Spending review

No, not that one. This is about my own personal spending and the challenges of being a consumer. In our market-based economy competition is king and we all benefit from transparent and competitive pricing, right?

To an extent, perhaps, but as we all know these things don’t quite work in the way suggested by the textbooks. The complexity of modern markets and the myriad choices available can often serve to baffle and confuse. And we often legitimately feel that we’re being ripped off.

Even within the confines of a large Tesco superstore, for example, the pricing is often un-transparent, inconsistent and generally baffling. It’s quite well known that it can be cheaper to buy two small tins of a product rather than a larger one, for instance – the opposite of what we would expect. Whether this is a deliberate selling ploy of some kind or a simple error is unclear, but it’s often not easy to compare the various prices and sizes of products, so we may not be aware of these anomalies.

Along the same lines, I’ve quite fancied a special pen to write on my blank CDs/DVDs, since normal felt pens don’t seem to work, and ball pens don’t leave much of an impression. Tesco stocks packs of four on the shelves beside the blank discs, but in my local store they’re priced at around £4.50, which intuitively seems overpriced, so I’ve always baulked at buying a pack. OK, I’ve never looked very far for them – and do almost all my shopping in Tesco - but I spotted a similar product in Asda last week for £3.00, so I bought a packet, thinking I’d secured a bargain.

However, I was looking in the stationery aisle in Tesco yesterday and spotted a four pack of disc marker pens for £1.30! Feeling a bit peeved I checked the aisle with the blank discs, and here were the similar pens still selling at £4.50. Between the three separate products there seemed little to differentiate them – each had a black, blue, green and red pen – except for differences in the packaging, and the fact that the significantly dearer pens were in the same aisle as the blank discs rather than among the other writing materials. Sneaky or wot?

By the same token, in HMV last week I bought a CD from the bargain section for £4 or so – Muse, if I remember correctly - and then noticed the same title in the normal section for £17 or thereabouts. I also saw a Metallica CD that I’d bought for £5 (two for a tenner) a few weeks ago on sale now for £15, while the same title is available on Amazon for £4.99 – I don’t mind paying a pound or two more in the shops, but a tenner is just ridiculous, particularly given the previous price in the same shop. And, of course, with the amount of products in such stores it’s impossible for shoppers to always make such comparisons – and it’s often just a question of luck that we come across these discrepancies – thus we might in fact pay the higher price and never know we’re effectively being ripped off.

On a different tack, I pay £15 a month for 5GB of mobile broadband bandwidth, and after 18 months or so into a two year contract I’ve managed to exceed my monthly allowance for the first time, and now I’m charged at a premium rate. Fair enough, I don’t mind paying maybe double or perhaps even treble my contracted rate. Er, no, it’s 10p per MB, so around £100 for a GB, as compared to my usual £3. What’s that all about? Presumably it’s to exploit the captive market of those who rely solely on their mobile broadband account and have exceeded their limit, like poor old me! So now only essential internet access until midnight tonight, which is why I’m composing this on a word processor, rather than ‘live’ on the usual Blogger software.

On the other hand, last night I thought I’d spotted a bit of good news pricing-wise. A few weeks ago I dropped the extended battery I’d bought for my netbook, and it didn’t survive the fall. So I was considering buying a new netbook rather than a new extended battery – which would cost the thick end of £100 – for my current machine, which currently provides two hours or so on the original battery.

The Argos catalogue has a Samsung model with a 14 hour battery life (aye, right!), but for weeks this has been out of stock both in the stores – you can check availability online – and for mail order via the website. Last night I checked to see whether it was back in stock, and was pleased to see that the price was now marked £20 off. Thus two bits of good news. Except that it still isn’t in stock. Either in the numerous stores I checked or via mail order. So presumably they haven’t reduced the price just to shift all that stock they can’t get rid of. Bizarre.

Anyway, what’s all this got to do with Planet Politics? Not much really, but I suppose it does raise profound philosophical questions about price transparency, market failure etc, and the extent to which government should intervene in the market to correct such shortcomings.

Or perhaps it just demonstrates that a consumer dealing with businesses is just like a voter dealing with politicians – tread carefully and never take things at face value. The words ‘marketing’ and ‘spin’ may normally be used in different contexts, but essentially they mean the same thing.

And have you ever noticed that the first four letters of ‘politicians’ are the same as the first four letters of ‘police’?