Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
A Deceitful Salesmanship
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it. - Oscar Wilde
In these trying times, even OFWs penny pinch to save more to bring back home, so do we. My wife’s “radar” is always on the lookout for the cheapest stuff we need to put more premium on our hard-earned money.
Yesterday my wife heard that Danube, a mall-cum-supermarket, advertised a promotional sale. We never shop there except to bring our daughter to enjoy the rides in its amusement park. But since its on “sale”, we went there anyway and proceed directly to its Promo Section.
What caught my eye are stacks of 6-pack beer in one corner. The bold sign says “buy 1 + 1, SR11.50”. That’s cheap. Doing some math, each bottle cost less than 1 riyal considering each beer cost SR2 up to SR2.50 tops depending on the brand. I took two 6-packs and proceeded to the check-out counter. I unload the beers last because it’s the heaviest among the goods we bought. When it was scanned, it registered SR16.95. Whoa! I told the cashier to scan it again and the price is the same. I complained to the supervisor and he went to see where I got the beer, when he came back, his tagging a “kabayan” along. The “kabayan” explained I took a “Holsten” brand which cost more. What is he talking about? Even if that brand cost SR2.50 each, that’s still SR1.95 less than what they are charging me. Besides that, the sign says “buy 1+1, SR11.50”. No mention at all about “Holsten” cost SR16.95 or “Barbican” cost SR.11.50. Pissed, I returned the beers and went home.
At home while unpacking and storing the items we bought, my wife did a review of the sales receipt. She told me they cheated us on another item. The “Fairy” dishwashing liquid was on sale for SR.7.95 but they charge us SR.9, its regular price. I looked at their ads again and true enough; the Fairy was on sale but the white one. My wife took the yellow one. What is deceitful was my wife took it from the Promo Section where all the products are supposed to be on sale. I told her to forget it. I’m not going back to that place again.
I don’t mind if businesses apply selling techniques to attract more customer. But to put up perplexing ads in order to confuse consumer is tantamount to cheating.
In these trying times, even OFWs penny pinch to save more to bring back home, so do we. My wife’s “radar” is always on the lookout for the cheapest stuff we need to put more premium on our hard-earned money.
Yesterday my wife heard that Danube, a mall-cum-supermarket, advertised a promotional sale. We never shop there except to bring our daughter to enjoy the rides in its amusement park. But since its on “sale”, we went there anyway and proceed directly to its Promo Section.
What caught my eye are stacks of 6-pack beer in one corner. The bold sign says “buy 1 + 1, SR11.50”. That’s cheap. Doing some math, each bottle cost less than 1 riyal considering each beer cost SR2 up to SR2.50 tops depending on the brand. I took two 6-packs and proceeded to the check-out counter. I unload the beers last because it’s the heaviest among the goods we bought. When it was scanned, it registered SR16.95. Whoa! I told the cashier to scan it again and the price is the same. I complained to the supervisor and he went to see where I got the beer, when he came back, his tagging a “kabayan” along. The “kabayan” explained I took a “Holsten” brand which cost more. What is he talking about? Even if that brand cost SR2.50 each, that’s still SR1.95 less than what they are charging me. Besides that, the sign says “buy 1+1, SR11.50”. No mention at all about “Holsten” cost SR16.95 or “Barbican” cost SR.11.50. Pissed, I returned the beers and went home.
At home while unpacking and storing the items we bought, my wife did a review of the sales receipt. She told me they cheated us on another item. The “Fairy” dishwashing liquid was on sale for SR.7.95 but they charge us SR.9, its regular price. I looked at their ads again and true enough; the Fairy was on sale but the white one. My wife took the yellow one. What is deceitful was my wife took it from the Promo Section where all the products are supposed to be on sale. I told her to forget it. I’m not going back to that place again.
I don’t mind if businesses apply selling techniques to attract more customer. But to put up perplexing ads in order to confuse consumer is tantamount to cheating.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Tag! Your “It”
I was tag by a fellow blogger and OFW, witsandnuts, and I apologized to her if it took me this long to answer it. Anyway the rules are:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag as many people you want.
I have the urge to ransack my bookshelf for a “deep thinking” book but that would be cheating. So, since the nearest book within my reach is a technical one, sorry if this may sound mambo-jumbo to you.
Book: Network Programming in C by Barry Nance
The first thing to note is that the high-level call fopen() is not generally LAN-aware, and does not provide a means for indicating sharing mode and access mode. At any rate, avoid using fopen() in your LAN-aware applications; it does not give you enough control over the different file-sharing modes. Use the open(), _open() or sopen() calls instead, as outlined in the following sections.
I’ll pass muna in tagging others.
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag as many people you want.
I have the urge to ransack my bookshelf for a “deep thinking” book but that would be cheating. So, since the nearest book within my reach is a technical one, sorry if this may sound mambo-jumbo to you.
Book: Network Programming in C by Barry Nance
The first thing to note is that the high-level call fopen() is not generally LAN-aware, and does not provide a means for indicating sharing mode and access mode. At any rate, avoid using fopen() in your LAN-aware applications; it does not give you enough control over the different file-sharing modes. Use the open(), _open() or sopen() calls instead, as outlined in the following sections.
I’ll pass muna in tagging others.
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