This got me thinking today as there was news about the company Loblaws saying publicly how food prices are going to rise because of things like the tariffs but with that said so many people don’t believe the company due to their past actions such as the bread price fixing scheme. Essentially, people viewed it as an opportunity for the company to pass blame where the tariffs are simply a technical excuse to charge people more money. Not surprisingly, this is due to how much money the company makes each year to further create that doubt.
This kind of happened in a different scenario I saw where a small business was looking for say a student to do all this professional work of going to a site, recording a video with their own gear, getting people to sign waivers that were recorded in public and editing over three pieces of video for the company. All this for a lowball rate of about $100. The thing is, people knew the business made a lot of money too and so they could afford to hire people with industry standard rates versus trying to take advantage of people to cut cost. As expected, they didn’t look good as people then didn’t want to buy their products.
I am all for saving money and not having to pay more than you need to for lavish solutions. But if you have the proper funds to budget for the appropriate labor then you should versus trying to take advantage of people who may be say naïve or so new that they will literally do anything. To me it’s no different than a store price gouging consumers all in the effort to make more money. Your reputation is something that should be protected too from these types of PR disasters.