Implying A Discount To Get A Sale
Business

Implying A Discount To Get A Sale

I saw these two people competing for the rights to sell an item where the person would get paid a percentage of the final sale price. Imagine it is like someone wanting to sell his business and so he wants to hire someone to sell it for him. It is a pretty large dollar amount too and so you can imagine people saying anything to win the rights.

This was the funny part I thought. Basically, people would have to pitch on why they are the best person for the job and their fees. The owner is a pretty stingy person too who usually just wants the cheapest option available. One person just mentioned what his flat rate was which sounded pretty normal. Then, the other person’s rate was the same figure. However, he had an interesting twist where he said that he was giving the owner a 10% break in his fee.

Again, it was the same amount as the other guy. Interestingly enough, the owner even mentioned that since he was getting a discount he would go with that guy. Didn’t really have much to do with who would provide the better service. I guess with examples like this you can see why some companies imply that certain items have a 50% off sale price when in reality the price is the same everywhere else. Or sometimes what people do is just mark up the price on the sale day to make it look like you are getting a better deal.

2 Comments

  • Stewart 11/21/2009

    Interestingly, it used to be that in the UK this practice was illegal. There was a law which stated that the item had to have been offered for sale at the pre-sale price for a certain period before you could say it was discounted. The idea, a good one I believe, was to give the customer confidence that this was a genuine deal.

    Two things occur to me. One is that not being too close to retail would tell me that I may of course have been living in cloud cuckoo land! The retailer probably found a way round this. Secondly, it’s been a while since I’ve been in the UK and things may have changed.

    Whether it’s the same or not, I still get surprised when a company actively rubbishes it’s competitior by name in an advertisement. I think that was illegal in the UK as well!

  • Alan Yu 11/21/2009

    That’s an interesting consumer law. I have heard in Quebec the consumer protection laws are way harsher. So maybe that is the only place in Canada where a retailer would be extremely afraid to do things like that.

    There are laws that prevent a company from bad mouthing another if what they say is clearly false. Unless by rubbishes you mean commercials where companies poke fun and mock the other product or business.

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