Thursday, February 22, 2007

Discount offer

"Hurry up! 50% discount is there in the super mall. And today is the last day to avail this End of Season Sales discount", I urged everyone.

Naveen replied, "These discounts would be present through out the year. Businessmen just raise the prices and give discounts. See, an item worth Rs.100/- will be priced 150 rupees and 30 percent discount(means Rs. 45) will be given on it. We stupid guys feel happy to gain 45 rupees as the discount but end up paying more."

"I don't agree with you completely. Promotions like discounts and prizes are useful for the business to improve sales and discharge old stock. During promotions if they make us to pay more then who would buy from them? Certainly they should be less than or at least equal to the normal price," I started arguing with Naveen.

"Do you think these promotional advertisements come for free? And businessmen forgo their profits for no advantage. And ... "

"Okay, now its not time for discussion, first go and get ready. We are already late."

In an hour we reached the super mall packed with Sunday customers. We all were excited to see 50% discount posters all around the place. But it remained only for a while until we noticed that it's 'Up to 50%' but not '50%'.

I liked a blue T-Shirt. But its price is Rs.800 with just 15% discount and so the amount required to buy it is around seven hundred. It's absurd, genuine price should be between five and six hundreds. But here all the prices are very very high. So, I left that shop and got into another store.

There I picked up a brown T-Shirt worth Rs. 200/- where "Up to 30% discount" was written on its tag. I asked a salesperson about the exact discount. He entered the code written on the tag of the T-shirt into a computer and answered "No Discount Sir". I am taken aback at his answer - "No Discount Sir". It's very bad if they don't have discount then why is there discount tag. As it was nice and not too expensive, I bought it. And from there we went to another apparel store.

"Buy three, Get 1 free" or Buy two and get 50% off on the third one", were the offers there. Rakesh selected a shirt and a trouser for himself. To utilize the offer I bought a trouser and took one more trouser for free of cost. We were not completely satisfied with them and we thought to postpone purchasing them. But the salesperson's words - "Tomorrow there may not be offer, Sir", made us to buy immediately.

Three days later, to accompany another friend in shopping, we went to the same store. But this time that offer is not there. Ha Ha, Naveen and I made a wise decision to utilize the offer.

With in ten minutes we heard an announcement saying that only for an hour "Buy 2, Get 1 free" offers on the same apparel that we had bought three days earlier. After an hour and a half we heard the announcement stating that the offer will close with in 20 minutes.

1 comment:

Karteek said...

Well .. atleast in Chennai, I find only discounts on hiked prices. Rule Zero : There is no businessman who likes to make less profits !!!

Past, Present and Future - All are abstract.