Are we being misguided and misdirected? It’s time to
look around and take note of reality versus what advertisers
tell us.
A
great example is one of the supermarket’s favorite
pitches, “Buy one, get one free.” Some of the offers
may be real good deals but you need to check them out first.
One peanut butter brand recently offered “get one free,” but
the one you bought was not only higher in cost; it was in a
new, smaller container. The ad should have read, “Buy
one smaller amount at a higher price and get an equal smaller
amount free.”
We
all know food store marketers compete for special positions
on the shelves. I’m sure some stores simply place stock
on shelves according to the size of the boxes or containers.
This is especially true in the cereal aisles, yes plural. I
visited a major grocery store a few days ago and the cereal
boxes were from the top shelf to the bottom and on two or three
end aisle displays. Yes, it’s wonderful to have such
a wide variety of cereal but beware; the boxes appear to be
the same size but they don’t have the same content.
We
had three kinds of cereal on our shelf at home alongside
each other. They all looked exactly the same but when I
read the small print content note “Net Wt.” I got a
surprise. One box was a store brand and it contained 16.4 ounces.
The second box I checked was a name brand, with the same sized
product — Mini Wheats. It was not completely full and
it contained only 15.5 ounces, it did however cost $2 more.
The third box on my shelf was a highly advertised health and
diet cereal. The content in this box was only 12.5 ounces — and
it too was very costly.
Let
me be clear, the differences in box contents are certainly
not controlled by your grocer. He simply attempts
to use
his shelf space and make a uniform presentation. My
point is; if
you just run into the store in a hurry to pick up breakfast,
you still have to read the small print if you’re
looking for a bargain.
If
you want some coffee to go with your cereal and plan to pick
up a pound — another surprise awaits. The small
one-pound bag content has now shrunk to 12 ounces. That’s
25 percent less, but here is another big surprise — the
price did not drop 25 percent.
Food
items are not the only items to watch. Printer cartridges
don’t seem to last as long as they used to. Beware when
you see the message announcing, “Ink low” or “Replace
color cartridge.” Don’t change the cartridge! My
experience is if you ignore that flashing icon, you can print
another 200 pages, equaling 20 percent of what they tell you
to expect to print. If you buy the black and color cartridges
in a twin-pack to save a buck, don’t be fooled by the
messages that say change each. Most of us know printers use
about 2-1 black over color. The bargain we think we get buying
twin-packs may be a myth; I wouldn’t be surprised
if they cut the amount of ink in the color cartridges
of twin
packs.
I
am having a really hard time understanding the reasoning
behind the new light bulb rip-off. I
read there is
a good environmental impact by use of the compact
fluorescent lamp (CFL) bulbs but
then I read they are dangerous if you break them
because of the mercury content. Isn’t that an adverse environmental
impact? What I object to when using them is they don’t
produce much light; not enough for reading or
doing any close work.
I
understand the CFL’s use less electricity but aren’t
our electric companies using coal or natural gas, or local
resources available like wind, turbo and solar? Another plus
for the CFL’s is supposed to be that they last longer.
On the minus side, I read they have caused house fires. On
many cartons of them appears the note: “Made in China” or
some other foreign country. It’s just hard for me to
trust what might be my life to something “Made in China” and
whatever happened to support “Made in
the USA?”
Last
but not least, I’ll discuss my favorite product
to pick on: toilet paper. I recently compared jumbo rolls;
one was perhaps the most popular and maybe the first-ever marketed
and the other a major brand. The old favorite rolls, advertised
as being two-ply, were not always such. The center core was
half again as big as the one I compared it to, and the paper
was loosely wrapped on the core which gave it the “softer” feel
but less paper.
The
major brand advertised to be “the thickest” weighed
more per roll, was wider, not loosely coiled
and remained thick throughout the much
smaller cored
roll. Both
sold for about
the same price.
As
I SEE IT, we have to be detectives, watchful of each item
we purchase to avoid
being “ripped off” — even
when buying a product designed to “rip
off.”