Now that the Olympics is almost over virtually every store that sells Olympic related merchandise is trying to clear its inventory it seems. Everything from 80% off offers to some buy one get one free sort of deals. This is just like shopping after some kind of special occasion like Christmas or Halloween as everyone wants to get rid of their excess inventory.

I’m surprised for this that they didn’t try to hold it off until later since most tourists are probably still around and would be unpleasantly surprised when they see how much the items have dropped in prices. A lot clothing and general merchandise related stores usually don’t have a very flexible price protection policies either. I can’t remember the last time when I visited a different country where I would actively look for the lowest process too.

I suppose one that that people do is to just tell local friends and family members the type of gifts and souvenirs that they would like to buy and then one day they will help them buy it. So if there are better deals then the people who actually live in the area can return it. Can’t believe it is almost all over so fast too.

Recently I saw some deals on certain items that looked like they were 80% off from its regular retail price compared to other stores. Of course, I picked one up as to me this seemed like an error or that the company just doesn’t care about getting rid of it. As word got around, some people went to the store with the sole purpose of purchasing the whole inventory.

You can usually find these types of deals where stores sell certain items because of consumer demand and at the same time they don’t really focus on it as an integral part of its operations. That then made me think, if you knew that a certain item was extremely cheap and that it won’t drop in price in other stores for a long time do you actually buy more quantities as a result?

Example, let’s say you saw a great TV that you wanted that was selling for $200 where everywhere else was selling it for $1000 and probably will be for a long time. Would you actually buy say two and then figure out what to do with the other one afterwards? Or would you just buy the one for yourself?

I have a habit where if I personally know there are other people that may want it too I would purchase extra ones as a way to help them save money too. I have a circle of friends where we do that all the time as we know what we each would buy if we saw it for dirt cheap. At worst we could always sell it off to someone else or give it away as a present where the receiver will be extremely surprised.

As mentioned many times, usually when you see sale signs indicating that an item is say 50% off you still have to do your due diligence as that sale price may not be all that it seems. As many of you may know, the business Linens N’ Things has recently started a going out of business sale and stores are advertising a 10% to 30% off on all the products in the store.

I must have passed at least two of these stores here recently and they sure know how to draw a crowd with these big yellow signs plastered everywhere about them going out of business. From my experience though, this is one of the most expensive retail places there is to buy stuff. Even with the discount, from what I saw it was still more expensive than other places most of the time

Someone then just recently forwarded me this video about one of the stores in the US and it was a pretty interesting watch. Essentially, it looked like someone got lazy in the company and in the process of changing prices they simply just stuck a new price tag over the old one. That sure didn’t make them look too good. You can watch the video at

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/17851557/index.html

In all fairness, sometimes a business does have to mark up prices in order to adapt to the market condition. While that may have been the case here too, this was a great possible example I thought on how you have to be careful in not placing all your trust and judgment on those sale signs to be certain that you are getting a good value.

Today I was at the mall and saw this one store that had a limited time clearance sign plastered everywhere. It was almost as if the company had to simply liquidate everything. I did go into the store as I was thinking of buying a rolling backpack and figured that it would be a good chance to get a good deal.

At first my impression of the sale was very good as they had stacks of items outside the store such as wallets for $5 and a lot of the bags had these 70% off indicators on them. I then noticed something funny as I walked around there.

In the background they had this lopping recorded speech to inform visitors about the great limited time clearance sale on all the products such as the backpacks in the store. The funny thing was that as part of the speech it mentioned how this was a fantastic father’s day sale that shouldn’t be missed. As you know, Father’s day is already over.

I figured that maybe it was just a week long event as a result. Afterwards, one of the worker asked me if I needed any help and proceeded to tell me about the different rolling backpacks there were. He then mentioned about the price and how compared to other stores it is about $3 cheaper than any of the competition in the mall.

That just made me think how it wasn’t really a clearance sale at all in terms of what you would normally expect. Especially with signs indicating that the products were 70% off the original price. That kind of turned me off from purchasing anything. That was definitely an example I thought on how you can’t always just go by those signs to tell you if you are getting a good deal or not.