I think it’s so obnoxious when I go into a little shop and nothing has a price tag. I hate it with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. Are you seriously gonna make me ask you about the price of every little thing I might consider purchasing? Or would you prefer that I bring a bunch of stuff to the register and then decide if I actually want it as you ring it up? And it honestly doesn’t matter if I can afford it (although the lack of clearly labeled prices are particularly rude to people who maybe can’t). No matter how much money I have I will never feel good about getting ripped off so the asking price will always be a factor.

I was recently in a local needlepoint supply store where they had nothing labeled. Needlepoint supplies vary wildly in price. You can get thread for a dollar or for $20. Canvases can cost 5 bucks or hundreds. From their website I saw that this store had needle minders (little decorative magnets to hold your needle when you take a break, they usually look like enamel pins but with magnets instead of the pin and clasp). Well they had $7 needle minders and $75 needle minders. So someone will wander in and see a cute 1 inch Snoopy magnet, think it’s a cute impulse purchase and then get hit with $75 + tax and have to either smile and go along with it or have to back out. It’s just a piss poor customer experience.

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[–] 53 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Ask 30 questions, and walk out without buying anything. The owner will quickly realise the value of those price tags.

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    [–] 52 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    IMO, if there's no price tags, that means haggling is on the table. Me and the cashier are going to have a discussion about how much this doodad should cost.

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  • [–] 22 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Fortunately there are pretty strict laws about displaying pricing here because that sounds really annoying.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I've never seen this either. I suppose it's from the US, where, typically, the end-consumer has no real rights anyway in most corners of the country (apart from getting cancer in California).

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Pffff, what do you need those rights for, anyway? You have the freedom to choose any store you like in the marketplace. So don't try to infringe on the store owner's freedom to not have to display prices, you freedom hating commie! /s

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    No price tag? That must mean IT'S FREE, RIGHT?
    HUAHUAHUAHUA

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I was in a clothing store, saw a nice shirt with a handwritten price tag that read $15. I asked, if the shirt was indeed just 15 dollars; "ah, no, that's the in price, the shirt is $250.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago* (40 children)

    In some of these stores "if you need to ask you can't afford it", but in your expample that certainly doesn't apply lol.

    Kinda the same story with only giving the price before taxes in the US, why would you not just tell your customer up front what they actually need to pay? Making price labels isn't actually hard, you don't need to have them shipped from the national headquarters.

    Granted, I've never experienced either. At most, some stores are sloppy and don't label all of their items.

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 3 months ago (10 children)

    Yeah, when I shopped for embroidery stuff in Paris everything was clearly labeled with the actual full price because France is a real country with laws. So if a historical embroidery shop in Paris can do it then this neighborhood shop in Seattle can fuck right off.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    Which shop? My partner does some embroidery, and it'd be good to know what to avoid.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)

    Heirloom Designs. FWIW they do have nice stuff. But I can’t abide the price tag thing.

    ETA the delightful place is Paris is Maison Sajou and they’re over 180 years old. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in Paris.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    Shit, I guess they really are Seattle's only needlepoint shop, which must be why they feel they're able to get away with that shit.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    I think they’re the only Seattle shop with high end needlepoint fibers and hand painted canvases. You can definitely get Anchor or DMC and various notions at Stitches or Acorn Street but the silk and merino fiber (thread? Floss?) is pretty niche. But I don’t want to totally beat on them cuz even if they have some annoying properties, they are still a small local business trying to foster local crafting and fiber arts.

    I’ve sewn, knitted, crocheted, cross stitched and embroidered on and off my whole life and only just recently learned that needle point was its own separate thing and as I poke around it feels like a weird elitist corner of the fiber world. I saw someone comment once that they would love to get into it but it’s so expensive and I was confused because DMC floss is like 75 cents a skein and needles are like a few bucks. But some needlepoint stuff is like crazy expensive. Like I saw a series of videos on TickTock where people were making needlepoint brick covers, which is some kind of traditional thing where you encase a brick in needlepoint and then use it as a doorstop, and I thought it looked cute and fun and thought I might try it but when I looked up brick cover patterns they were like $150!!! Like WTF. You still have to get all the thread and stitch it. But I guess the canvases are often hand painted so there is a lot of labor. But still.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Price before taxes in the US is because a lot of products have the price already printed on them, and are sold in many locations with many different tax codes. I live in Los Angeles where the total is 9.75% but often shop in Santa Monica where it's 10.75% for instance. If I buy a Hallmark card, from a company based in Kansas City Missouri (which apparently has several different rates because of tax overlay zones and counties but it's about 9.95% ish) it will have a price printed on the back which doesn't include any taxes. As a shopper I can still easily compare it to the price of a Papyrus card (owned by American Greetings, based in Westlake OH , total sales tax 8.00%) on the next shelf. I get a ballpark figure adding 10% and rounding. If I buy a soda there will also be a recycling deposit, which also goes to the state not the store. If I buy food, the register knows not to add any tax, unless it's hot and prepared. (Getting fairness for poor people using SNAP to buy a rotisserie chicken is a whole separate discussion!)

    The store can program the register once when they need to change the percentages of federal, state, county and city taxes it will add to all the items, or to various categories of items. They won't have to relabel everything in the store if we pass another ½ cent/dollar to fund homeless shelters. The shop owner keeps none of the money and the register calculation makes their payment of those taxes practically automatic.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (15 children)

    Kinda the same story with only giving the price before taxes in the US, why would you not just tell your customer up front what they actually need to pay?

    In some cases, this maybe makes sense, because some purchasers are exempt from sales tax in some circumstances.

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    [–] 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Why are you going there. I turn around and am gone if things are not priced. I mean like a renfair stall with blacksmith I can forgive. Heck its all part of the experience. But like a normal shop. pass. heck if something I intend to buy is not labled at the grocery store I won't buy it. Ill stop somewhere else to pick it up on the way home.

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    [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    No tag? Not for sale, then.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Same with web sites. If I'm looking for something online and prices aren't listed I'm out.

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    [–] 6 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    I've worked very high-end retail, and the only reason a customer would ever have to ask the price is if they were too vain to wear glasses so they could read the labels. Having done labeling, I can see that it would take a lot of time to hang tags on individual skeins of thread, but surely at least the peg they hang from could have a label. How does the person at the register know the prices, do they have everything memorized? Or is there a code label already on the item? If so is there a way you or your phone could decode that? Or could they hand you a scanner to use? Seems like they ought to be able to explain it, or demonstrate that they aren't just making up the prices based on the shopper's appearance. Most vendors even print the MSRP, so that shop might be removing them and upcharging.

    What a stupid way to turn what could be a pleasant artistic introspective shopping experience into a stressful one. And I'm sure it cuts their sales because not only would I (politely) have them take back the $75 magnet before I paid, but also on any further visits I would stop myself from even touching anything other than the list I came in for, and they'd miss selling items which I might have impulse-purchased if I'd seen they were priced within reason.

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    How does the person at the register know the prices?

    That’s the funny part. They don’t.

    When I asked about the price of the thread, she had to look it up on the ipad. There were like 3 main brands and for one of them it took a decent amount of time, like 2-3 minutes to hunt it down. It’s kinda wild because it’s a tiny store with only 2 walls for display or shelves and the thread takes up one entire wall.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Oh that's hilarious actually! So they're just really really bad at running a store. They're wasting more effort and time than it would take to label every item, starting from scratch. God forbid they would ever have to deal with multiple customers asking prices. You and a few friends could come in separately but all around the same time and just ask for price after price... Did they have any rationale for why they don't show their prices?

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    The implication is "if you're too poor to risk spending dozens or potentially hundreds of dollars on an overpriced niknak, then you're too poor to shop here."

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    One thing I really like in Asia is probably half of food places have signs outside with the prices or a menu or an app. No sitting down, looking at the menu and realizing you fucked up. It's more important when a meal can cost between 1 and 100 USD.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Dont waste your time ,just leave the shop

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago*

    I see this as an issue of trust and reputability. Typically, items will have a UPC printed on them, a tag with a price on it, or in an area with a posted price. If I don’t see any of those, and especially if it is on something not easily found on the internet, then I see no way to know if what I am holding is worth what I am willing to spend on it. And more importantly, if the person at the register is ripping me off or not.

    If the purse I pick up does not have anything on it that indicates it could be $500+, then I’m wasting my time by hunting someone down to give me a price check. This is especially true with designers that have low, mid, and top tier products, ranging from maybe $100-$3000+.

    I’ve only encountered “no price tag” shops a few times. And each time, I’ve walked out.

    Whether inefficient, lazy, or pretentious, it’s an insult to consumers.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Whoops, I brought an extra 25 items to the register that I might want.

    What's the price on that? Oh, nevermind. You can put that back. And the next one? Oh, I'm sorry. That's too much. You can put that back too.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    It is easy for sellers to charge more than the MRP by charging for 'services' on top of the item price, such as a 'cooling charge' for cold drinks, or by manufacturers setting the MRP at up to ten times the expected sale price. In Sri Lanka, it has been reported that the MRP for basic items at food stalls is circumvented by the operators charging separately for ingredients in the food, such as the eggs in egg hoppers.[7] The MRP also hurts consumers in rural areas because if retailers cannot charge a higher price to make up for the higher cost of transportation and distribution to those areas, they may simply not stock those items.

    Maybe you could mitigate those issues with tighter laws and stricter enforcement ... but it really seems like MRP isn't a magic bullet solution here.

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