I had a really novel experience at a local hobby shop recently. This place has a huge inventory of model train goods, some of which has been there since the late medieval era. I found an older P2K geep with a price sticker of $59.98. That looked pretty tempting since it was done up in my prototype’s colors and was new. I also picked up ten envelopes of Champ decals priced at $.35 a pack. Looked to me like a total of around of $63.50 plus tax, maybe $70 total.
well, I went to the checkout and the clerk rings it up and tells me, “yeah, that’s a total of $226.50”.
“What? Must be a mistake somewhere. The geep’s sixty bucks and the decals are like $3.50”, I said.
“You got it wrong”, he replies, “Walthers charges $180 for that engine now and Champ’s last price was $3 a pack. I rang it up right.”
I kind of grimaced and shook my head. “No thanks” was about all I could say as I put my wallet away and took off. Now I’ve got a business degree from a Big Ten school and worked in the finance branch of one of America’s largest employers for 31 years, but this new marketing model is just beyond me. Maybe a guy should look for a new LHS that’s a bit more traditional in their pricing.
There’s nothing wrong with changing prices on a minute by minute basis. Most businesses just don’t go through the effort of it. You see it all the time when you’re driving past a gas station in the morning and think $3.56 huh…well I’m a bite late for work already so I’ll stop on the way home and then pow $3.65.
That’s not marketing. That’s…there’s no other way to say it: it’s against the law in most states (I say most because I don’t know for sure in all). While there’s entirely reasonable times where the shelf price is outright wrong through mistakes of the store, the store is obligated to go by the shelf price (again, in the states that I’m familiar with). But not updating the price and then just saying “oh, volatility of the market so scanned price is the real price” is not something you can legally do.
Big Ten business schools aren’t what they used to be if they’re not teaching that pricing model. When I got my MBA at Penn State in '85, that was the oldest pricing model in the book, it’s called caveat emptor, or “Whatever price the market will bear.”
He obviously mistook you for a sucker. You did the right thing by walking out. That kind of thing is illegal in many places, and unethical everywhere. A short note to your area’s AG or Consumer Advocate might cause him some grief.
Whats bad is the guy at the register was lying to you. If it is an older P2K loco, they are not selling for the claimed price. The newer upgraded Proto are improved and a totally different run under a different economic system of manufacture and in a newer packaging. What that shop guy was doing was probably illegal and certainly falsely representing his product trying to scam you.
At minimum I’d report that shop to the Better Business Bureau and certainly let everyone know what kind of chicanery they practice there or rather lying to the customer and trying to scam them. Thats bad. I hope that guy never sells anything again after the word gets out if what you say is true.
I was in a shop in Schenectady NY once and had a small version of that happen to me there. I saw an MDC Railgon gondola and knew from experience what they sold for. The guy had marked it up above it’s original MSRP by several more dollars and stated it’s what they were selling for now-a-days. Knowing that sounds similarly shady, I said no thanks. The shop was always stinking of cigar smoke and now it stunk of scam. I believe it is long shut now.
I saw something similar at the Amherst show for the past two years. Two years ago, I had just purchased a MRC Prodigy Wireless cab at a deep discount $115 on an MSRP of $185. Some guy at the show had a stack of MRC products with the words “Special Show Pricing” on it. The wireless cab had a new price tag, which was crossed out and a different price written in. The crossed out price was $225, the special price was $185. Nice!
Last January, the same guy had the same deal going, an obviously inflated price “discounted” to MSRP. In fairness, though, the pricing WAS special… Can’t argue with that.
I went to one well stock shop years ago that was owned by a guy we called “Bubba”…
Now old “Bubba” didn’t bother to change price tags on his stuff and when you checked out you paid what ever the price was on the tag.
The shop smelled of cigarette smoke and dog smell from the “welcoming dog” that would stand up on you and look you in the eye just before planting a big lick on your face.
I actually ran into a dealer at a train show whose policy was to mark the retail price on the items when he got them and when he got more at a higher price he continued to sell the first lot at his orginal price, while marking the new higher price on the second lot.
I pointed out his freight car trucks had different prices and he told me the above. He said it was a way of giving the customer a break since he was still getting his markup. Needless to say I bought the older ones first.
Wow. Particularly for that older P2K engine where you’d be paying for the “privilege” of scraping out the rock hard old lubricant which makes the oldest LifeLike P2K engines literally unoperable if they have been sitting in the packaging since first release, but also for the honor of having to change out all the geared axles due to the infamous gear cracking problem == with the days long past when LifeLike and later Walthers would exchange the wheel sets for free.
We lament the passing of the LHS but often forget that some of them are best closed.
I was in a REAL model RR shop in Portland OR last week. Already paid for my stuff, my wife spotted a pink engineers hat for our little girl. I asked how much? He said “8.99, I think” So i picked it up to buy it, the tag said 9.99 No prob, what’s a buck, and he’d said I think… But he cheerfully said “well it’s 8.99 now” And he even brought up that it’s illegal in Oregon to mark one price and charge higher. (not exactly what happened). I already planned to come back, but it was a nice gesture. She looks adorable in the hat.
I don’t know if I can reccomend a shop by name on this forum, but they’re on Division, and make my occasional 3 hour business drive a fun trip. Dan
There are two accounting methods fifo and lifo. They stand for first in first out and last in first out. Most business uses lifo for a number of reasons but in this case a marked product selling for a different price usually falls under the bait and switch laws in the state. It is illegal.
You walk into a store and see the price marked on an item- that is a legal contractual offer to sell that item at that price by the store. You selected the item and were prepared to make payment at the counter- that is a valid and legal acceptance of the price for the item by you as the other party to the contract. At that point, a legal contract is formed and is enforceable (UCC). Any change in terms subsequent (the store clerk/owner telling you the item has a different price) is an alteration of the intial contract, rendering the contract void on its face.
I would make a more serious presentation of this situation in the form of a formal complaint to your state’s business license office or secretary of state. If another shopper was tricked by this artifice, then it becomes not just a small matter but a community issue. As much as I mourn the demise of LHS’s, this would be one that could “disappear without a tear”!
Chasing away customers is a new marketing model? Nah, it’s been going on for years. Why do you think he has shelves of ancient inventory?
I’ve bought a lot of old inventory at my LHS, stuff that had probably been there since the shop’s previous owner. It was all good and there was never any question. The marked price was the price, and then he gave me a discount on top of that. At one point, I found a new item that was mis-marked, so I brought it to his attention. It works both ways sometimes.
Before I left the store, I would have said to him these words loud enough so that anyone else in the store would be sure to hear:
“You are a liar and a thief. You misrepresented a price right in your own store (it constitutes an offer of sale or a contract offer), and you stole my respect for you, such as it was at the time, when you claimed that it’s a reasonable policy. Have a great one.”
I had a similar experience at a rather famous Southern California hobby shop. They had taken in a collection of HO scale items and had it laid out on tables near the store entrance. Everything had price tags on it and the prices were invitingly good. I only had $20 bucks on me (my boss wanted to stop in on the way back from a job site), so I picked through the collection to find the best bang for my buck. I went up to make my purchases only to have the guy behind the checkout counter frown at the price tags and mumble, “These aren’t right.” He then started ringing up the sale at double to triple the tag prices. When I simply said, “No thank you,” and put my money away, the guy got all pissy and started to stomp around behind the counter. His behavior became so aggresive I decided to wait for my boss outside.
Well…if they’re going to charge current prices…then they shouldn’t be so LAZY and should remark the products with current price tags. The owner should stay late and pay a few people to stay late a few nights.
Wow… current price on old stuff? What a *nugget would do something like that? Anyone interested in a unused new Honda Jazz from 1994? I just want the current new list price for it… jeeez…