h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a box under the desk. It's full of things I don't really know what else to do with. A rubber band, a 3.5" floppy disk, a ball of string, the bit of bent wire that opens the broken drawer...

This journal is going to be the proverbial box under the desk, where I can put any little intangibles and shiny things and pieces of flotsam and jetsam that catch my eye.

Like malaria. I knew malaria was a nasty business, of course. But what really illustrated how bad was reading a quote from a Viet Cong veteran. "We lost far more people to malaria than we did to the Americans."

Yep. It's one of the diseases that make mosquitoes the deadliest creature on the face of the Earth. A1132138

Indeed.

Although on the other hand, I did think the survival rate once infected (and the ability to build up a limited immunity) was much, much lower than it apparently is.

Interestingly enough the awful sickle-cell anemia which afflicts people in malaria ridden places actually confers protection on its sufferer from getting killed by malaria. It however is not nice to live with.

I didn't know that!

It seems that having malaria and surviving it gives a certain immunity, too: if not immunity to contracting it, then at least some immunity to the most severe symptoms. It doesn't last though.

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Changing tack completely:

"If your shopping would have been cheaper elsewhere, we'll refund the difference."

The psychology behind this is interesting. You buy your shopping in shop A. Along with your receipt, you get a voucher for £15 because it would have been £15 cheaper at the competitors.

So people walk out, thinking "Oh! I've got a £15 voucher, I'll have to shop here next time to use it!"

So by charging you £15 more than the two competitors would for the same thing - ie by overcharging you - they have ensured that you'll shop there next time.

Clever, eh?

Yes, it's very very clever. And plenty of people will fall for it. P. T. Barnum was right!

To me, the word 'refund' means cash. If it ain't crinkle it ain't a refund. Nor is truly a refund, grammatically speaking, because you haven't been re-funded with something you previously un-funded from your bank account or wallet by handing those funds over to the supplier.

If a shop tried to sell me (figuratively speaking) that old flannel, I'd start thinking about whether or not I want to patronise their business. It's the opposite, really, of 'Never Knowingly Undersold'.

But the shop really know what other stores were charging for the merchandise? Just wondering.

Actually, let me amend that - my brain is still woolly from lack of sleep.

By cash, I mean funds that I can spend anywhere, not necessarily green folding stuff. A voucher isn't cash. A business might refund money to my credit card. That's not money I can put directly in my wallet, but it is a refund.

Well said!

It's pretty much standard practice for all the big supermarkets here, now. They're all at it.

Sometimes you just get weary of scams even when they are obvious and you don't fall for them. You feel like saying "Look, I know it's crap, and you know it's crap, so can we just quit the whole charade and stop wasting each other's time?"

True. I think the safest thing is just to assume that everything offered by any business is a scam, and work back from there.

Yes, every business, even self-employed independent sole traders, such as your local corner shop. Let's not forget that everything Arkwright ever offered in the way of a sales promotion was a scam

I think we should formally codify all this wisdom!

"Rule 1. Everybody in the world is a "

Case in point - I just had a cold call from a business I've never heard of (and whose name I shan't mention because h2's legal people might get upset), and the very first thing they said was congratulations, my phone number has been selected to win... something or other - I couldn't get past her very strong accent. Not that I could be bothered to pursue it - the moment I heard 'you've been selected', that was the end of the conversation as far as I was concerned.

On the other hand, I might have turned down the chance of receiving a major award, delivered in a huge wooden case marked Fra-gee-lay

This idea of refunding the difference deserves more thought.

Think of an item... a Widget®. Two stores in town traditionally sold Widgets for decades. They were similarly priced with between a 5-15% markup. Then a Warmart opens up a few miles out of town. They offer Widgets® for 5% under store 1 & 2's WHOLESALE price because they can buy in huge bulk and pressure the manufacturer to move their production overseas. Store 1 cuts its prices as low as he can. Store 2 goes out of business. Locals still like shopping at store 1, but Warmart's prices are still undercutting them when there's a sale. So store 1 makes a "guarantee" to match any sale price. They'll lose money on that Widget®, but they expect their shoppers will buy more than just a Widget.

I don't see how that's a scam.

An item sold below cost to get shoppers through the door is called a "loss leader." Stores can do that and remain profitable because the people who run them know something about human nature.

There are some deep-discount stores in my area. They put candy and other goodies at the checkout aisle, knowing that shoppers will assume that this candy is as good a buy as the rest of the store's merchandise. It's actually just as expensive as it would be in any other store. If shoppers stopped t think about this they would realize it, but maybe they're so thrilled to get low prices on the regular merchandize that they don't mind spending some of their savings on the full-priced candy. Plus, standing in a checkout aisle is stressful, which gives people the desire to be doing something -- something like eating candy to compensate for the stress.

Also, most people do not comparison shop. Even though it's much easier now that all one need do is point a jeejaw at the UPC and get all the local and online prices.

That's a slightly different set of circumstances. There are three similar supermarkets in my town. One is perceived as slightly more middle class and expensive, one as sort of average, and one as a bit more down-at-heel.

But the thing is, they are all the same in price if you compare like with like goods. It really is just a marketing image. I know this from experience and looking at prices. Yet all three run ads, quoting real prices, and conclusively proving that they are the cheapest and they'll pay back the difference if it isn't so.

So it's not really a case of one giant pricing the others out of the market.

Except for when it is.

A friend of mine works as sort of a private fire investigator. He told me an interesting story about a brand of fans. This brand was known for quality. Then, Warmart starts carrying their brand at the time when Warmart bragged about how they carried products "Made In America*". That asterix indicated "barring other cheaper imports". The fan company starts selling their fans to Warmart and in a few years Warmart is their number one customer. Then they are pressured to lower the prices of their fans. Then, when they've lowered their costs as much as possible, they're pressured to lower them further. So, the fan company does what they feel they need to do and they move production overseas.

Long story short, my friend says he's seen a lot of house fires started by this company's fans lately.

that is capitalism and that is what a lot of us are struggling against... it's futile though.

Sometimes I'm glad that in my town there is really not much choice of supermarket. We have 3 discounters, of which I only use one because their price/quality is good. The things that I don't get there I get in a big supermarket which I loathe for the fact that the lighting is too bright and the big, neon coloured hand-written signs saying "cheap" (cheap is a whole different kettle of fish to me than, say, economical)

But. Actually, their fruit and veg is excellent, plus because it is known as cheap and is in the cheaper end of my (one-horse and therefore small) town, it has a lot of non-ethnically-German customers. And they know their market so the veg and fruit section is nearly (but not quite) as good as the W-shop in the UK. Well nearer than the hideously expensive specialist shops in Düsseldorf where I can get the things I need at triple the price of my local one.

So I shop around. However, I never buy something unless I need or want it (use a list). I never buy something at the checkout unless it is something I need and I know that the price is ok.