The price we pay for low prices

So last night, before I went to bed, I was checking out Mashup Mom's website and she linked to this Wall Street Journal article here The article basically talks about some of the modern ways (Internet) that consumers use in order to get, what was once hard to get information, about the company's lowest price on a particular product.  As a whole the Internet age has made us smarter consumers. We zoom in on sales, talk about them in blogs and on message boards, and think we are not hurting nobody. But is that true?  What does it cost for us to get our free/cheap stuff?

Here are my thoughts:

Most folks at the worker bee level are underpaid, being laid off or overworked. When we take advantage of a sale. For example, I have personally witnessed people who bought cartloads of stuff during really good catalina promotions (like your bucks) and then return the items but not the cats or ringing up 3 grapes at a time, for hours, in order to get the bonus your bucks cat on their magic card. When you use 20 different email addresses so you can keep using that online coupon, you are taking advantage. Companies do not have unlimited funds to run these promotions. What is happening is a few people are taking advantage (running a deal to the ground) before the deal even gets out to the general population (as intended). Then things like layoffs happen because the company did not make their target goal. Social Justice does not apply here. We are not sticking it to "The Man" we are hurting our fellow man.


Don't get me wrong, I shop the sales, I use coupons and rebates. What I do not do is think that I should never pay for anything. I do not buy or trade coupons because the manufacturer took the time to print on all of their coupons that they do not like this.  I do not take peelies, hangtags or wine tags off a product that I am not buying at that time. I do not buy 100 deodorants because they are free and I can sell them or donate them later. I do not use multiple email in order to take advantage of a really good online deal. I do not use multiple cards so I can avoid the limits a store or manufacturer has set. I refuse to submit rebates with all my relatives addresses so I can get my money back for 30 razors. I do not return stuff I buy and get a register reward or OYNO catalina for. I only buy things that we will use. I do not take advantage of a mistake by a store. Recently Jewel has a free bread coupon or a free produce coupon if you signed up to receive their emails. Now common sense dictates that wanted you to choose one or the other, not sign up the same email multiple times. Well they did not ensure their system stopped people from signing up and even worst they made the coupon a PDF so there was no limit to the amount of time one could print it. Well people ran with this, stood in line for hours doing multiple orders for bakery bread and produce that they only had to pay tax for. Did they think about the fact that the ingredients, staff, space and electricity required to make the bakery bread all cost money? NO! Many justified it by saying, well Jewels prices are so high anyway like this would entitle them to something. Now remember the head honcho of Jewel is not getting his pay cut, so the money lost will result in layoffs, store closings and even higher prices. That can eliminate my choice of stores to shop at, which actually hurts my power, as a consumer, in the long run by getting rid of competition.


I work very hard on my blog to avoid posting things that I deem unethical, even though some are very tempting. I do not expect that everyone will think like me. End rant, lol.

What do y'all think?