I think it’s so obnoxious when I go into a little shop and nothing has a price tag. I hate it with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. Are you seriously gonna make me ask you about the price of every little thing I might consider purchasing? Or would you prefer that I bring a bunch of stuff to the register and then decide if I actually want it as you ring it up? And it honestly doesn’t matter if I can afford it (although the lack of clearly labeled prices are particularly rude to people who maybe can’t). No matter how much money I have I will never feel good about getting ripped off so the asking price will always be a factor.
I was recently in a local needlepoint supply store where they had nothing labeled. Needlepoint supplies vary wildly in price. You can get thread for a dollar or for $20. Canvases can cost 5 bucks or hundreds. From their website I saw that this store had needle minders (little decorative magnets to hold your needle when you take a break, they usually look like enamel pins but with magnets instead of the pin and clasp). Well they had $7 needle minders and $75 needle minders. So someone will wander in and see a cute 1 inch Snoopy magnet, think it’s a cute impulse purchase and then get hit with $75 + tax and have to either smile and go along with it or have to back out. It’s just a piss poor customer experience.
In some of these stores “if you need to ask you can’t afford it”, but in your expample that certainly doesn’t apply lol.
Kinda the same story with only giving the price before taxes in the US, why would you not just tell your customer up front what they actually need to pay? Making price labels isn’t actually hard, you don’t need to have them shipped from the national headquarters.
Granted, I’ve never experienced either. At most, some stores are sloppy and don’t label all of their items.
Yeah, when I shopped for embroidery stuff in Paris everything was clearly labeled with the actual full price because France is a real country with laws. So if a historical embroidery shop in Paris can do it then this neighborhood shop in Seattle can fuck right off.
Which shop? My partner does some embroidery, and it’d be good to know what to avoid.
Heirloom Designs. FWIW they do have nice stuff. But I can’t abide the price tag thing.
ETA the delightful place is Paris is Maison Sajou and they’re over 180 years old. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in Paris.
Shit, I guess they really are Seattle’s only needlepoint shop, which must be why they feel they’re able to get away with that shit.
I think they’re the only Seattle shop with high end needlepoint fibers and hand painted canvases. You can definitely get Anchor or DMC and various notions at Stitches or Acorn Street but the silk and merino fiber (thread? Floss?) is pretty niche. But I don’t want to totally beat on them cuz even if they have some annoying properties, they are still a small local business trying to foster local crafting and fiber arts.
I’ve sewn, knitted, crocheted, cross stitched and embroidered on and off my whole life and only just recently learned that needle point was its own separate thing and as I poke around it feels like a weird elitist corner of the fiber world. I saw someone comment once that they would love to get into it but it’s so expensive and I was confused because DMC floss is like 75 cents a skein and needles are like a few bucks. But some needlepoint stuff is like crazy expensive. Like I saw a series of videos on TickTock where people were making needlepoint brick covers, which is some kind of traditional thing where you encase a brick in needlepoint and then use it as a doorstop, and I thought it looked cute and fun and thought I might try it but when I looked up brick cover patterns they were like $150!!! Like WTF. You still have to get all the thread and stitch it. But I guess the canvases are often hand painted so there is a lot of labor. But still.
My local needlepoint/yarn store felt so snobby. I went in because I’d picked up cross-stitch and thought maybe they’d have something in that area. Nope. Totally different, wouldn’t even give me the time of day or explain the differences.
Anyways, joke’s on them. I’m an accomplished knitter with an expensive yarn habit and never went back. A year later the store closed. Rumor has it the owner retired, but I know the truth /conspiracy
I think there might be cross stitch beef because I saw this thing on TicTok where needle point people were arguing that stitch counting is theft?!? Overall it seems like needlepoint might be kinda low on the DIY scale for a crafting community. Like most people seem to only work from pre purchased hand painted canvases and they don’t sew so they send the completed needlework out for “finishing”.
Stitch counting is theft? That sounds ridiculous to me, someone who only does counted cross stitch (patterns printed onto the canvas or aids stress me because sometimes they can show through, or maybe there’s a judgement call on if a stich is to the left or right. Plus, counting is fun and it’s what I’m used to from knitting.)
Is the argument that you could make multiple copies of a object from one pattern? I do that in sewing, and knitting, why not in embroidery?
you can thank corporations for this one – in several states it is actually illegal to show the full price
Holy shit!
Price before taxes in the US is because a lot of products have the price already printed on them, and are sold in many locations with many different tax codes. I live in Los Angeles where the total is 9.75% but often shop in Santa Monica where it’s 10.75% for instance. If I buy a Hallmark card, from a company based in Kansas City Missouri (which apparently has several different rates because of tax overlay zones and counties but it’s about 9.95% ish) it will have a price printed on the back which doesn’t include any taxes. As a shopper I can still easily compare it to the price of a Papyrus card (owned by American Greetings, based in Westlake OH , total sales tax 8.00%) on the next shelf. I get a ballpark figure adding 10% and rounding. If I buy a soda there will also be a recycling deposit, which also goes to the state not the store. If I buy food, the register knows not to add any tax, unless it’s hot and prepared. (Getting fairness for poor people using SNAP to buy a rotisserie chicken is a whole separate discussion!)
The store can program the register once when they need to change the percentages of federal, state, county and city taxes it will add to all the items, or to various categories of items. They won’t have to relabel everything in the store if we pass another ½ cent/dollar to fund homeless shelters. The shop owner keeps none of the money and the register calculation makes their payment of those taxes practically automatic.
Printing prices on the item seems like a dumb idea when you’re doing business in a country where two cities in the same state might have different sales taxes. My country has no regional sales tax variations and still doesn’t do this.
Since the price on the package (or advertised online and on TV) is for the item alone, it stays the same regardless of the tax. This enables people to bitch about the separate amount going to the government with greater precision. At the moment, my Republican customers can bitch about the percentage going to “immigrants and homeless” while my Democratic customers can bitch about the amount going to “genocide in the Middle East.” Add in tariffs and now they’re still mad about the high cost but they’re not mad at me.
It prevents stores from charging whatever they want…
Do you just not care about thinking about this beyond just how inconvenienced you are by doing some rather simple mental math….?
In some cases, this maybe makes sense, because some purchasers are exempt from sales tax in some circumstances.
I’ve had tax exemptions in other countries. They can remove the tax at the register.
They slso can show both prices on the price tag
In our stores that would make 4 different prices on the tag.
I’m sure you can understand why that’s not a great idea?
I answered the other person below, 4 prices at different sizes and boldness is absoultely not an issue here. I find it a great idea.
So… how does a person know which one is for them…? Is the bold for me? For you? For the foreigner that’s exempt? Why are ther so many different price options? Sir! Can you tell me how much this item costs. Okay, now this one. Okay thanks for your time, there is a Lineup of people with the same question.
And what price would the weight price be? Pre tax or post tax? Or does it need to do each and now you have a dozen prices.
What a dumb idea. lol.
Ok, the normal price is the bold big one, say 2.40$ for this 5 kg of flour. Then you have a slash 2.00$ written with no bold. People eligible to have that price will know this applies to them.
Below the two there are respectively 0.48 $/kg and 0.40 $/kg written, so you know that is by weight.
All prices post fucking taxes ya dumb mmuricans lol
Seriously it ain’t fucking rocket science, even dumb people are not that fucking dumb. It works here, in real life, it can work where you are, you lot are different but not another species mate
You suggest that they show pre and post tax, than call someone dumb for asking how they would do so…? And saying it would be post tax only….?
Yeah you’re the textbook reason why this system would never work. You can’t even finish describing it without confusing yourself and resorting to insulting people.
How many different prices are going to be on the tag? Including weight pricing that’s now 3-4 completely different prices for the same identical item on a single tag.
Because that’s not gonna be confusing lol. Seriously, do you not think about this other than wanting life simpler for yourself? There’s countless other people than you, and some are pretty damn dumb, think about others maybe too?
You write a big bold price with the most used one, then less bold the lesser used one. In small below the weight pricing.
Stores here do this, it is not an issue.
Dumb people are gonne be dumb regardless of what is written on the tag.
That still doesn’t make sense. This is going to be a small minority, let them do the math.
So you want to make minorities life’s harder to make yours easier…?
Wow, that’s a pretty selfish take.
My wife is exempt from paying GST, so to include it in the pricing would make it incorrect. She would need to pay pst though if applicable.
Things are more nuanced than it seems.
Not everything has pst, gst and/or hst added to its price either. It’s also easier to enter into your taxes when it’s a number on your receipt instead of rolled into a single price.
I’m not tipping food with gst/pst included, so there’s plenty of situations where it being automatically included doesn’t make sense either.
That’s not how it works if the store or lawmakers aren’t deliberately being idiots about it. It would be easy to treat it like a rebate at the cashier and lower the end price by whatever amount the sales tax is. Just as easy as calculating the sales tax and adding it at the cashier, except now >95% of customers have to do the calculation on their own if they don’t want surprises.
Where I come from, tips are always voluntary and above a certain price many tend to tip a flat amount that’s independent of the food price.
Removing 5% of $105 isn’t the same as adding 5% to $100.
That’s not how math works.
Tips are voluntary, on the cost of the meal, not the added taxes. I’m not tipping taxes lol. It’s normally a percentage of the cost of a meal, to tip $10 for a $20 is fine, but to tip that same amount on a $200 bill would just be insulting.
And why would taxes be a surprise? You’re taught about them in school since they’re a part of your everyday life. It’s not hard to do some mental math and add percentages, the inverse is orders harder.
Yeah you divide it by 1.05 rather than multiplying it by 1.05
That said, something costing less than the sticker price for a small number of people is better than it costing more for the vast majority of people
Okay, now add in multiple taxes, which one gets removed first so it squares up? You’re ignoring reality to make a simple example. I bought some clothing too, there’s no tax at all on that, so you can’t just remove it from the final sales price. Now it doesn’t square up. Whoops…. Maybe there’s a reason we don’t do that….?
Yes, minorities, they are exempt, natives specifially as well. You want to discriminate against minorities and natives? Just so you don’t need to do some simple mental math…?
Maybe the situation here is different which is why we are different…?
Shocker eh?
People who barely speak the language and you want to try and explain complex taxes and exemptions and why the price is different for them? They’re a foreigner, could even be a refugees. But fuck them…? When you should understand since you were taught? Please make it make sense lol.
All anyone around here hears is how selfish and lazy you want to be when the reason is “simpler for me”. Think of others, especially ones that would have their life’s significantly impacted by a selfish thing like this.
Why do you insist that it’s not possible to substract the sales tax at the cashier? You need to substract something like 4.76% instead of adding 5%, but cashiers literally sit in front of a calculating machine that could do this with the press of one button.
I never said it wasn’t possible, but you just described the issue. So now people are thinking the tax is only 4.76% instead of 5? You’re adding layers of confusion. And what amount do I add to my tax reporting so I can recover that amount? You are saying I need to go through every receipt and remove 4.76% and input it, instead of just moving a number from the tax line over. Because the simple thing is to actually add it to the final cost, so it’s not confusing and than the listed price isn’t “false” since taxes are separate from the price of goods.
And removing 4.76 isn’t easy, you said they were the same. Can you acknowledge that’s pure bullshit atleast? You want to make everyone’s life far more difficult, just to avoid some mental math?
How does your taxes work with gst? No way to claim any and recover? How does that work without a listed price on the receipt?
Taxes were only ever supposed to be a temporary war thing, the way you’ve adopted it, makes that no longer the case. And ours has changed a few times over the years, so it’s not just as simple as you think it is.