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.
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IMO, if there’s no price tags, that means haggling is on the table. Me and the cashier are going to have a discussion about how much this doodad should cost.
If the cashier is also the owner, that might even work!
This is actually how im gonna approach this moving forward. Love it
LOL…upvote this…
Ask 30 questions, and walk out without buying anything. The owner will quickly realise the value of those price tags.
I would but I value my time. They’re gonna have to learn from someone else. Next time I need thread, I’ll drive to the suburbs and see if the stores out there are better.
Or just steal some stuff.
Fortunately there are pretty strict laws about displaying pricing here because that sounds really annoying.
I’ve never seen this either. I suppose it’s from the US, where, typically, the end-consumer has no real rights anyway in most corners of the country (apart from getting cancer in California).
Pffff, what do you need those rights for, anyway? You have the freedom to choose any store you like in the marketplace. So don’t try to infringe on the store owner’s freedom to not have to display prices, you freedom hating commie! /s
The only places I’ve seen this are boutique stores selling designer brands, where you probably shouldn’t be shopping if you need to see the price.
No price tag? That must mean IT’S FREE, RIGHT?
HUAHUAHUAHUAI was in a clothing store, saw a nice shirt with a handwritten price tag that read $15. I asked, if the shirt was indeed just 15 dollars; "ah, no, that’s the in price, the shirt is $250.
What is an “in price”?
The price the store pays.
Thank you
Having worked in retail, I hate you and everyone like you
Actually, it’s priceless.
Go away, Dad
No, no, he has a point.
Why are you going there. I turn around and am gone if things are not priced. I mean like a renfair stall with blacksmith I can forgive. Heck its all part of the experience. But like a normal shop. pass. heck if something I intend to buy is not labled at the grocery store I won’t buy it. Ill stop somewhere else to pick it up on the way home.
I generally agree with you. I didn’t know until I got there. In this case I made a point of going there to get some thread and there were like 3 kinds that I cared about so I just asked about those items and bought what I needed. It would have been a pain in the ass to leave and drive to another store. But they missed out on me making any additional impulse purchases and I will not return.
Same with web sites. If I’m looking for something online and prices aren’t listed I’m out.
Are there consumer sites like this? Feel like this mostly happens when it’s business customers.
I come across them occasionally. They try to force you to create an account and log in to see pricing and bullshit like that.
No tag? Not for sale, then.
I see this as an issue of trust and reputability. Typically, items will have a UPC printed on them, a tag with a price on it, or in an area with a posted price. If I don’t see any of those, and especially if it is on something not easily found on the internet, then I see no way to know if what I am holding is worth what I am willing to spend on it. And more importantly, if the person at the register is ripping me off or not.
If the purse I pick up does not have anything on it that indicates it could be $500+, then I’m wasting my time by hunting someone down to give me a price check. This is especially true with designers that have low, mid, and top tier products, ranging from maybe $100-$3000+.
I’ve only encountered “no price tag” shops a few times. And each time, I’ve walked out.
Whether inefficient, lazy, or pretentious, it’s an insult to consumers.
The implication is “if you’re too poor to risk spending dozens or potentially hundreds of dollars on an overpriced niknak, then you’re too poor to shop here.”
Yeah. It feels needlessly antagonistic. I don’t think that’s the intention but 🤷🏾
The intention is that they can fool careless shoppers into putting things in their baskets without thinking about prices (or feeling inhibited by them), and then by the time they get to the checkout counter they’d feel too embarrassed to put items back or they already feel to attached to them.
The thing is, that clearly only works on people with enough expendable income to A), put things in their basket without knowing the price; and B), go ahead and buy it anyway just to save face when you get to the counter and find out how overpriced it is.
For anyone with less wealth, it would either create a very embarrassing situation for them when they get to the checkout counter and find out they can’t afford their stuff, or they’d simply not put anything in their basket anyway without knowing how much it costs (which would require asking someone, and people at these kinds of stores tend be very pretentious and act like you’re being rude when you ask about the price of something; as if if price matters at all to you then you don’t deserve to be there).
In other words, it’s to keep poor people out while bamboozling moderately wealthy people out of their money.
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”.
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?
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….?
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
Whoops, I brought an extra 25 items to the register that I might want.
What’s the price on that? Oh, nevermind. You can put that back. And the next one? Oh, I’m sorry. That’s too much. You can put that back too.
I’ve worked very high-end retail, and the only reason a customer would ever have to ask the price is if they were too vain to wear glasses so they could read the labels. Having done labeling, I can see that it would take a lot of time to hang tags on individual skeins of thread, but surely at least the peg they hang from could have a label. How does the person at the register know the prices, do they have everything memorized? Or is there a code label already on the item? If so is there a way you or your phone could decode that? Or could they hand you a scanner to use? Seems like they ought to be able to explain it, or demonstrate that they aren’t just making up the prices based on the shopper’s appearance. Most vendors even print the MSRP, so that shop might be removing them and upcharging.
What a stupid way to turn what could be a pleasant artistic introspective shopping experience into a stressful one. And I’m sure it cuts their sales because not only would I (politely) have them take back the $75 magnet before I paid, but also on any further visits I would stop myself from even touching anything other than the list I came in for, and they’d miss selling items which I might have impulse-purchased if I’d seen they were priced within reason.
How does the person at the register know the prices?
That’s the funny part. They don’t.
When I asked about the price of the thread, she had to look it up on the ipad. There were like 3 main brands and for one of them it took a decent amount of time, like 2-3 minutes to hunt it down. It’s kinda wild because it’s a tiny store with only 2 walls for display or shelves and the thread takes up one entire wall.
Oh that’s hilarious actually! So they’re just really really bad at running a store. They’re wasting more effort and time than it would take to label every item, starting from scratch. God forbid they would ever have to deal with multiple customers asking prices. You and a few friends could come in separately but all around the same time and just ask for price after price… Did they have any rationale for why they don’t show their prices?
I didn’t ask why so IDK their rationale. I suspect that they are just inconsiderate.
Agreed.
You know when you’re a little kid and you think, “I’m gonna have a pet shop so I can keep all the pets” because you don’t really grasp the selling part? I’m getting the vibe of “I’m gonna have a needlepoint shop so I can have all the pretty threads and stuff.”
It’s giving “my wealthy spouse funded this business to keep me busy even though I’ve never even worked a retail job before.”
Like it doesn’t do enough business to be a money laundering front so ???
I’m thinking tax write-off rather than money laundry
I thought that meant you couldn’t afford anything.
Dont waste your time ,just leave the shop
I already went there to get a few specific skeins of thread so leaving would have also been a waste of time. But I won’t return.
One thing I really like in Asia is probably half of food places have signs outside with the prices or a menu or an app. No sitting down, looking at the menu and realizing you fucked up. It’s more important when a meal can cost between 1 and 100 USD.
