While at the supermarket today I saw a good deal on five pounds of carrot for about $1.50 with the stipulation being that it was limited to one per person. I was with other people as well and so naturally we each bought one as individual transactions. Funny enough one person brought up if that was technically allowed since many would consider us to be in the same group so to speak.

For the most part I would say a lot of businesses do this to prevent resellers from purchasing everything themselves. Therefore, I don’t see why people feel weird if they are say shopping with a friend and they literally each make separate transactions in order to capitalize on the deal to save money. There are some odd moments though as I remember one time I saw a family with like five kids who all seemed like they were under ten years old and the parents got them all to buy these cases of soda as there was a one per person limit.

I was watching an episode of Dragon’s Den recently and one pitch kind of caught my attention as essentially a former police officer had an invention that was supposed to help block the last letter of the license plate on a car from being captured by a photo radar. Therefore, even if you were caught speeding and it took a picture of your license plate, without having the last character visible they can’t issue you a ticket. He then mentioned that he got caught by the radar before too and so he thinks there are millions of people out there who would buy his invention.

My first reaction was is a former police officer really trying to make money off something like this? I think it would be the equivalent of member in a former security firm inventing bags where store alarms can’t detect them with reasoning such as people get embarrassed when they walk through those alarms and it beeps. Of course, common sense is that it would mostly attract criminals or people who are trying to steal.

That then raised some dialogue how if it isn’t illegal then you shouldn’t care as it is all about the money. There were some interesting points too such as saying it’s legal to sell things like cigarettes which kills people and so this could potentially be no difference. Heated topic when it comes to business and money for sure. I think in every angle it’s one of those things too where you can’t condemn that one item unless you condemn everything that’s like it, so to speak.

At the end of the day, regardless if a person like myself says that the item is immoral for example it ultimately comes down to the consumer where not buying it is the real way to say it should go away, so to speak.

I was having a talk with a person today where he was able to get a huge discount at a chain store because for one reason or another the company’s pricing system was not updated properly. Basically, $30 items would ring up at the cash register for about $5 only. Of course, he decided to buy a bunch and even went to different locations to do the same.

He was then saying in some ways he felt like he had robbed the store as the company must have lost a lot of money because of this error. This was interesting I thought because some would say it’s completely wrong whereas others would say you are simply taking advantage of what the business is offering.
In some ways I would say it is no different than being savvy shopper where you hunt down for certain products at particular store where on top of using coupons you would literally walk away with the item for free. I personally think it is wrong if you are specifically trying to fight for the discount when the business itself clearly recognizes that it is a pricing error where you try to use every technicality in the world to get it after.

Example, if you bought five of those items and they offer to sell you one at the incorrect price then that is usually satisfactory I would say. Trying to push it further is just a little too greedy I think even if you do save a lot. Kind of reminds me in like cartoons where people forget to write a “One free item per customer” clause and then you see this guy trying to get like a thousand free products which puts the company out of business.

Anyone else read that news today? I was just browsing around some news site and apparently there is a lady who was using Google maps as her directional guide and ended up getting hit by a car as the route wasn’t what she expected. You can read the article at http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/05/29/if-google-told-you-to-jump-off-a-cliff-would-you/ .

The main thing that this made me think about is the lawyers and how they are probably making a lot of money with what I think shouldn’t even be a case at all. It’s almost like trying to create an issue for the sake of keeping your business afloat in many ways I think . Kind of like a company claiming that you need their special pill product to protect you. Basically you are creating a market for yourself.

Some may argue where that is the foundation of most businesses anyways where the bottom line is profits and trying to convince people to buy into things that they don’t necessarily need or would be appropriate.

I’ve discussed about this topic many times with people and today I was listening to a rather awkward conversation of a person that makes great money selling tickets to his motivational seminars. Basically, everything was outlined on why he makes so much money from these and the business reasons behind it. For example, he knew that most people that buy your products and kits at the those conventions will do absolutely nothing with it and so it is almost a pure profit type of thing.

There was even then a “psychic” that openly admitted to just spewing out random happenings for people who were looking for some answers and saying how if people are that gullible enough to pay him money to do so then that is a business that he shouldn’t ignore. The main justification was that what they do is no different than people spending money on like a movie as they go there for an escape of sort.

The main part of that business that I am personally not too fond of are those that use belittling tactics to get money from people. Example, it’s like that convention I went to awhile back out of curiosity where I was definitely one of the people who was not in debt but the speaker kept trying to insist that everyone in that room had things like major credit card debt and therefore needed his products. A little devious in my view.

Is it admirable that they found a sustainable way to generate a profit or would you condemn someone for it? It’s almost like a debate on how some magicians openly say that what they do is purely for entertainment using tricks whereas some actually try to seriously claim and make you believe that they have super natural powers. I guess like that if the second person was asking for money I wouldn’t be too fond of it.