Grocery prices going up. Is some of this gouging?

[Dream Baby]

I was looking at those big green jugs of distilled water the other day.

The current price is $1.19 but the tag underneath was $.85.

That's an increase of exactly 40%!

You shouldn't use tap water for humidifiers but IMHO just use purified water.

I also realize the medical field uses a lot of distilled water.

 

[ION the Prize]

Hey, man. Supply chain.

 

[GRC]

That's what inflation will do for you...

 

[Black Sheep 214]

When wages go up, business expenses go up, shoplifting goes up, prices also go up, irrespective of other factors. The leaders at corporate and the stockholders aren’t going to pay out of their own profits, so they pass any possible increased business expenses on to the customers.🤬
Wouldn’t surprise me if some of the price increases are gouging, not necessarily at Spot, but just generally. All of the publicity about rising inflation rates seems to feed the beast and give cover for more price increases, just keeping the ball rolling…

 

[Luck]

Turns out people were right when they said paying low skill part time jobs $15/hr minimum wage would make prices go up.

 

[Tacopie]

Remember those stimulus checks? Everything in grocery went up also. We knew it was coming. No such thing as free money.

 

[FlowTeamChick]

If you do the price change task in your own area with any regularity, you've probably noticed that prices on certain things fluctuate a lot - at least, I've seen it in my area. Sometimes, the changes are small and sometimes they're pretty substantial. For a while, it seemed like the prices on all the Claritin products were changing weekly, in both directions. Saw just recently where all the products in one men's personal care line increased, then went back to the prices they were the week before, then increased again the next week to a different amount from the two weeks previous. I've stopped trying to make sense out of it.
What constitutes price gouging varies by state and generally has to do with a state of emergency being declared. So bumping up the price of bottled water by 40% (or even 10% in some states) in stores where a hurricane has hit the area would be price gouging. But a 40% increase without a state of emergency? Maybe not.
And I use regular city tap water in my humidifiers. There's some mineral build-up, but that's easy to clean with white vinegar.

 

[Dream Baby]

I guess price gouging isn't the correct term.

Target does have vendor contracts so I wonder how much of this increase is because of them or Target.

It seem most guests don't know the difference between distilled and purified because the get them confused all the time.

Like the "nursery water" we carry which is just purified not distilled.

 

[TheFrigidPenguin]

Price gouging is raising the price of an essential item during a state of emergency.

You're thinking of supply and demand during tough economic times. Prices are gonna go up.

 

[Black Sheep 214]

Might not be price gouging, since cat treats are not essentials, (although certain feline opinions may differ) but a two buck price hike on a $7.99 item seems a bit much…😾🙀

 

[dannyy315]

Yes. The rate of increase in prices and profits is significantly outpacing the increase of the consumer price index. Some of it is inflation, but a lot of it is companies taking advantage. Listen to some shareholder meetings, some outright admit it.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

It isn't a 1 to 1 comparison. It's a matter of overall profit and volume.

Some items people will pay more for, some they will not.

Will people pay 7% more for an 85 cent jug of water? Yes. Will they pay 40% more? Also yes.

Will they pay 7% more for a TV? Probably not.

Target is definitely still sticking in the collective consumer butthole but it's just *slightly* less nefarious than you think.

 

[Dream Baby]

Years ago I worked for Circuit Circuit (DOA 2009) which was like a Best Buy.

Employees could buy merchandise at cost.

Essentially their version of DCPI would show the markup.

All you had to do was flip the last two numbers.

For example is the "DCPI" ending with 08 it meant it had an 80% margin.

An USB cable at the time had that sort of margin.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

Years ago I worked for Circuit Circuit (DOA 2009) which was like a Best Buy.

Employees could buy merchandise at cost.

Essentially their version of DCPI would show the markup.

All you had to do was flip the last two numbers.

For example is the "DCPI" ending with 08 it meant it had an 80% margin.

An USB cable at the time had that sort of margin.

I also worked for CC (firedog installer representtt). Margin on some things was astronomical.

It was 100 dollars to have me program a harmony remote. It took me 10 minutes. Considering I was already there the only cost was my time, which cost them about 3 dollars. We made sooooooo much money from that.

Then they screwed me over when they "restructured" and I just started telling customers I could do it for half price but there's no support. Just program and done. 50 dollars for me, zero for circuit city.

 

[FlowTeamChick]

Used to work for a book store - substantial mark-up in that industry. Long enough ago that I don't remember percentages, but it was a lot. I've been told it's even more for jewelry, on the order of 100%.
Every industry is going to be different.

 

[Dream Baby]

I also worked for CC (firedog installer representtt). Margin on some things was astronomical.

It was 100 dollars to have me program a harmony remote. It took me 10 minutes. Considering I was already there the only cost was my time, which cost them about 3 dollars. We made sooooooo much money from that.

Then they screwed me over when they "restructured" and I just started telling customers I could do it for half price but there's no support. Just program and done. 50 dollars for me, zero for circuit city.

I believe when Circuit City took away the commission the highest earners were let go and not switched to hourly.

You got rid of the 10% of the workers that provided the 90% of the profits.

Good math there!

 

[countingsheep]

The thing is inclation is easily at 7% right now and will increase over and over for some time. The government pads their numbers by making it sem like its not bad. Theu lie conatantly about inflation rates. Economists are well aware of this. Corpoeationa are well aware of this to. Its not peice gauginf its jist the reality of a failing economy. Thats what happens when yiur government doesnt care about the rest of us

 

[JiJi]

I don't remember who I was talking to, but someone was telling me they weren't going to shop at Target anymore because prices went up.
I was like "Uhhh yeah.. Prices have been increasing everywhere, not just at Target."

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

I believe when Circuit City took away the commission the highest earners were let go and not switched to hourly.

You got rid of the 10% of the workers that provided the 90% of the profits.

Good math there!

I've written somewhere else on the forum about this. This is exactly what happened. The top earners we're axed.

I was not axed because I was a paid a reasonable hourly wage (18/hr) and they needed someone who could do both home theater and PC installs. They did remove my commission on in-home service upsales though. So where i would see about 8 dollars per average upsell, I got zero.

I sold a reasonable amount of services and I was also working at target full time overnight and taking 17 credits on top of that. I had no time for their shit which is why I just started offering the services half price unwarranted. Most of the time the customer chose to just pay me half and be done with it.

When life gives you lemons right?

 

[dcworker]

Brent oil 118 back to $4.30 soon

 

[sunnydays]

believe that when i see it