbage bags; magazines; paper products. Health and Beauty/drugs are always adjacent to the check out. Etc.
The constantly shifting to keep up with the Walmart Benchmark K-Mart, otoh, is *never* the same.
>It may be dumb to
>patronize such places but if it is I have plenty of
>company. In fact Wal Mart's now realizes that people
>getting lost in the immensity of all this crap deters
>customers, and they are planning to open mini stores.
>About the size of a supermarket.
Isn't that amazing. Well it just won't be the same, I say.
>But the main point in detecting price increases is
>consistency. If you consistently shop in mostly the
>same places, then you catch the upward drift, though I
>think I was the only person in the world who noticed
>the great olive oil price spike last year, over $20 for
>the 3 litre packages.
Gad, I thought you were talking *olive* prices and I was trying to figure out why you were buying 3 ltrs of olives at a time. Martini anyone?
> But it nonetheless is the case
>that if one consistently shops at the small high priced
>stores (of which there are few in the burbs, save at
>Stewart's, our equivalent of 7-11), then one goes from
>one exaggerated price to an even higher price.
Yes, though I've found milk to be lower priced at these 7-11's. Loss Leader logic again.
>As for the price of labor, my hourly wage is higher
>than that of the various local outfits that come around
>and do lawns and leaves and such, but I do it myself,
>because I can't always get someone to pay me at
>inflated professor rates and a $250/mo lawn service
>contract adds up fast. So I harvest my own biomass, on
>the order of about two to three tons a year, according
>to crude estimates.
Shucks. You do the lawn *and* the shopping too. Gad your wife is a lucky gal. Any brothers? Sisters?
>Right now I'm
>interested in contrary indicators, and mustard and
>relish (separate, not combined, I would never trust
>someone else with the ratio) are on the list.
See now this is where I assumed you couldn't be much of a shopper or Man-About-The_Kitchen: Hotdog relish is a mix of mustard and relish. Relish is just plain relish. And the cheap mustard thing--what other kind is there? And really, is it necessary to buy white wine dijon with dill grown in the fields of Tuscany or somesuch. Honestly.
>So I repeat, that if people want to send their price
>hikes to me at my email address (not the list) I will
>put them all together and post them back in due time.
>For laffs.
Well I would have been a great informant, but see I just moved from NY to FL and I'm adjusting to the change in prices from one region to the next. Milk is *much* more expensive. And cheese, too. Is it possible to get good cheese in Florida without spending $10.00 a pound? Now I know why my dad made me ship NY sharp cheddar cheese to him every so often. But, I about died when I saw that I could buy a mango for 50 cents instead of 3 bucks. In any event, I haven't really noticed a big shift in prices up or down, though I do think, again, that meat prices have shot down quite a bit. That *may* be an artefact of living in Florida, but I think I read or heard that meat prices are lower.
SnitgrrRl, Academic *and* smart shopper